Emptiness

While we are becoming more conscious on our journey of awakening, we gradually come to realize that life is really what you make out of it. Our thoughts, wounds, past experiences, etc. shape our life and our perception of it. It is sometimes scary to feel and see how much our wounds are present in every inch of our life: in our relationship to ourselves and to others, in the choices we make regarding lifestyle, career, spiritual practice, even the diets we opt for. 

It is so liberating moment (even if it is just that: a moment), to realize that it can be different. I recently found the notes from my journal from some time ago. Reading it, I couldn’t believe I wrote it, but I was glad I did. I can compare now my reality and that one from a few years back. Although my wound is still there, as well as my defenses, ego and so on, I would dare to say that they are less of a guiding force than some time ago. This transformational work pays off, indeed.

Here is the excerpt on experience of emptiness.

“Life is passing. I wonder if I will ever get it, will I be what I was meant to be. Or all will just pass by me? Just blankness in front of my eyes.

I do not like idea of just going back to my everyday life. I have no home and no place to be in this world, nothing to look forward. Just blank emptiness in front, and behind. Will I ever get it…life? Will I ever have it, tangible in my hands, in my veins?

I feel like I am just holding onto fog; rather being gone and alone than with people. And even staying, what would I do with my life? Being busy arranging the fog.

In either case the life will pass and that fact leaves irreversible emptiness in me. It is hard to make sense out of it all…out of this human experience. It will all pass, only emptiness seems to always be there forever. I would rather get busy with those clouds and fog than being with myself in that vast, devouring emptiness.

Actually it is a place where everything is already gone. There is no even source in it…just empty echoing. I cannot speed up my passage through it, I can’t avoid it, can’t delete it.

And here it goes, my negative projection starts filling it up. A vague feeling is squatting underneath those empty clouds…its uncomfortable dampness wraps my dented soul. Sense of being alone and abandoned threatens my very existence.

It is devastating state of being crushed. You sprout and just start to put out little green leaf and then, something breaks you and makes you even with the ground. It is unbearable feeling to have your very soul contracted into one dot.  Place of no existence while still existing. Can’t breathe, can’t be, can’t have any hope that it will ever be different, that this can ever be reversed.

Again in the broken place. “

Fortunately, experiences and perceptions of reality change over time, especially if we practice mindful presence with ourselves. By staying with painful, empty or broken place long enough, inside of us, we will witness healing happening: our own presence will start filling up the broken and empty. Slowly, but surely, all the way until it becomes part of the whole again.

And so the journey continues: from empty to full and to empty again, from dark to light and again into the darkness, bringing some more light into it. There is no end and no beginning, neither to emptiness, neither to fullness.

It is the infinite soul journey.