Holding space

If I may be so bold, I would assert that we need to learn how to hold “space” for people. This means that whatever they speak about, the listener does not react with strong emotion. Instead, they hold space to simply process what has been happening for them.

The task is to listen without judging. This is different from simply hearing someone. Holding a space is crucial when developing a relationship- friendship -etc. with a person who comes from a very different background. Normally, we wish we could react in calm smooth way at all times, but certain moments present challenges that take us away from our center and cause us to become overly emotional in our response.

Many people never learn how to hold “space” for anyone. Space was never held for them. If the individual has had experiences wherein they needed to tune someone out and not listen to them, they will have a difficult time getting into the place where they can listen easily to just anyone. They might be hearing but not listening.
Another piece to this puzzle that is relevant, and really this is always relevant, IMHO -at all times, is that YOU ARE NOT the stories in your mind. Our human identity is tied up in all kinds of false stories of what we are based on the way we have been programmed and conditioned. The essence of what we are can be summed up by the word- breath, the air that moves through us as it circulates and that leaves us when we exit this realm and head where ever it is we head, or are exterminated.

That mystery remains unsolved for the vast majority of us, though some claim to know. The point is, we are BREATH, breath is spirit and that is all we really are, we are not false constructs that make up identity. We breathe and then we stop breathing. We over complicate this and misery ensues.

This connects to holding space because we are simply breathers who slip into and out of existence with no formal instructions given while we are here, and the space we hold for each other can transform the quality of our breath, and the quality of our time here. Many can attest to this as true.

and now for a poem-- "go silent, get loud"

Showing up.

Showing up on time.

Breaking down.

Breaking down knowledge, breaking down into pieces

Showing up again.

There was a completion, a full circle 

There were words spoken but not by a tender mouth

There were words spoken in gazes -in familiar galaxies

we showed up-

we broke down-

our fiction temperature was raging,

our truth movement was astonishing-

our pieces were broken until suddenly hope formed an ice sculpture and as it melted it became the water we needed to take in
our broken pieces spoke directly to each other at the time- at the time we thought we were fine

And this time presents new truths-  we are whole
we break down again only this time it is a necessary fragmentation in a process 
designated to re- design us

A new template.

Give us seconds-- we will make hours.

Give us hours-- we will condense them into minutes. 
Time is barely breathing on the back burner 
We are showing up again…still. 
We show up in the stillness.

We are whole again.