Inhabiting the Vast and Mysterious

As of late, I have been sitting with a question.

It arrived during an ordinary day while clouds played with morning light and raindrops danced on the roof. The initial question that arrived was how do we take the vast and mysterious and make it inhabitable?

After turning the question over in my mind for a while it didn’t sit quite right. I sensed a presumption in the question, and I began to see it held the assumption that I direct the infinite. I could sense how I wanted the vast and mysterious wrapped in familiar packaging to make it a suitable size to live with.  

The more I pondered the more I realized I was treating the vast and mysterious like an object outside of myself. I was standing safely on the inside, looking out at this unnamable reality, while trying to reduce it into something small enough to handle. I wished to manage it.

Managing is such a deeply human impulse. Our minds prefer objects, boundaries, definitions, and categories because all that precision feels safe, and knowable. The mind creates distinction because distinction helps us navigate the world, and there is nothing wrong with that, it is brilliant. The problem isn't about categorizing, but mistaking the categories for reality itself.

I am becoming aware how incorrect this categorical thinking is because there are some days I experience the vast and mysterious everywhere all at once. It doesn't necessarily feel outside or inside of me, it simply seems to be everywhere, and that "everywhere" includes the vast world and the uncharted territory inside my own chest. 

As I pondered the managing part of myself another question arose that boggled my mind: how do I inhabit the inside of myself? The question sounds absurd, and I’m not sure that will be fully answered here, yet it’s a paradox worth exploring. I wondered, if I am already myself, why would I need to learn to inhabit myself? The answer was simple; because being oneself and being present to oneself are not the same thing.

If I pay close attention to what is actually happening in me I become aware that often I am not actually very intimate with what is happening. For instance, I can experience anger or grief and not actually inhabit the anger or grief. I can have desire or longing without actually knowing what the desire or longing is pointing towards. I can also reside in a role, story, or set of expectations without really inhabiting the living reality underneath them.

This paradox of learning to inhabit myself teaches me that there is a part of myself that has learned to operate without presence. Presence is simply being fully here by allowing myself to be touched by life. Another way to say this is I know I am present when I can be touched by life and not contract or withdraw, but neutrally meet what is happening.

I often live outside myself by believing that the mind’s chatter, the tasks I do, or the responses I make are actually me. This faulty belief results in me relating to an edited version of reality, and I do this because the immediacy of aliveness is dismissed in favor of quick management. I rearrange reality to some version I would rather be meeting.

To truly allow life to touch me means inhabiting the inside of myself, which means dropping the defenses. It means settling down into the body, and actually noticing what is presenting itself throughout the ordinary day. It requires learning to become available to what is actually here, whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable, without trying to edit or fix any of it. What I also notice when I am in this more available state is the ongoing commentary my mind offers for everything I am encountering. 

When I stop running from my own physical sensation and interior depth, I discover that the space within is continuous with the space without. It’s not that the distinction between inner and outer disappears, it's just that with presence I am not convinced that I am a sealed-off self moving through the world. The grief in my chest and the rain against the roof are not the same thing, but somehow both belong to the same mystery of being alive.

It is a slow learning to inhabit the vast and mysterious. I am so familiar with management-me that it takes time to trust the non-management side of myself. One could say that the management self understands function, while the inhabiting self appreciates participation. One seeks predictability; the other remains available to what is unfolding.

I also notice when I apply the function versus participation principle to outside relationships that the difference is notable. It is the difference between asking the cultural nicety of “how are you” while not really expecting an honest or lengthy answer, to silently meeting someone’s eyes with a curious wondering of how they are truly feeling. 

Perhaps this paradox is the tension I keep encountering. I want to inhabit the mystery, but I also want language for what I am experiencing. I want to name it without reducing it, but I also want to learn to inhabit it, which sometimes can feel like defining it. Perhaps the need for language is the same reason we name what we feel for someone we care about as love, even though the full extent of that love is undefined. Language is meant to help us talk with and understand one another, to open us to further discovery. 

The language of the past would have defined the vast and mysterious as God, and that word remains a possibility. Unfortunately, the word God is loaded with human projection obscuring the living reality. For many people the word God carries baggage, dogma, and/or harsh religious memories. When I say God, I do not mean a cosmic object sitting somewhere in the heavens, nor a defined Being whose attributes I can catalogue. This is one of the things I love about the mystical tradition, it recognizes that if God can be defined then God has been made into something smaller than what God actually is. 

So, for now, I prefer the vast and mysterious. What I mean by that language is simply that which exceeds me, while accompanying me. It is that which expands beyond my rational mind’s comprehension, and that which is infinitely more than what I know. It is also that which calls me forward into greater presence, honesty, and openness.

From my human experience I would simply call it Love. It draws me out and beyond my world of management and continually invites me into more expansive ways of living. Perhaps this is what it means to inhabit the vast and mysterious: not to understand it, contain it, or even define it, but to become available to its movement within this very ordinary life.

Reflection:

Where in your ordinary life are you being invited to stop managing and become more available to what is already here?