Just a note: the serenity prayer is always good advice. One can hold the tension and take that advice but the the tension remains as it was and is.

correction – I might add a refusal to articulate it away, fix it with words.

HI Anita
To your point “Your philosophical and poetic reflections could act as a shield, elegant and thoughtful, that sits between you and raw vulnerability.”

As most such things it has been both and neither. Today I no longer view it at a shied if only because it hasn’t worked as one 🙂 If anything the reflections have increased my sense of isolation. My family would reject most of what I have written and not understood.
So the pondering has changed little of what is “painted” but has restored a relationship to the canvas… ( I sleep a little better and handle panic attracts a little better) The tension between remains and I can only try to hold the tension without seeing it as something broken. It is and I am That.

“I’m having this image of a blank canvas full of dark colors, representing the ache and I’m nowhere to be found on it. The ache feels heavy, unbearable… until someone, with a few brushstrokes, paints me onto that canvas. What a relief: there I am. I didn’t know I was there.”

I have lived in that space waiting for someone to paint the brushstrokes… if only I could see myself… We live our lives reflecting and reflected the illusion of separation between the observer and the observed… But… What if the brush has always been in your hand? What if the ache isn’t a void, but a whisper reminding you that you are already on the canvas, even if the colors feel too dark to see?

I use too many words… I return to the riddle..

We are “bigger then big and smaller then small and we have it ALL” where in each breath, we can simultaneously feel expansive and grounded, infinite and finite, everything and nothing… avoiding the tension we tend to notice only the what is causing us grief or the one we wish to escape to. The observer the observed lost in the painting and forgetting the canvas and or running from both.

How often we get caught up in the details of life (the painting) and forget the underlying reality or awareness (the canvas) that holds it all. We are, I am That. The painting and the canvas. not as separate but one.

That is not comfort in the sense that we tend to seek comfort. Comfort as a release from pain, fear and uncertainty. It is the tension of ache Life asks us to hold. Maybe their is a kind of comfort in that… We may feel alone in our wonder and our pain, but were not when we remember.

Hi Anita. Great questions

Yes, I know that nothingness inside. That hollow, alone space. There are times when the mystery feels too vast, and I long for something more tangible. The heart aches, even as it knows. The soul whispers “yes,” but the body feels tired, small, and unseen.

Do I feel I belong to something greater? I think this is where language begins to fail. The word greater implies measurement, and the experience I’m pointing to is beyond labels. It’s not something I can hold and define. As I mentioned earlier, the heart still aches even when the mind “knows.” So I hold this as a kind of living tension, not something to fix, but something to stay open to. (The wisdom traditions suggesting that holding the tension opens to what Gurdjieff might call the third force. The ‘force’ which encountering the tension of duality dissolves it into something else.)

And no, this doesn’t make me less needy of human connection. If anything, it might deepen the ache. To be candid, I sometimes wonder if writing about these things is a way to avoid that ache, but it doesn’t. It just brings me closer to it.

How to explain… Alan Watts once said, “What you do to the Earth, you do to yourself.” I used to read that as a kind of environmental ethic, where I still saw myself as separate from nature. But when I let go of that separation, the meaning changed. If I am the Earth, if I am everything, then what I do to the Earth, to others, to the world, I do to myself.

When I see bombs being dropped, I am That. When I see a child starving, I am That. When I see someone holding that child, I am That too…
It’s not a comfortable realization. But it feels true. And maybe that’s what belonging really is, not comfort, but connection. Not escape from the ache, but presence within it.

I understand when someone might say what’s the point then if in the end that ache and that experience of nothingness inside remains. I don’t have a answer for that. I still get angry and frustrated only not so much now. No that’s not it, the anger and frustration is part of the ache returned to the ‘canvas’.

Maybe the ache not a flaw in the system, but is the system. The anger, the longing, the emptiness brushstrokes on the canvas of being.
And the canvas itself still, silent, unchanging holds it all….

There’s no easy answer and maybe that’s the task: not to answer the question or resolve the ache, but to relate to it differently. as Rilke said “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves” holding the tension something shifts, though not always in the ache itself, but in how we hold it.

All these words and I’ve said very little and nothing new.

