In this essay, Heidegger introduces the expanse as a formal indication of being. The expanse is the open domain wherein entities may abide and appear in their singularity. In this conversation, Heidegger describes the enactment of thought as the thinking of being as expanse. Being-there belongs to the expanse, and the expanse would not be what it is without being-there. Being “gifts” itself as this expanse, which at the same time is the expanding and projecting-open of the “there” of being-there. The expanding process is both the releasement (Gelassenheit) and being-there’s letting be of being.
Being-historical thinking originates from Ereignis, that is, the safeguarding and giving of the truth of being. Thinking in accord with this origin is the ecstatic structure of being-there’s openness to the open and its projecting open and inabiding within this expanse. Heidegger describes thinking with being in terms of forbearance or waiting. Waiting is grounded in the fact that being-there appertains to that for which it waits. The thinker must assume the attitude of responding to being and let being arrive as expanse. In waiting, we must leave that for which we wait to open forth, because waiting lets the open be. Waiting is both the liberation from representational thinking and a release into the open. The liberating movement of thinking requires a touch of willing that disappears in being-there’s release into the expanse and is completely extinguished in releasement. In releasement, being-there comes into its own through the belonging together of being and thinking. The hallmark of essential or originative thinking is open resolve, projecting open, and dwelling within of the truth of being. Only when the thinker perseveres and exercises forbearance in this stance of resoluteness may he be said to repose in himself as who he is. This state of response is inabiding and indwelling.