Distance

Mind dwells in distance and relies on distance. The body is immediate – it is and can be nothing else, but the mind can choose not to inhabit it – to take us away from it and out of it and into its comfortable domain – the head. This is it's first distance – the one all others mirror. But to be in the body is not simply a matter of awareness – of energy, but of mobilization – of spirit. Spirit bundles awareness into something eminently useful, and cuts through all the rules and restrictions the mind and the imagination care to impose. Science – the formulation of observation – tells us how things are to a passive mind but cannot predict or extrapolate for spirit. In a sense mind is always passive because it's activity is not of the world, so much so that its very activity creates distance – forces things to stand apart. And by creating distance it also creates time – the possibility for lack of immediacy.

In a sense distance is the comforting space between things – the appearance of separation. But distance is also difficulty. Any difficulty we may have is because we have chosen distance over immediacy.