We routinely give up things throughout our days, whether time or money, energy or ideas. Seeing the world as a limited pool of potential, we believe that we experience sacrifice as we give of ourselves in the world. However, nothing in Heartspace happens in a vacuum. Instead, everything operates in complete balance, always. This means that as our connections to some things fade, leave, or end, others are seeded, growing and flourishing. Heartspace is an infinite pool of ability in which all things always grow, forever expanding throughout the universe. Despite appearances, there is no actual end to any connection we may ever experience.
The tree that falls in the woods is not actually dead. Instead, it moves to another point within its Heartspace in order to become a nurse log that will hold supple nutrients for new plants. As it looses its form as a tree completely, it continues to exist as physical matter by replenishing the forest floor and becoming dirt.
Your ideas are the same, as you learn the truth that is being exposed to you in every moment of your life. Gathering around the hundred million lasting connections that live in you, through you every single day, these ideas pop into your mind, sometimes taking root while other times evaporating rapidly. As longstanding ideas about who you are or what you know dissipate, they become the fertile grounds in which other ideas grow, serving as nurse logs in our imagination as we continue to construct world meaning from our experience.
What is required for you to live in Heartspace isn’t sacrifice, its exchange. Its the conscious knowing of the interdependence of feelings and ideas, and the deep feeling of gracious release of having to know the outcomes of our actions before we take them. When you trust the lasting connections you experience throughout the world everyday you trust Heartspace.
Charles Bukowski, never apparently gracious as a writer, wrote some profound things throughout his 60+ publications. In his second novel, Factotum, he wrote the following which I think speaks well to the relationship between having lasting connections in our lives and sacrifice:
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
The second-to-last line is the lesson I am trying to explain here, that by consciously engaging in the world “You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.” Find your joy in who you are and the way life works, and give up what you need to when you need to, without hesitation. Then you’re living from Heartspace.
Adam F.C. Fletcher 