If we observe our reaction to emptiness, most of us will run away from the feeling. We do not like an empty house or an empty room. We try to fill our days with activities. We fill our heads with problems that may or may not need our attention. We keep filling our hearts with our past traumas, someone else’s issues or hopes of the future.
In the context of Tending to Your Garden Within, it is important to allow emptiness in our soul (soil) so that the roots of the trees and plants in our garden within can be allowed to grow and expand. It is necessary to remember that the growth and creation of roots are achieved due to empty spaces. Emptiness also creates the possibilities of creation and growth.
We are not used to having a mind with empty thoughts. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to let go of the chatter in our head during meditation: we cannot imagine the nothingness. We may not like to dive into our emptiness within, perhaps due to the fact that we have filled ourselves so full or so often with frozen emotions such as anger and hate that they have become a part of us. Perhaps we have grown too complacent having the emptiness filled with things that we are too comfortable with. The poem below illustrates some forms of emptiness that most people try to run away from.
Running Away From Emptiness
Do not run away from emptiness.
Emptiness is part of us and we are part of it.
It is the emptiness of one’s stomach
that makes eating pleasurable.
It is in the emptiness of self
that one can see Self.
It is in the emptiness of the heart
that love can take residence inside.
It is in the emptiness of desires
that one is truly free.
It is in the emptiness of knowledge
that one seeks to know.
It is in the emptiness
that one can hear the movement of the soul.
It is in the emptiness of self
that illusions are shattered.
It is in the emptiness of beliefs
that naked truth is encountered.
It is in the emptiness inside
that the Divine is experienced.
Copyright @ 2010 by Shervin Hojat
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