In her book ‘Waking Up To What You Do’, Zen teacher Diane Eshin Rizezetto writes about a conversation she had with a trapeze swinger, who talked of “the dead spot”, where you literally hang in mid-air between the bars. The trapeze swinger said:
The dead spot comes “at the end of the swing… when the swinging bar stops moving in one direction and starts moving in the other. Like when you’re the highest on a playground swing. The whole idea is to use that change of momentum to create the trick.”
Diane unpacks this in more depth, writing:
I think of the dead spot as that place between swings, when the performer just hangs at point zero before grabbing the next bar. It is the moment of nonaction and not knowing.
She highlights how all our lives offer us “dead spot” after “dead spot”, risky moments full of potential for our growth and transformation:
Our dead spots can take many forms. They can occur at the time of major events, like changing a relationship or profession. It can be the loss of a loved one or indecision over what action to be taken when faced with a big job choice. Whatever it is, no matter how big or small, the dead spot appears when we cannot engage in our habitual way of holding and grasping for the bars… Life prises our fingers loose and no matter how much we try to avoid it, we end up in the suspended moment, not knowing what comes next…
When we take pause in the dead spot, that moment of nonaction, before we react, we step through the door marked Enter Here and meet life just as it is, in just this moment. It is in this moment of Just This that the trapeze artist finds the most power and creativity. In Just This we meet the power and creativity to break away from our habitual thoughts, emotional matrix, body patterns, and energy that fuel and direct our reactions.
Reading Diane talk about “the dead spot” felt so resonant with so many moments in my life at present, where uncertainty and unknowing abound. Not long after reading Diane, I also stumbled across a quote by the psychologist and holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, who wrote:
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