Empty Cups...

Experiencing spiritual confusion recently, I asked for guidance.  “Spirit” pointed me to “Emptiness.”  The word E-m-p-t-i-n-e-s-s floated through my awareness like a whisper, as if gently calling me to listen, to “see”, to touch, and to experience IT – this “Emptiness.”  I was drawn in to the *space* of Divine Emptiness within.

Amazingly I found articles and posts on Emptiness, on Consciousness, and on Awareness (which many consider one and the same).   Then I spontaneously posted the post about Cups in the Ocean, finding the poems by Rumi once again. And my post on SteppingInto The Stream is in many ways about discovering that wondrous space of Emptiness through letting go.  While decluttering the book cases a couple of weekends ago I re-discovered Adyashanti’s book, Emptiness Dancing, which I have just started re-reading.  And then Fred LaMotte posted this lovely piece recently on the Fullness of Emptiness…  Obviously there was something I was supposed to see about “Emptiness…”

When the word and internal *feeling* of Emptiness first wafted through, it was so powerful that I started taking empty cups from my cupboard and setting them out on their sides in places where I knew I would see them, as reminders of this wondrous sense of Emptiness - our original Nature; the Formlessness within Form analogy.

I experienced this Emptiness as endless spacious openness, unconfined, not having a bottom like a cup, but somehow the symbolism of the empty cup spoke to me, allowing me to recognize the Emptiness as our original Eternal Nature – the still-point of Consciousness ItSelf.   What we *think* we are - this ego, this personality, this identity, this mind, this thought, this emotion, this body, are basically empty forms, filled with Emptiness (Formless Awareness/Consciousness).  It is not the same gutted emptiness that one feels after loss, or trauma. Not “emptiness” in the sense of being a void, devoid of life, but a dynamic, yet subtle vibration of Aliveness, aware, knowing Emptiness that is viscerally felt as an alive, peaceful FULLness . 

When I would turn my awareness inward to this space of Emptiness I felt a profound quietness, a deep presence of Being, a re-orientation of my perspective.  But I also had the sense that through this re-orienting “I” was being “emptied out,” of my orientation to my habituated patterns of mental conditioning as a way of living, the conditioned mental frameworks, as well as deeply buried emotional issues that continue to run deep and rise often, along with the ego-centered way of seeing the world that wants to hang on.  It is like being emptied of all that is not Essential, which of course creates upheaval, and can and has sent me into anxiety and bouts of depression recently.  The ego becomes so emotionally attached to its ideas and beliefs of the way our life should happen, that it resists letting go.  In this process, however, I got the image that the “me” that I *think* I am, that I have become attached to, is an empty cup in the vast Ocean of Pure Consciousness – being dissolved into that Ocean, so that I may remember that *essentially* I am the Ocean. 

In some ways this does leave a kind of gutted feeling because the ego-self resists this emptying, as the orientation *begins* to shift from the “me/ego-self” to our Essential Nature - before the sense of a separate “me.”   The familiar identity known as Christine is being emptied out – present tense – ongoing – little by little - through a process of awareness and surrender – through continually bringing my awareness to this space of Emptiness, *feeling* it, the true Emptiness; seeing that these “ego forms” that we believe we are, are really just empty cups filled with this wondrous space of Aware Consciousness, or Emptiness, unattached to ego, or mind, or thought, or feeling – just the conscious Isness of Being.

How interesting the many varied ways in which we are each shown the wondrous mystery of our True Nature…  Shown that the process of “awakening” to the Truth of our Existence is ever-unfolding, each in our own way…

As a result, I realized recently that I no longer *know* what I *thought* I knew, as my perceptions of Truth have evolved.  In this space of Divine Emptiness what I *thought* was important to say, isn’t, because there is really nothing left to say…

Namaste…