Empty

Empty, is such a curious word

I am empty, somehow seems to suggest an end, a despondency and lacking of. Even as it is uttered.

That is how it is defined anyway. That which lacks content. The jar is empty, the hall was empty, the page was empty. My mind, is empty. Which these past few days it feels like, by the way.

And there seems almost a obligation to fill it.

As if empty is bad, sad and undesirable. And I wonder if it really is that.

Space is never empty. We seem to have equated, no content with emptiness.

But the space, in the jar, in the hall, on the page, in the mind, is NOT empty

It is filled with possibilities of what all can be.

Isn’t the void, the space, the nothingness, the womb from where everything came?

Then how is it empty? Where did the “content” come into the void?

It Is unknown, yes

It is not seen, sure,

Not understood, certainly

But the emptiness is anything, but dead.

It is infact, more alive than the busy aliveness of content

It has a still context that is timeless and formless.

And in this full emptiness, I feel like dropping my anchor.

I have come a long way from not being able to sit still and meditate, afraid of the emptiness and the void.

Now it feels warm, and safe and full of something

Perhaps is we looked deeper longer with more compassion at that which scares us, we would know it for the friend that it is. We could get a chance to meet our own assumptions and beliefs based on fear and move past. To meet that which can be. Perhaps if we didn’t compare, and did an either or, we could hold this beautiful, seeming paradox.

I was watching my Favourite, Lord of the rings yet again, and this time Smeagul and Gollum, held my attention. The two parts of the person, the light and the shadow. and how there is simultaneous dialogue of the two, and I was stuck by how at any moment if I was asked to put a finger the “real” Smeagul, I would not be able to. Because both were real. One would not exists without the other. literally. And finally, this person, this curious mix of person and creature..is the one who destroys The Ring (and save middle earth) . Every other character is “single shade” good or bad, in different moments. But it takes a simultaneity to do the almost impossible.

Maybe what holds us back is the fear of the void, the unknown, the uncertain. Because the mind keeps wanting “certainty”. Maybe we use that as a cleverly disguised word  for “control”. Maybe we feel justified in the labels and positions. Maybe we feel – different than. Other than. And if we perhaps suspended this..either or..and dropped and became ok with the Empty maybe…a new context can find its way into our world.

Sigh !!!

But the truth as I keep discovering as a doula is we move from unknown, to unknown. From before birth to after death. And what can be held  and what holds us, in the middle, as Ariadne red thread, is Faith.