Empty Within

 

Feb. 10

Pondering the many times during the last few weeks in which people I know have remarked on the way in which they feel they’re empty within.

This remark is never on the order of a "good," or desirable, emptiness such as that which Thich Nat Hanh discusses in The Other Shore. It always denotes a lack of anything real within oneself.

Now, one might argue that this does indeed corresponds to TNH’s conception of emptiness; but I think not, because what those who sense this quality in themselves are trying to describe, above all, is a lack of feeling and meaning; and TNH’s emptiness is a quality that endgenders feeling and meaning. The distinction isn't even a subtle one.

One might further speculate that the supplicants presenting this "picture of a lack" are somehow confronting their own nothingness; and yet one can't even allow that, because what they’re suffering doesn't have the sensitivity to do that in a way that relates to their work. It is as though they're blank, that there’s a void where there ought to be something real. An itch that needs to be scratched. 

That, of course, is real enough in itself; and it relates to the well studied phenomenon of depression and emotional dysfunction in general. Healthy emotion has a better quality to it than this; it not only provides something that is there– not absent – but also something that assists in the functioning of the organism and an at least practical attitude towards motivation in the execution of daily life requirements.

So people speak of being empty. This is distressing; and it's more than just the average irritating little thing that bothers one. It's inwardly global— Weltschmerz, “world pain,” a fundamental void that somehow demands to be filled with something one doesn't understand or even know how to get. A disturbance in The Force, as it were. 

There ought to be more here in me, and there isn't; I ought to have a feeling about myself and my life, and I don't. 

Why isn't something more real going on?

I’m reminded of Gurdjieff's ”filling exercise,” spoken of numerous times — but not precisely described — in Paris Meetings 1944. 

What does this mean? 

What do I fill myself with? What can I fill myself with?

I can't claim to know much about his exercise, although I probably know a little bit, because I've been taught a few exercises.

But I can rely, in this case, on my own work and an individual, if not traditional or collective, understanding of what it is to become full of something more real.

I place my attention on the place where Being begins. 

This is a quite interesting place, because it's generated by the contact between breathing in an attentive manner and the way in which the breath inwardly forms a connection to sensation. 

The air contains the particles of higher substances that can help increase the rate of vibration of sensation, but they can't be extracted unless the attention is already concentrated at a certain level of vibration itself. That's a tricky thing, of course; and yet once the attention learns to concentrate itself at that rate of vibration it is nearly always possible to enter a conscious relationship between breathing and sensation. 

It wouldn't do, of course, to stress that or use force on it; and one doesn't actually need to, because the ease of availability afforded by a right level of vibration tends to remove the need for any use of excess force in the first place. The relationship becomes natural because it is available; and I am available because of the inner rate of vibration. 

From this place I can better study where Being begins. I don't imagine that I’m "further ahead" from here than where I was before, or that I'm about to cross some loftier threshold than those I’ve known before. 

I ‘m just right here where things begin. 

Anything that is added to this is imagination, and right now I'm not interested in imagination. I'm interested in Being.

It’s very important to understand the distinction between imagination and Being. When imagination thinks it contains Being, there is nothing there, because where it began was already empty of anything but thought. 

When Being contains imagination, however, the real begins. I can then see imagination instead of living in it as my ordinary landscape. It becomes a separate thing which can be useful for both practical and recreational purposes; but in any event, I know what it is and I can clearly sense the difference between that and the beginning of life, the beginning of Being.

This place where Being begins is quite interested in forming a relationship; it’s the initiation of a space that can receive a higher energy that inwardly forms my parts in a different way. And so if I come to it gently, and without too much force — relaxed, as is often said in the Gurdjieff work – there’s a reciprocal force of Being in which myself-as-I-am and Being-as-it-is feed one another in partnership. This sounds like addition and subtraction, but it isn't. Nothing is added here; and nothing is taken away one from the other. 

We are together, here, I and myself, in this place where Being arises.

This is a beautiful and mysterious place. It doesn't have anything at all in it, and yet it is completely full. What is that mystery? I'm quite interested in staying here and investigating that, already knowing that I won't find an answer.

The investigation gives birth to an even finer vibration. 

Here I am.

There is a stillness in the place where Being begins. That is, perhaps, its prominent and most attractive characteristic: a stillness that has nothing in it. This is a new kind of emptiness. Unlike the emptiness that leaves me feeling void of value, this emptiness is value. I didn't know before that emptiness could be value; but now I understand that, because I’m filled with it as a substance and inhabit it as the beginning of a space within me. That space is fecund; it’s generative. 

The stillness is here to serve as a vessel that receives my life. That is what it's for.

I don't need to explain why I have a vessel or why life should fill it; from this place where Being begins, that doesn't need to be explained. I'm simply called to participate in what is a miraculous event that is filled with real emptiness, not the emptiness of my imagination, but the actual emptiness of my Being. 

My Being becomes a space that receives what life brings.

This isn't an exercise. This is just a set of impressions of how I can approach this question. Really, if I wish to be filled, I need to approach the place where Being begins and explore on my own, without demands or preconceptions, without assumptions. 

Hoping that you find yourself in good relationship today,

warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.