The space in between

Migraines are an ongoing issue for me that for whatever reason, come and go like the seasons. They are unpredictable, can be long or short lived and vary in intensity from completely debilitating to less debilitating.

Recently during a migraine episode I focussed on tuning in deeply to the pain - the throbbing pain, and found that it flowed with my heart beat. That is, the pain pulsed rather than was continual. Upon discovering this I applied deep concentration to only pay attention to the lull between the pulse. The ‘space in between’ as I have dubbed it. The bit with no pain in the case of a throbbing migraine. It numbed the pain, it pulled me into a different realm of awareness and provided a coping mechanism for getting through to the next lull and the next.

I’ve been able to apply this concept to much of my life with varying degrees of success. Is the ‘space in between’ the awakened self, the moment of right here right now between the past and the future? When in meditation or a flow state, time feels like it expands or even doesn’t exist at all. The idea of self barely exists. Is this the space in between?

Photography by it's nature renders the past still. It freezes time, snatching light and pulling it into another realm so we can live it again and again. It expands time, perhaps grabbing some of that space in between and then allowing us to sit with it and importantly in it.

I enjoy Buddhist koans, I think because they appear to have no empirical value, however if you sit with the koan perhaps the space in between is revealed, that is, between knowing and not knowing. Here is a quote attributed to the Stoic philosopher Seneca that is similar in nature to a koan.

‘A light loses nothing by being extinguished, it just goes back to how it was before’

© Christian Pearson - The space in between, 2025