The Space Between Us
Essays
A threshold is not a simple boundary;
it is a frontier that divides two different territories
and at the same time belongs to both.
— John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
it is a frontier that divides two different territories
and at the same time belongs to both.
— John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us
In two days, Anne and I will launch our Between-Us Groups initiative — the first in a series of online meetings designed as a continuation of the work described in The Space Between Us.
It feels like a suitable moment to pause, and to reflect.
A central thread in my recent writing has been a discovery that arrived only after what I call the initial radical shift in perspective — waking up — and the subsequent work of stabilising that realisation as the context for daily life, embodied and embedded. Beyond this, a deeper phase has revealed itself, one I have come to call Being Available.
This is the point at which it becomes clear that it is no longer about you — or in this case, about me.
To wake up from the dream of separation is to discover a fundamental boundarylessness. Yet that boundarylessness does not dissolve form; it points instead to a greater whole — one that I embody both as Peter and as more than Peter. There is a dance here between the infinite and the finite, and it plays itself out as the very texture and context of a life.
To recognise the deeper imperative at work is to realise that one is no longer in control — no longer the master of one’s destiny — and yet is also an intimate creative partner in what unfolds next. Participation replaces authorship. Resistance softens into cooperation. What wants to emerge begins to find a clearer passage, to the degree that one ceases to resist it.
Standing at this cusp of a new venture, I can see that everything that has unfolded — from the writing of the book, to its launch, to the unexpected surge of interest in the work — has been serving an agenda far deeper than I could ever have designed. Anne and I both feel this unmistakably: that we are being prepared for something new to come through.
The freshness of this emergence lies precisely in the fact that it is unknown and unknowable. Being itself seems to be asking us to fashion a crucible of not-knowing — a relational field capable of holding uncertainty without collapsing into fear or opportunism. Within such a field, the latent potential of our inter-connectedness may begin to express itself in new and creative ways.
This feels especially urgent now, at a moment when the meaning-generating structures that have held a shared worldview in place for generations are visibly crumbling, and when the forces of opportunism are already moving in to capitalise on the feast left in their wake.
For now, our attention is almost wholly given to the next twelve weeks: to facilitating and curating this work with the thirty individuals who have stepped forward as participants in this new unfolding. Recent writing has been largely in service of this — preparing materials that support, clarify, and deepen the field we are entering together.
What we expect is that the real work of the coming weeks will be to stay close to what emerges. To write interim reflections. To note insights as they arise. To allow a picture to form slowly, from within the lived experience of the groups, rather than imposing a frame in advance.
Other writing is already receding into the background for now — essays exploring broader spiritual and cultural themes, poems and spoken pieces tracing facets of the diamond turning, dialogues with other awakened souls. They are not gone, but paused, making space.
Where this leads next is unknown. But there is a felt momentum building. And it may be that, as this year unfolds, even the website itself begins to evolve into something else — shaped less by intention than by what the work is asking to become.
It feels like a suitable moment to pause, and to reflect.
A central thread in my recent writing has been a discovery that arrived only after what I call the initial radical shift in perspective — waking up — and the subsequent work of stabilising that realisation as the context for daily life, embodied and embedded. Beyond this, a deeper phase has revealed itself, one I have come to call Being Available.
This is the point at which it becomes clear that it is no longer about you — or in this case, about me.
To wake up from the dream of separation is to discover a fundamental boundarylessness. Yet that boundarylessness does not dissolve form; it points instead to a greater whole — one that I embody both as Peter and as more than Peter. There is a dance here between the infinite and the finite, and it plays itself out as the very texture and context of a life.
To recognise the deeper imperative at work is to realise that one is no longer in control — no longer the master of one’s destiny — and yet is also an intimate creative partner in what unfolds next. Participation replaces authorship. Resistance softens into cooperation. What wants to emerge begins to find a clearer passage, to the degree that one ceases to resist it.
Standing at this cusp of a new venture, I can see that everything that has unfolded — from the writing of the book, to its launch, to the unexpected surge of interest in the work — has been serving an agenda far deeper than I could ever have designed. Anne and I both feel this unmistakably: that we are being prepared for something new to come through.
The freshness of this emergence lies precisely in the fact that it is unknown and unknowable. Being itself seems to be asking us to fashion a crucible of not-knowing — a relational field capable of holding uncertainty without collapsing into fear or opportunism. Within such a field, the latent potential of our inter-connectedness may begin to express itself in new and creative ways.
This feels especially urgent now, at a moment when the meaning-generating structures that have held a shared worldview in place for generations are visibly crumbling, and when the forces of opportunism are already moving in to capitalise on the feast left in their wake.
For now, our attention is almost wholly given to the next twelve weeks: to facilitating and curating this work with the thirty individuals who have stepped forward as participants in this new unfolding. Recent writing has been largely in service of this — preparing materials that support, clarify, and deepen the field we are entering together.
What we expect is that the real work of the coming weeks will be to stay close to what emerges. To write interim reflections. To note insights as they arise. To allow a picture to form slowly, from within the lived experience of the groups, rather than imposing a frame in advance.
Other writing is already receding into the background for now — essays exploring broader spiritual and cultural themes, poems and spoken pieces tracing facets of the diamond turning, dialogues with other awakened souls. They are not gone, but paused, making space.
Where this leads next is unknown. But there is a felt momentum building. And it may be that, as this year unfolds, even the website itself begins to evolve into something else — shaped less by intention than by what the work is asking to become.
The Cusp
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