Hi Anita
I really appreciate what you shared and the psychological and emotional lens through which you viewed the phrase “When I see I am you, how can I harm you?” You’re right, it can be incredibly difficult to see innocence in others when we struggle to see it in ourselves. I feel that is a aspect of our shadow work, where we wrestle with seeing both the best and worst aspects of ourselves and instead project them onto others. In projection, the last thing we want to, or maybe capable of doing, is to see others as ourselves.

What I was pointing was something a little more like the spirit behind the word Namaste “The divine in me recognizes the divine in you.” Or even deeper, There is no me and you, only This. As the Upanishads say: “Tat Tvam Asi” “Thou art That.”

It’s not just about seeing my goodness or badness in you, but about seeing that we are not separate at all. That at the deepest level, we are made of the same light, the same breath, the same being. Each of us a arising and returning to the canvas. From that place, harming you would be harming myself. Its a moment of non-dual realization, where the illusion of separateness dissolves (as would any measurement, like innocence), and compassion arises naturally, not from similarity or shared traits, but from oneness.

I think both perspectives are true and necessary part of our unfolding. The psychological healing of reclaiming our innocence a step toward being able to glimpse that deeper unity.

One of the intentions behind the blank canvas post was to point to this shared truth across wisdom traditions. That this realization of oneness is not exclusive to any one path, but a shore we all seem to be sailing toward. A unifying current beneath the surface of our many stories.

Hi Everyone

Finding that I have nothing new to say I thought I would expand on the Blank Canvas with the aid of AI see if various wisdom traditions might relate to the idea.

In Jungian terms The “blank white canvas” functions as a symbol of the Self, the totality of the psyche, both conscious and unconscious. The word Self a archetype of wholeness, the unchanging ground from which all psychic content arises and to which it returns. The canvas, though seemingly empty, contains all potential, just as the Self contains all aspects of the personality, realized and unrealized.
“The canvas contains within it every painting that has been and will be created.” This realization mirrors the Platonic idea of forms and Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious—a realm of archetypal images and potentials that exist beyond individual experience.

The idea that “nothing is lost, nothing gained, nothing to fear” a realization of being present (Eternal Now), often symbolized in Jungian psychology by the mandala, a symbol of wholeness and the eternal cycle of becoming. The canvas, like the mandala, is both empty and full, static and dynamic.

Exploring the notion of AUM as the sound of ‘one hand clapping’ and every word that has and will be spoken.
AUM is considered the primordial vibration—the sound from which all creation emerges. It is not just a sound but a symbol of totality where:
• A represents the waking state (conscious mind)
• U represents the dream state (subconscious)
• M represents deep sleep (unconscious)
• The silence after the sound represents pure awareness, the Self beyond form

AUM the sound-canvas from which all spoken words (forms) arise and to which they return. The Sound of One Hand Clapping, the Zen paradox meant to transcend dualistic thinking by inviting the mind to confront the limits of logic and language. In the context of AUM, One hand clapping is the unmanifest, the potential before form. Two hands clapping is the manifest, the world of duality, sound, and form. So, AUM is both the sound of all sounds and the silence of no-sound: the canvas and the paint, the hand and the clapping, the word and the silence between words.

Exploring the notion of Language as Paint on the Canvas and how Language constructs our reality. From a psychological and philosophical standpoint, language is not just a tool for describing reality, it shapes it. In Jungian terms, language is a symbolic system that gives form to archetypal energies. It is how the unconscious becomes conscious.
• Words are symbols, and symbols are bridges between the known and the unknown.
• Language filters experience, giving it structure, meaning, and narrative.
• What we can name, we can relate to; what we cannot name, remains in the shadow.

The ego uses language to define identity, time, and separation. But the Self, the deeper totality, speaks in images, dreams, silence, and paradox. This is why mystical experiences often feel ineffable as they transcend the limits of language.

In the metaphor of thatCanvas and the Paint, the canvas is pure awareness, the Self, the eternal now. The paint is language, thought, culture, memory, everything that gives shape to experience. Each word, like each brushstroke, reveals and conceals. It brings something into form while hiding the infinite potential behind it.

AUM the sound of one hand clapping the vibration before duality. Language the second hand, the clap, the echo of creation.

The canvas is always blank, yet always full. Every word is a painting, and every silence a return to the source. Let us then take care in the words that we speak and remember the return to silence.

Hi Anita I appreciate the questions as they mirror my thoughts.

