emptiness

Emptiness: It sounds quite a negative word, doesn’t it, implying, usually, a barrenness, a lack of something. Yet, the enlightened state, this highest state of consciousness that the human mind can reach, involves a certain emptiness. But this emptiness is not felt as a lacking. It is not felt as something missing. This emptiness is felt as a relief and as a vast spaciousness. The space of existence; the glory of all that is, is felt, in this emptiness.

What is it that has disappeared to create this emptiness; to allow this emptiness to be felt? Really, there is just one thing that has gone and that is one’s idea of oneself; that is the ego.

It is this great urge to think about everything; to have ideas about everything; and to somehow invest in those ideas a sense of truth: this is where we go astray. The ideas themselves would not cause so much trouble if we could just see them as ideas and no more. But somehow the whole energy of our experience of life has become attached to these ideas; dependent upon these ideas; and no more so than with the idea of the self. It is this energy, tied up with the ego, which prohibits emptiness from being experienced.

So see, that all your ideas about yourself are just ideas, beliefs, hanging around in your mind, like bored teenagers sitting in a square. These ideas are tired and old; out of date as soon as they come. They may be entertaining; they may have some utility in certain circumstances; but do not give them an undue weight. Do not inflate their importance. Instead, allow your mind to become still. Forget about yourself, if you will. Just allow the spaciousness, of consciousness itself, to open up within you. From this perspective of emptiness, you can see, clearly, that the various forms of existence are but transient waves, coming and going; changing shape; never fixed. Also you will see the interconnection of all that is. There is no separation in emptiness.