How Can I Embrace
Emptiness
When I’m Not Full Yet?
Essence is emptiness.
Everything else accidental.
Emptiness brings peace to your loving.
Everything else, disease.
In this world of trickery emptiness
is what your soul wants.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Why do these mystics keep going on about emptiness?
Most of us feel empty
and are trying to fill it up. I gotta get more stuff, more sensations,
experiences.
If I don’t, I’ll feel inadequate, lonely, at risk of getting hurt. I
don’t
want any pain, so I’m gonna do what I can to keep away from it. If I
get
some pleasure, I won’t feel my pain. The pleasure ends, so I’ve got to
get
some more. Maybe I need to get it from you. Maybe I need some of your
stuff
to make me happy. I acquire. I hide from pain. I block out reality to
keep
the hurt away. I cling to my plan--the plan I came up with as a little
child.
It’s true, I didn’t know much about people or relationships or the
world
or psychology as a child, but I’ll stick to that child’s understanding
of
my place in the world no matter what. It served me well then. Well, it
didn’t
really serve me well, but it served as well as I could imagine in my
childish
mind. Why change now? If I change now, I’ll have to feel the pain I’ve
been
avoiding all these years. I’ll have to give up my protective shell of
habits,
blind spots, and prejudices. They are precious to me. They let me feel
something.
They keep out the hurt. Well, they don’t really keep out the hurt, but
I
think they should. It makes me angry that I have to feel pain. I think
it
must be your fault.
At some point, it may
become
clear to us that what we are doing isn’t working. Trying to avoid pain
by
hiding from life or by getting more things and more pleasure or by
puffing
up our ego isn’t going to work. Grasping at things and experiences,
being
attached to our image of ourselves and the world, clinging to the
status
quo, fleeing from our aversions; these never give us what we hope they
will.
Instead, they are likely to foster suffering, ignorance, and a heavier
karmic
load.
We would be better off loosening our grip. We could be less attached
to the illusions we fashion to explain this confusing universe. We
could drop
our conceptions of ourselves that paint a pretty picture, but are no
more
a real self than a portrait on a wall. We could stop living in the past
and
throwing that past into the future so that we can pretend to know how
things
work.
Stop right
now.
Give it up. Take a breath and let it out slowly. Open your senses.
Perceive
without judging. Be yourself. Be not your fake self, but your real
self.
Don’t try to think about it. Don’t evaluate or criticize. Sit right
where
you are at this moment. Take this moment fully. Take this next moment
fully.
Take this one right now fully. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Breathe. Fully
now. This moment.
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© 2002 Tom Barrett