Living in Betweenness

The Space Between (4)

Imagine two partners in mid-argument. One accuses: “You never listen.” The other defends: “I’m always here.” The loop tightens as both voices rise. Then, without planning it, one of them suddenly stops speaking and remains silent for a moment. It’s not that the person is acting strategically by trying to “win” through silence, but that something in them recognizes the futility of the whole interaction. They recognize the fear beneath their own voice, and they recognize it in the other as well, the delusory force motivating them both. In that seeing, the argument loses its power. The silence that follows is heavy, then tender. Byron Katie has said that “defense is the first act of war.” When you stop defending your position, your identity, and your rightness, the field can open up. What was previously a battle can become a meeting, a coming together.

This is how betweenness manifests in human relationship: by being neither fully identified with your position nor aloof and detached from the intimacy. You’re present to the shared field that holds both perspectives. When one person stops adding reactivity to the mix, space appears, and it’s something the other person can feel. This allows the contraction soften. Now words can arise from that spaciousness rather than from fear.

This doesn’t mean all conflict magically disappears. It means the conflict is held in awareness rather than generated by identification. You speak from the space between rather than from the defended self, and you find that often, mysteriously, the other person meets you there.

Richard Rose’s Practice: Will and Release

Richard Rose taught betweenness not only as a lived state but as an active practice, a precise method of willing without attachment that opens doorways both practical and mystical. The technique is deceptively simple: Hold an intention clearly, will it to happen, and then drop it completely. In that gap between wanting and not-wanting, between effort and surrender, something beyond the personal mind can move.

Rose gave a startling example: playing cards. You might will an ace to appear, even shout “Give me an ace!” to the dealer. But the moment after willing it, you forget you asked. Any continued thought about success or failure negates the result. The willing must be genuine and total—and so much the release. This works, Rose discovered, primarily for “events of the moment.” You cannot will something to happen next week through betweenness. The mind cannot sustain the forgetting that long. But in the present moment, when intention is clear and immediately released, the field often responds with uncanny precision. The key is removing ego from the process. As Rose put it, take the attitude “let’s see what might happen” rather than “let’s make this happen.” You will the event, then you let it be willed through you. You might mistake this for passivity, but it’s really a higher form of action by aligning with what wants to occur rather than forcing outcomes from fear or desire. Bart Marshall describes this: “Living in betweenness does not result in the character getting its way more often, because in this state one realizes that what ‘I’ want and what God wants are not different.”

Rose also pointed to betweenness as a direct path to realization. “Thought, no-thought, results in Absolute realization,” he said. Awakening comes by looking between thoughts, in the gap where the personal mind dissolves and the Absolute shines through. Betweenness, in this deepest sense, is not just balanced living but a doorway to what you are.

This practice—the mechanics of willing and releasing, the art of synchronistic creation—will be explored more fully in a future post series to be titled “the art of allowing and intending.” For now, simply note that the equilibrium described here has both a passive dimension (allowing life to move through you) and an active one (consciously participating in the dream’s unfolding). Both are aspects of lucidity.

NEXT: The Ordinary Miracle