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can you let yourself?

they’re always telling people to meditate and journal and pray. but the real question is, “can you let yourself be empty?”

because it’s not empty your mind to improve focus and boost productivity. it’s not empty your heart into a journal for emotional regulation. it’s not empty your spirit of pain and desire by delegating upwards, so that the universe can bring you what you want or destroy what’s hurting you. it’s just, “can you let yourself be empty?” can you not need what you think you need? can you not long for what you think is missing?

can you stop wanting what you want for long enough to understand the reason you want it? which is that you’re experiencing an illusion of lack that is obscuring the truth of the emptiness? that the seeker becomes the witness, the sought after — once she’s remembered the truth?

the emptiness inside you doesn’t want to be filled because it’s lacking — it wants to be filled because emptiness requires fulfillment just as fulfillment requires emptiness.

why are we born hungry? why is lack the feeling that awakens us into the human condition? why does it have to be the shock of disconnection? why do we seek, chase and pursue? why do we run from the emptiness only to find it in each of our achievements and possessions and experiences? our losses ring as hollow as the victories. with time, they may even reverse themselves: our losses become our wins, and gains became our weaknesses. this feels bad only because we think it’s what we don’t want.

there are spiritual practices that talk about expanding the soul, expanding the vessel. but why do you want to expand the vessel? it’s to create more emptiness. so that more light can flow to you and through you. before there was everything there was nothing. God is the emptiness and the dark and the womb, and God is also the baby, the birth, the life that issues forth. everything came from nothing. emptiness is required for fulfillment. even pipes and pots have to be empty before they can be filled.