I’m sitting in a small cafe in a small town in Southern Delaware; one of the less exotic places I’ve been lately, but I’m learning to appreciate what it has to offer. The miles of close-shaven grass fields where trees once stood are giving a similar feeling of relief and expansion that driving through the open desert used to give me. Miles of nothing, or, miles of everything.

I guess it’s like a pessimist and optimist looking at a glass. Space can be perceived as nothing, especially when we are attached to the idea that human created culture (objects of convenience) constitute something. But why stay stuck in this perception of ‘something’ being an object or being. Something established by man, in this context.

I’ve used “in the middle of nothing” to describe the beautiful place I used to live. Fort Defiance, AZ. It helps people visualize the vast open spaces, with few people or structures in sight; the mind immediately registers a picture of few modern conveniences. I was always proud of my ‘middle of nothing’ place and my ability to enjoy it. At one point it was part of me. I’d have listed it as a selling point on a dating profile if it asked for something like this.

Now, it’s a state of being and I’ve outgrown the phrase. The land deserves better. We’ve shared so much.

After all, abandoning the mental construct of ‘something’, nothing is a beautiful kind of something. Nothing is possibility and opportunity. Nothing is everything you could ever want or imagine. Space. To breathe. To create. To listen.

But how do you describe everything and nothing at the same time so it’s understood that nothing also means everything? When I say in my head, “I live in the middle of everything,” it feels…expansive.

Technically, we are all living in the middle of everything, it just depends on your definition. 3D and beyond, we are our own center of the space around us, whether you think it is filled with everything or nothing. Even in small-town Delaware, I am in the middle of everything. The world is always accessible…unless you have a different definition of accessible than me. Language allows us to create such beauty, and such confusion.

The idea of the pendulum has come up in so many contexts lately; spiritual growth, the process of detachment, neuromuscular learning and control, tolerance for human produced culture (or distractions, depending on where your pendulum sits). This idea, originally a Daoist concept, came to me via Michael Singer. My own practical application of this idea has transformed many aspects of my life, including my understanding of what nothing and everything mean. Daoism suggests that we are like pendulums swinging. Our behavior is often at extremes. We decide to make a change in this way as well. We swing from binge eating cookies to eating none at all for months, only to swing it again and binge. This isn’t real change, this is torture. This is letting the snake bounce off the same two walls, doubling back on itself over and over again. This is trying to walk down the up escalator. What have we all been doing? There’s no balance.

Balance is found at the center, where the pendulum stops swinging, or it swings slightly, then rests again in the middle. I’ve practiced this very consciously over the past two years, and like always, just realized the pendulum is still swinging.

Actually, all growth takes on a pendulum effect, I’ve noticed. A friend told me she realized after a difficult week that she went from a “fighting” response to suddenly wanting to run. Complete swing to the other extreme.

As I sit in this small cafe, I noticed a girl wearing fishnet stockings under her shorts. I reflected on the importance of being an individual, and the lengths we all go to, pushing our pendulum as far as we can into the wooden wall of the clock.

At this point I’m fairly unattached to being individual, but I’m working my way towards the middle ground. I used to sit in the extreme. I had to do everything differently, then, I had become plain and had shed most of my personality. But you don’t have to shed everything to ascend, at least if you’re choosing to be God with a persona.

My months of backpacking systematically stripped away preferences and the need to be anything at all. I became perfectly happy in the same pair of hiking pants and the same hooded hiking shirt, no make up, no hair style; just me. I can see now where in the path of my pendulum swing I’m hovering. I am approaching center. I know this is so because I’m not rejecting looking any particular way, but I’m also not needing it. My self-worth isn’t being fed by external factors in the same way it used to be.

I feel relieved to be free of this need. It controls your life, it chooses your friends and it spends your money. It keeps you from exploring the peace…the beauty…the expansion of being in the ‘middle of nothing’ (and everything)…or it keeps you stuck there.

If you’d like to understand how to free yourself from the pendulums that rule your life, you can find me at http://www.alanabencivengo.com.