“[Basic Goodness] is the totality of our experience, felt directly, before we divide that experience into little bits though our conceptual thinking.”

Opening to Intuitive Wisdom

“When we trust the world and relax into it, we begin to see that our world is rich and vivid. It may not necessarily be nice or pleasant, but it is a living world, and it wakes us up. And as we wake up, we feel the detailed textures and energies of our thoughts, our emotions, our perceptions, and our environment. Our thoughts, emotions, perceptions of color, sound, and so on change every moment. Every thought appears to our mind and then goes, and likewise every emotion, though some may stick around longer than others. And the world around us–the world of color, sound, taste, smell, and sensation—that, too, is constantly changing.

“Those thoughts, colors, sounds, and so on are all filled and surrounded with living space. If there were no space, there could no longer be change, and it would be a dead world.”

“That living space that pervades all experience is the basic goodness of the world, of which we spoke in chapter 1. The complete openness of basic goodness is pervasive in all phenomena, like space. That space can be experienced directly because, as we said, it is an intimate part of every moment of our life. Yet it is very hard to grasp it by conceptual thinking. It is the totality of our experience, felt directly, before we divide that experience into little bits though our conceptual thinking. All the spiritual, philosophical, and religious traditions have been able only to point to it and suggest it. As Buddhist master Seng-ts’an said, “The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the further from it you go.”

~ Jeremy & Karen Hayward, Sacred World: The Shambhala Way to Gentleness, Bravery, and Power