On Holding Space

A few months ago a friend asked me what it means to hold space.

This was my response:

I look at holding space as healthy empathy or held compassion for loved ones facing challenges.

It’s an alternative to what I’ve come to call toxic empathy.

“Oh I can feel what you're feeling and that must be so hard. Here, let me carry that for you”, and then assume self-appointed, albeit pointless, responsibility for the other—oftentimes disempowering all involved in the process.

For this week’s blog and for deeply personal reasons, I’ve responded to elaborating on the topic.

To hold space for another means to help hold the container for their experience to unfold. We do this through focused intention or pure imagination. We breathe it into being.

It creates a bit of a buffer zone, if you will.

For example, if you are going through a difficult time, I may ask you, “Is there any specific space you would like me to hold?”

It could be the space for love, healing, acceptance, success, peace, and more of the like.

I'll hold you in the light of that, but it will be up to you to lean into it and choose it for yourself.

As all of these spaces are of a very high vibration, they are easy to hold, and cost me nothing.

Kind of like the negative calories associated with eating celery.

It’s a highly efficient process that allows me the ability to do something for you when words fall short and I have zero other control over your situation.

Low vibrational space can also be held. Space for greed, hate, misery, retribution. But it’s much more energetically expensive to hold those things.

That would be like switching from celery to twinkies.

Let’s get a little more specific with our examples.

Say we are close friends and you have a job interview this afternoon, it’s a perfect fit for you, and you really want it.

I could hold the space for you to be confident and to successfully navigate the interview.

This one is pretty straight forward and it will be easy for me to remain free from expectation and stay authentic in the way that I hold space for you, without interjecting false-self things.

Now, say you are my mom or a close family member and other people are treating you unjustly, causing you pain, and are making your life much harder than it needs to be.

From a place of love, I can hold the space for your acceptance of the situation and your ability to find peace and a new way forward.

But...

(And you know how much I love a big BUT)

If I give my false self any space at all, she may try to exert her will onto you and energetically cajole you into that acceptance and peace.

And that’s going to make the container heavier.

My false self may even want to cause harm to the people hurting you or otherwise wish ill upon them.

And this is going to make the container too heavy to carry, the space too uncomfortable to hold.

From here, it's a slippery slope into toxic empathy, sleepless nights, and other ills associated with the energetic deficiency it will cause.

Instead of offering you a lifesaver in the form of space held, I will drown with you. And that makes for a moot point.

I could also hold space for those doing the injustice—that they may come to the light and make different choices.

However, the space you hold for others will be more appreciated if it’s first invited. Otherwise, and depending on their capacity to return to love, it will be rebuked all together.

Some are so consumed by their greed, hate, and discontent, that they will completely repel their polar opposites—no space held would be big enough to buffer.

If the invitation doesn't come from those that would like to benefit from it, you can always offer.

So, you may be wondering, how is holding space different from prayer?

I feel as though we have the tendency to turn God into a bit of a fairy godmother in the sky, granting wishes to some, while denying them to others.

I don’t personally feel that is how this works. My understanding of God being that life-force energy that connects us all as one.

This is the only way I can look at things like famine, war, and other atrocities associated with the human experience and believe in any God at all.

I know that the presence of God, as I understand It to be, within me is what brings me to life. When I stay in that stream of consciousness, I am of the light and I am embodying the most authentic version of myself.

When I attempt to use that energy to fuel not-self or false-self things, I create the space within me for mental madness to take root. And that’s a chapter I’ve read too many times. Time to move on.

So, for me, prayer is a selfish thing, freed from the negative connotations typically associated with that word.

I do not hold space for myself. I pray that I will align with what is true and authentic within me, that I will embody that truth and authenticity, and live my life accordingly. From that place, whatever is mine to have is mine to have and cannot be taken away from me.

Am I living in that space 24/7?

Nope.

Am I enjoying more time there than I ever have before?

Absolutely.

When I pray for others, I am not praying to a being outside of them. I am praying that they too align with what is true and authentic within themselves as they are also animated by that same life-force energy that connects us all as one.

And that looks a lot like holding space.

When there’s nothing else we can do, we hold space. And that’s not for nothing.

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