Fullness and Emptiness

This life is our playground and death our nighttime

We must play returning at night empty handed and tired

           - Rumi

Many years ago, when I first began seriously seeking– inner peace and radical ease - I read about an interview process, interviewing hundreds of awakened beings, asking the question, “how would you portray your location” – some semblance of that question.  What struck me was the universality of the answer.  “I am everything and I am nothing.”

I recognized the truth of the answer even without having the experience of what they were referring to.  It remained a quiet knowing without any substance or depth of fullness . . . even after awakening . . . until now.

Let’s start with “I am everything”, which means looking at our heart.  Where love and oneness ripen and explodes unrestricted and I am everything is remembered.  The felt sense of fullness. The instinctive knowing, we are all in this together – all beings, all creatures, all living expressions formed from the same home.

Whether we are aware or unaware, there is an energetic pull in each of us to know what is most real, deeply authentic and to have some understanding of what life is all about.  There is a pull in us towards Beingness.

Having intuited this most of my life, along the way I was given words and phrases to help articulate to myself what was insisting on being known.  Who or What Am I, where have I come from and where am I going?  Age old questions that speak to that tap on the shoulder to rub the sleep out of our eyes and recognize the source of all beings.

As I look back on things is seems to me that both trauma/suffering and becoming aware of deeper questions kept me from throwing myself fully into the mainstream of this world.

What felt extremely painful . . . that sense of being an outsider . . . that bottomless desire to belong . . . that hole inside that couldn’t be filled . . . all turned out to be a god send.  It sent me searching . . . all-in searching.

When we are in pain . . . when we are filled with confusing emotions . . . when we lash out - typically that is all we are aware of.  If often looks and feels like a closed-off and protected heart.  In fact, it is a closed-off heart.

On the human level, when a child is, to any degree, hurt, betrayed, doesn’t feel safe, is not adequately cared for or loved, it will, to protect itself, close off some or all tender or vulnerable parts of itself. 

A closed, or even semi-closed heart will, likely, not feel joy or care-free either – it is like the muscles of the heart are surrounded by barbed wire – nothing can pass either in or out without feeling the sting of pointed steel.

A common example, used in psychology, describes the behavior of a very hungry infant, crying to be fed, becoming more and more frustrated the longer it takes for the breast or bottle to show up.  It is what can happen in the moments after that is stunning and can lead to a life time pattern of, to some measure, rejecting the very love we are seeking and/or being attracted to folks who will create that old mis-connecting dance with us, over and over.   By the time the breast or bottle is available many an infant is beyond frustrated and turns its head away from the source of its nourishment.

I think it is fair to say that our greatest suffering can actually come from our heart’s being closed off.  It actually hurts when our hearts are closed, even when it is in the name of protection. Since we long for love, how would it not pain us to experience a lack of love . . . even if the experience of lack is an illusion. Perhaps that is why we are often encouraged to let our hearts break.  Let it break wide apart. Be brave enough to feel the agony and disappointment we have kept at bay.  As counter-intuitive it might sound, we are summoned to let the dam break and open wide to ourselves and to the world.

An awakened spirit opens the heart – wider and wider. An awakened spirit cracks open the defenses put into place for protection and bursts the heart to its original vastness.  Open to the slings and arrows of everyday life, open to the suffering that is all too common in our world and most importantly, completely open to Love.  Love and connection . . . the profound realization of our interconnectedness . . . the Oneness of everything alive . . . this realization is keenly felt . . keenly known in an open heart.

As a young adult I was very aware of my heart being closed off and I felt great anguish.  I was slightly aware of not letting anything reach me or touch me.  I was acutely aware of feeling disconnected, an awful feeling.  Something in us knows we are not separate, even as we live our lives assuming we are . . . separate and alone.

My years in therapy moved the dial, softened me as I dropped defenses but didn’t come close to the torrent of Love that exploded when my heart burst open during a spiritual retreat.

