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…
