Embrace the Void

that sense of emptiness? yeah, it’s not going anywhere

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

We come into the world alone, and we will leave it the same way. In between, we frantically try to avoid being alone because we dread loneliness. We fear the void.

We scramble to avoid boredom at all costs. There’s nothing worse than not having our brains and/or bodies occupied. When we don’t have enough to do, we feel worse than empty.

There’s never enough. No matter what it is, we always feel that sense of lack. It may be work, money, food, adoration, substances, possessions, any number of things we crowd our life with. Enough does not exist. If we didn’t dedicate our lives to the pursuit of more, what would we do with ourselves?

We expend our energy in vain to avoid that sense of emptiness, but no matter how much we shove it down, it’s always there. So, we attempt to fill it up - with people, activities, stuff, even addictions. We live in an achievement oriented society, but even deeper than that, we don’t feel a sense of worth without our accomplishments, possessions, relationships, etc. We have never learned, collectively, to simply be.

The only way out is through. We have to learn to befriend the emptiness, to embrace the void. Get comfortable with the discomfort.

Our frantic pursuit of anything and everything to fill up the emptiness stems from living unconscious lives. Until we raise our consciousness, with the practice of mindfulness or awareness, we will continue to enact the programming that we’ve been conditioned with. As Jung said, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Harsh truth: we will never escape the emptiness. In fact, it is an integral part of ourselves, and the universe in its entirety. Quantum physics has proven that at the core of matter is absolutely nothing. Empty space. Yet our frenzied efforts to escape the void are what cause us pain. We want to erase the sense of loneliness so we hang out with the wrong crowd, we want to run away from the emotional pain so we numb out with drugs, we want our parents’ approval so we become anxiety-ridden perfectionists, or we want acceptance from our peers, so we go into massive debt trying to prove our worth with possessions.

Until we examine why we keep striving for more, we will never know enough, and we remain blind to the reality that we already have more than enough.

An addict is someone who will never get enough of their drug of choice. Though we, as a society, look down on those who are addicted to drugs, we are all in the same boat. Our gnawing sense of emptiness inside is what drives us to pursue more of our chosen drug. How much money in the bank is enough? How many hours at the office is enough? How many pairs of shoes? How many hours of TV? How many cigarettes? None of us is exempt from this insatiable appetite for more, even if it’s as innocuous as a sugar addiction (guilty). None of us can feel superior in our absence of addiction. All of us would benefit from putting parameters on our desires.

A powerful tool is available to help us get comfortable with the discomfort of just being. It is a simple form of mind training known as meditation.

Most beginners, heck even advanced practitioners, find meditation incredibly uncomfortable. It can be physically distressing. Observing the mind is difficult. Our inability to pay attention becomes glaringly obvious and the constant flow of thoughts is frustrating. Terribly agonizing thoughts and emotions bubble up out of nowhere. We feel like we aren’t getting anywhere, never improving in our practice. We want to give up.

After some time, something interesting happens. We start to notice longer gaps in the thought stream. We start to be able to label the activity of our mind, or concentrate on the breath for longer intervals. Distractibility slowly decreases, focus sharpens.

Then the benefits begin to show up in our “real” life. The pause between an event and our response to it lengthens. We can see our thoughts and emotions for what they are - appearances in consciousness and not reality that we need to act on or even believe. Our sense of compassion towards others expands, thanks to our deepened awareness of the endless loop of suffering we engage in. The culprit all along has been us - our attempts to fill the emptiness have resulted in a more painful experience of the same.

The paradox of the void is counterintuitive, but can be summed up in a succinct phrase: what we resist, persists. Until we can wholeheartedly embrace emptiness, we will continue to hurt ourselves by trying to outrun it.

Meditation and mindfulness are certainly not the only ways to raise consciousness and decondition ourselves, but they have been proven effective by practitioners over millennia.

We create our reality in our minds. A sustained effort to cultivate a peaceful mind will yield results. Engage with that sense of emptiness, be curious, and watch your fear dissipate, as you embrace the void.

If this work enriched your life even a smidge, would you considering giving a modest tip?