“Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.” (Charles Spurgeon)
I tend to believe that part of the human condition is one where we’re prone to feeling empty more than not and that is the very reason why so many of us often end up seeking some person, place, or thing outside of ourselves to fill that void. Unfortunately, there is no person, place, or thing that can ever permanently do that, but that doesn’t seem to stop the ego from trying again and again and again. I should know given the amount of addictions I succumbed to over several decades while looking for ways to fill it. I became like a car that has to constantly go the gas station to fill up with fuel, just to keep going, yet always returning back to empty. Then I heard of plenty of suggestions along the way with how to fill the emptiness up in much healthier ways.
Go help someone less fortunate. Volunteer your time. Journal in a diary. Take up a healthy hobby like gardening. Learn a new trade. Enroll in some classes. And so on and so forth. And you know what? They didn’t fill that emptiness up either. Each were but a temporary solution, no different than how alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, caffeine, cigarettes, etc., were for me either. All of those solutions were me seeking something outside of myself to fill the void and that’s something my Buddhist teachings told me was merely an illusion. And eventually, I experienced the truth in that.
It happened when I was on a 10-day silent retreat over a decade ago now, where I had to sit with my emptiness, where I was not able to write, read, have access to TV or friends, or communicate with anyone for that matter. Through it all, I experienced an emptiness that was far deeper than anything I could ever imagine. But I sat through it and watched the rise and fall of so many unnecessary cravings for things in life. And then one day, towards the latter half of that retreat, something shifted within me. It was then I felt an energy, a presence, a Light come from within. And it filled that emptiness up. Completely. Sadly, I lost that presence six months later when I fell prey to some temptations and stresses of life, succumbing all over again to the illusion that there was something “out there” that could cure my emptiness.
Thankfully, I started coming out of this illusion once more about five years ago and have been working on sitting in my emptiness again, rather than looking for ways outside of myself to fill it up. But this time, it’s been even harder to do, because I have so much pain going on at the moment in my mind and body, much in part due to the release of all the lower vibrational energies I took in. All of it begs me to look for something “out there” to take it away immediately. Yet, I know that in continuing to sit through this emptiness, instead of looking for ways to take it away temporarily, it will shift, in the Universe’s own unique timing, just like it did on that silent retreat.
So, while I may not like this emptiness I feel pretty much 24/7 these days, I know my decision to accept it as it is and sit through it, is preparing myself to be filled by something far Greater, something that I know CAN and WILL replenish itself from within, so long as I stay out of that illusion that the world has the answer to cure it, because it doesn’t.
Thank you, God, for helping me to face and sit through my emptiness, as I know in doing so, I am preparing myself to be filled by something far more sustainable that will lift me out of the illusion that says the answer is out there in the world, because I know the answer really isn’t. As it’s in here, within me, with You.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
