How to Find Paradise On Your Sofa

Everything to gain, nothing to lose.

There is a resonance, an empty space that sits just below thought.

Between the thoughts.

Underneath thought.

This space can be felt and known, while evading direct capture.

More of it energizes, rejuvenates, heals.

Less time spent centered there leaves us to listen to our personal thinking— with much less potent results.

Personal thought can be endlessly entertaining and also can’t be us because since it can be experienced, it must be separate.

We can watch our thoughts like some teacher suggests. Countless things have been said about pretzel-twisting the thoughts into something else.

If it can be transmuted, rearranged, ignored, thought is not us and yet…

Thought is all we’ve got, except for everything else in that empty space, just less clear because of the way we are that.

Fewer things have been said about the quiet space behind thought. Maybe because it’s so close we take it for granted.

Beyond the nagging dishes and whatever morning routine. Behind the tittering sound of everything that already has form.

That nothing-now where all inspired creativity comes from.

The space where thought begins, arises, disappears.

The empty mind with endless refills, that is no-thing, no-where.

The practical miracle from which all genius, creative work flows before the intellect wrestles hold and demands it sit still for it’s closeup.

Only in reality now. And now. And now.

Aliveness, awake-ness, focus, the hint of a thrill. The ordered chaos in the background that is somehow always there.

The storied realm of losing oneself completely but feeling more like oneself than ever before.

Where masterpieces live, and non-masterpieces. Silence with loud tones.

Sitting there, going there– is all people are ever yearning to do when they hope to feel their best.

It’s where they lost themselves last time and feel forsaken, wishing they could go back.

Indeed, riding some random train of thought– often for months, years, all the time– lugs human disappointment with it, on par with losing Shangra-La.

That nothing is both us and greater than us; all at the same time.

The most ordinary space in the world, yet the most extraordinary.

The beyond time, the full, small, vast void everyone is looking for, and which everyone and everything is actually made of.

At some point, I thought to show you fancy scientific references but I forgot them and felt better.

Maybe I will talk about that later, right now it’s time to bask in that warm bath of conscious presence.

The wordless nothing which could also be called the beloved who never leaves, always sitting right there, watching the show.

Whatever is left when everything, every concept, every idea falls away.

Where words fail and resonance wins over.

Reach for her and she leaves. Nag her and she quits on you. Whine that she doesn’t speak to you enough and she smirks.

She isn’t a “her” either, but just as all cats are fickle and don’t care to prove their cat-ness, so is the irony of reaching for something that is always there.

Losing the great nothing is kind of like bitching about not being able to find your glasses while you’re still wearing them.

That place, that nothing which is always.. always there.

Go there– to that timeless presence and nothing can ever be wrong.

Nothing may feel disorienting, but luckily judgement fails entirely on the wordless edge of now-here.

And yet… as empty as it seems, things seem to want to happen from that space.

That energy– whatever THAT empty full space is– which is us and also not coming from us.

We could get our gongs out, sit in meditation, and study fancy spiritual words but the student who is studying, that nobody IS it already.

Here folks, step right up, behind this curtain is the YOU we’ve all been waiting for.

She’s right there, see her? She’s nothing. And she’s stunning. She’s you.

She IS the beloved already. And she doesn’t really like taking dictation.

Unless it sounds fun.

Unless it reminds her of who she actually is.

Not who someone told her human to be. Never that.

Insecurity thoughts just make her seem tired, old, staid. She isn’t, but that isn’t the point.

Instead, we can simply sit there, be it, claim it, bask in the warm bath, enjoy the timeless, ordinary void, forget ourselves while doing something that we aren’t doing.

Watch what happens when our attention widens, when the conscious aperture sticks open.

When we act from there. When we experience from there.

I used to be afraid of it.

I thought that background silence– that nothing– meant something was wrong, while feeling confused at just how right it all seemed.

Like the room of requirement, where there is nothing until something is requested.

“Is this IT? I thought there would be more cowbell.”

Entertaining this confusing thought was just a well-worn habit. I didn’t know.

It was kind of like having a Ferrari as a first car or meeting a great life partner at only 14 years old.

There is no proper context from which to understand. Spontaneous gratitude fails to spring from an expected result. Contrast is required for knowing.

Forgetting that habit was all it took to go home.

And creating from there is all it takes to…

But look, it’s gone again.

Elizabeth Stone, Transformative Coach