13. No-Thingness
We're back at square one.
Many of us didn't actually know resonance (either holding or potential space) at the level we most needed it when we were building our definition of "reality."
The questions we need to ask: Can we change? Can we find AND now? Is it too late to know being-with?
guysfromandromeda.com
Here's where the best hint I know begins: AND isn't to be found in the ways we're used to finding something. Because AND isn't a thing. Rather, it's the hidden-in-plain-sight, dark matter, unseen background being-with that is always present. For everything and everyone.
AND holds galaxies, atoms, and everything in between.
AND holds each of us, whether we know it or not.
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When Piglet says "nothing," Piglet is naming the unrecognized, yet always present background, the AND that, once recognized, becomes holding personified.
Each something is a celebration of the no-thing that supports it.
— John Cage
AND isn't a thing. AND holds all things. AND is resonance-between-things.
When Piglet says "nothing" he is saying "no-thing." Piglet is saying, "What I most need is no-thingness. I need not-thing-ness. I need the AND-that-holds; resonance. I need the non-thingness at the heart of all things shared with you."
Moments of meeting. Moments of trust. Hidden-in-plain-sight.
babyblog.com
Out of no-thingness, holding and newness continually arise. As Meister Eckhart said 800 years ago: "There exists in the present instant, a now which, without end, is ever new." Presence is synonymous with emergence. AND is being born now.
And now.
And now.
Melancholy by Albert Gyorgy
No-thingness is actually the opposite of our procedural experience of "nothingness." Those of us who are afraid (or certain) that we live in a universe of random nothingness are actually reliving and describing the vacancy of our learned absence. This is memory now masquerading as "reality."
Nothingness-as-worldview confirms itself, becoming increasingly rigid and ultimately static. It was cool and distant when we were young allowing all of reality to appear impersonal and vacant now.
But no-thingness is vital, fresh, and filled with caring.
Being-with is never some-thing. It's the utterly obvious but all-too-often unrecognized resonance of between-ness. Space that appeared empty remains space, yet it is now (and now and now) activated, alive, new... with shared presence.
Whenever we open to AND, we experience presence. Whenever we deny AND, we reconfirm absence.