There were a few questions so I’ll start with this one and maybe the others will fade: How do we stay present with emotion—without clinging to it, numbing ourselves, or rushing to fix it? How do we let difficult feelings sing through us… instead of scream “Danger! Danger!” at every turn?

If I have read what you wrote correctly the danger sensed is arising from past experiences (now memory) and is not immediate. If that is not the case and the danger immediate what I write of would not apply. The meditation is intended for the second half of life and the dangers of the past dealt with even if handled badly and their remains a wish of ‘if only’ it wasn’t so.

The thought of the mirror of the moment was to stay in the tension of such questions without intention other then holding it.

Emotional mindfulness reminds us that Emotions are not problems to solved but energies to witness. Here we sit in tension between the witness and our conditioned mind, our habit of categorizing and creating constructs. Observing the tension between the Yes and the No the space between witness and mind may dissolve and a something else arise. Here the observer is the observed and the thought the thinker – a mirror choicelessly aware.

When we don’t intervene with our habitual sorting and fixing, we open ourselves to a different mode of relating to the thoughts and feelings that arise. We do so with curiosity and space not judgment or measure. A space for something new to arise.

It is a difference of being present to an emotion holding space and being present in the emotion as identification with the feeling. Holding the tension, you will notice both. Staying in the tension honors the complexity of our experiences, resisting the urge to resolve or soothe our discomfort the tension becomes a teacher rather than a puzzle to be solve.

“Let difficult feelings sing through us” is a poetic call to metabolize emotion through presence. Where a scream cries out emergency the mind reacts to act and fix. A song, even a sad one, is expression and invitation to stillness in movement, resonance and maybe healing.

The notion I am playing with here is that of being a Mirror to the Moment and allowing what will arise and be seen. A mirror does not choose what appears nor try to fix what it reflects or claim ownership of what is seen.

To resolve the tension a third ‘force’ is required only the force isn’t action., nor can it be it be willed. It can only be allowed which the constructing ego mind is going to resist, thinking action must be a doing certainly not a being. This force is not a push but a rhythm, not will but a welcome. This to is a holding of tension.

The ego equates agency with control, believing doing is superior to being and allowing ia weakness. But this “third” isn’t passive, it’s radically alive, quietly dynamic, and spacious enough to hold contradiction without collapse. To the ego, it feels like “nothing is happening.” But to the deeper self, it’s everything. Presence without grasping. It’s the alchemical vessel where transformation happens because it is not forced…even as the fire heats the contents. (another tension to hold)

The past, the minds constructs, the fears remain, these experiences reside in the tension we hold. The Yes and the No, the like and not like. The meditation a kind of spiritual aikido, meeting the moment not with resistance but with yielding presence. Holding tensions not as weakness, but strength. A willingness to live the mystery, not to master it.

To be a mirror is to surrender authorship. To allow the third is to become a space through which life speaks. To embody this is to dance with the ineffable, not by leading, but by listening.

I seem to have used a lot of words which I fear may be misread as an attempt at understanding and understanding control and create a process to follow…

I can’t deny understanding hasn’t been the driving force of my youth, my ego and hope. A hope that if I understood I would no longer fear and no longer feel lost or alone. I would instead be in control and safe… That has proven to be a fool’s game and one I played badly.

I acknowledge the tension in that and holding the tension sense the rhythm of movement between a No ‘not this anymore’ and a Yes ‘I am still here’, listening.

I see I have named a fear – to be misunderstood. Within that fear a paradox that its ok to feel the pull for understanding and the tension that the point isn’t to not understand but to no longer demand the understanding protect me… I have named other fears, to be lost and alone… the tension of feeling separate from the world I know I’m not separate from.

I may still scream… just not in desperation… a holy scream.
Not a scream of “save me!”, but the scream “I am here!”
Not desperation, but declaration. Not collapse, but liberation.
Not trying to flee the fire but becoming the flame…

This too is part of the alchemy: Letting the voice rise, not to demand an answer, but to announce presence. Letting emotion move, not to control, but to release. Letting the scream sound, not to be rescued, but to be real.

So, scream. If it comes, let it come. Not as a symptom but as a signal that you are alive, unhidden, and unwilling to mute what is most vital. Even the soul needs a sound sometimes. Let it be wild. Let it be true. Let it be yours. The sound and mirror of AUM.