written 24 May, 2026
published 31 May, 2026
When you look up at the dark night sky, you immediately notice any finite forms giving off light: planes, planets, or stars. Your perception is tuned to notice differences, so these objects immediately capture your attention. But the only reason you can see them is their contrast against the vast wholeness of dark space in between. You don't usually perceive the space between the forms, but that background is essential to perception. This is the relationship between form and space.
Examples of this form/space dynamic are everywhere. French composer Claude Debussy, once said, "music is the silence between the notes." We focus on the form of notes creating the music, which are defined by silent spaces that we often overlook.
As you read this, any meaning in the words comes from the relationship between the marks forming the letters and the empty background, which gives power to the written word. We totally focus on the form of the words, usually unaware of the background space.
In "A New Earth", Eckhart Tolle points out there is a similar form/space dynamic in our thinking process. He suggests the human ego is the root of most of our cultural dysfunction. Specifically, we have become identified with the thoughts in our head, our ego, believing that is "who we are". In reality thoughts are an artifact of mind. We are not our thoughts, but a being thinking those thoughts. However, we easily confuse our identity with the constancy of thought.
But if you pay close attention, the stream of thoughts has gaps, where one thought ends and another begins, like punctuation in a sentence. These can be very short, and easily missed in the torrent of thinking. But by choosing to pay attention, we can notice the gaps, which will then expand in duration. We can become aware of being present, noticing as thinking forms occurs, rather than being identified with the thoughts themselves.
Thoughts are forms that happen against the background space of experiencing awareness. As we increasingly experience being aware, our identification with our thoughts, our ego, diminishes. What soon becomes clear is that thinking is always about something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future, while awareness happens in the moment.
Since reality only happens in the moment, never the past or future, being aware in the moment means being able to respond more appropriately to reality. When we are lost in the thoughts of past or future, our responses to reality are constrained, distorted, and often inappropriate. Appropriate response to reality is obviously a benefit for an individual, but applies at the social level as well.
In my opinion, there are two huge issues currently threatening all of humanity: the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the climate crisis. These both result from prioritizing form over space, ego over awareness.
The 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement was a solution the whole world wanted: preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, a goal even our president claims is important. This resulted from years of negotiation between leaders and experts from seven different nations, and it was verified to be working.
But eight years ago, only three years after being signed, our president decided to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, unilaterally deciding it was a "bad deal". Rather than considering the space of international relations that we all inhabit, his ego thought form prevailed, operating completely oblivious to the larger reality.
Iran felt betrayed, viewing the U.S. as an untrustworthy adversary, and began pursuing nuclear capacity to defend against an international bully, potentially creating the horror everyone had tried to prevent. The bombing last June, and the larger attack this March, failed to get back to conditions that existed before the president made his decision to withdraw. Furthermore, an aggrieved Iran exercised their geographical situational power, and closed the Strait, throwing the global economy into increasing disarray.
The climate crisis results from an economic model that prioritizes profit for a few, a form of ego, at the expense of all life on Earth, the larger reality space. While this crisis is slower to manifest that the Strait closure, the impact is much more widespread, with a solution even more difficult that the one with Iran.
As long as our leaders continue to operate from their limited ego forms, the larger reality will continue to collapse. Republicans demonstrably have no answers. Time to vote for change.
