Feeling the Ground

The nature of everything is open, empty and naked like the sky.

Luminous emptiness, without centre or circumference: the pure naked Rigpa dawns.

The occasion was the first session of a ‘median group experience’ with the purpose to focus on itself, open to practitioners working in the NHS, private and voluntary sectors. Various members of the group already knew some of the others to a greater or lesser degree but, as a new venture, the element of the unknown was heightened and, as the door closed, silence loomed loud.

I became conscious of a kind of global anxiety, with roused senses and deep uncertainty. How to think, or not think? To speak, or not to speak? If to speak, then what to say? Personal revelation? Comment on the group? Or wait and see. The longer it went on, the more grew the sense that in saying nothing when something could be said was to withhold a contribution to ease group tension. Alternatively, the sooner something was said, the sooner this pregnant emptiness would be delivered from itself.

Beginnings are unique. Anything is possible. It is like being at the summit when any descent can be used. As the steps go down, the route becomes increasingly formed and limited. It could have been that valley, but we have chosen this one. I wanted to linger on the giddy heights, to see in all directions, but to do so would be to refuse to engage in the collective process in time, and a direction must be chosen. I began to wonder at the nature of the anxiety. The eighth-century Hindu mystic and philosopher Shankara states in his Crest Jewel of Discrimination (Sankaracarya 1982, p. 125):

Whenever the wise man sees the least difference in the infinite Brahman, at once that which he sees as different through mistake becomes a source of terror to him.

There was something disturbingly primal about the feeling in the room. An urgency to claim an existence in the group, or to discover an identity with