Love that was too big, too vast, too indescribable to put into words.  I was utterly speechless, all the while whole-heartedly aware of the interconnectedness of everything and everyone.  Awareness showing me the judgment that had been a very familiar holding for the illusionary message of disconnect had disappeared and there was literally no separation amongst any of us in the room, no separation from the birds soaring outdoors, nor from any of the objects surrounding all of us. Awareness brought clarity – this was not merging – this was not empathy – this was a profound recognition of all of us being an expression of the same Source.

I not only knew, I am everything . . . but it was the beginning of perceiving all of life and this world through a lens of love and connectedness.  It literally shifted all relationships, including with myself.  I couldn’t have put words to it at the time but it was the beginning of a deep knowing that love, looking out from my eyes, was who we are; permeating every step we take with a distinct quality of deep silence, sweet nectar, and fierceness.  A fierceness to bring everything left out in the cold back into its all-embracing energy.

Love began to take up residence inside me in more digestible portions and I saw the pure beauty in every form or expression of that love.  I lived in the paradox of being everything all the while seeing everyone’s uniqueness . . .how each “person”, through their own abilities, their own capacities . . . so, so varied . . . would come to blossom, in their own way, in their own soil and in their own timing.  

Kindness and compassion took up residence inside me.  The long-held pattern of getting close to someone followed by a “must run away” impulse began to dissolve (fear of intimacy, terror of dependency).  I no longer felt the bottomless hole of neediness nor the relentless loneliness that plagued me all my life.  

And as judgment or conflicts or negative thoughts or emotions showed up, it became clearer and clearer how manufactured they all were; all made in a long-ago pact for a protection we humans use, imagining it will keep us safe from harm.  As if it could!

Instead, the I am everything made it immanently clear that we are all one beating heart . . . we are, indeed, each other . . . that Love will see us through all challenges . . . that division is made up in the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

It would be years before I viscerally knew “I am nothing”.  I had Long Covid for over 3 years, experiencing debilitating fatigue and a painful messed up gut.  I write about this in detail in my current book (Awakening is not for the Faint of Heart) so I won’t repeat the ins and outs of living with a debilitating illness, with no remedies or cure. 

The salient part, for this essay, is how presence held it all, allowing me to be present throughout the ordeal and recognize some deeper spiritual lessons clamoring for attention.

It turns out that my gut had been holding several memories and a whole lot of emotions (the body does indeed keep the score) that I had been unaware of and had no previous access until I was forced to be still for over 3 years and listen closely to my body.

Memories showed up . . . not particularly new memories but certainly wider and deeper perspectives . . . bringing with them immense terror and shame. 

Two things became clear.  One, I had never talked about these memories before and even more stunning, I had never said them out loud to myself.

I talked and talked into a tape recorder – giving myself all the space and freedom to say what I could at any given moment and walk away at any other given moment.  With enormous honesty, I put words (and feelings) to what was being uncovered. It was harrowing and intensely freeing.  I listened back to each recording, hearing my voice, bearing witness to what I had experienced as a 12-year-old, as a 13-year-old and as a 14-year-old.

The other clarity . . . the feelings that arose from re-visiting those times of abuse . . . mirrored, precisely, how my gut had been feeling throughout Long Covid. 

The experience of living through this . . .. in this way . . . in the current moment felt profound.  I was, at the very same time, fully aware of fully feeling my young self, from the inside out as well as abundantly aware of the presence of Love, unmoved, untouched, unflinching, cradling everything.

Over time, the intensity of the gut pain dissipated; the feeling being that the gut no longer had to hold onto the impact of the abuse and emptied itself.

I felt completely emptied out.  Emptied out in a fresh air kind of way.  Emptied out in a wide-open space kind of way.  Emptied out in a way I had not known before.

Emptied out in a “I am nothing” state of being. 

A clear channel for Life to flow in an unobstructed, continual flow.

In an ever-deepening trust of life as it is, no matter what, being ill and still for so long revealed to me, loud and clear, “I” am not in control . . . and it feels extraordinary to be nothing.

I saw You and became empty....

This Emptiness more beautiful than existence.

           Rumi

Whoever finds love beneath hurt and grief disappears into emptiness with a thousand new disguises

            Rumi

I was interviewed on Awareness Explorers.  If you are interested in seeing the video, you can find it here and on my home page.