Spiritual Emptiness

"We see more and more clearly, we shed these false ideas about ourselves, until we begin to see our own nothingness … This is a purifying self-knowledge that removes from us all the distortions until we become empty. As long as I see myself as something, then it means I am seeing God as less than everything. When I see myself as nothing, then I see my Lord as everything. Then I see I need nothing else: I don't need my self."[1]

"We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything."[2]

What is emptiness, spiritual emptiness? Sounds bleak, daunting, and even frightening, for at least two reasons. One: it appears to imply the same kind of emptiness one experiences in a state of depression, where one loses both hope and interest in life. It is not that. Indeed, in spiritual emptiness life becomes even more vivid, more interesting, more engaging, because we are no longer distracted from the immediacy of our senses by our self-involvement, our self-centeredness.

Which raises the other off-putting question about spiritual emptiness: what happens if I lose myself? If I am not myself, what will I be? Who will I be? I've spent a lifetime becoming myself, educating and training myself, improving myself. Why would I want to give that up? Then I would have nothing, be nothing.

The reality is that by becoming nothing, we become everything, because we are no longer separate from anything. This is the ultimate freedom, when we move past our false separateness, to become able to be and to act without that distorting lens clouding our vision and warping our motivation. By coming to emptiness and nothingness, all we stand to lose is our illusions. Nothing substantive is at risk. We simply come into the reality of how things actually are. Our thoughts and emotions and body only appear to be our self. Even our I, the core of our attention and presence, who we really are, is only an intermediate stage, albeit a crucial one, on the way to the Great Will within everything and everyone.

What are these false ideas about ourselves that Bennett refers to? The fundamental one is the idea that we are separate, that we are an independent self. We come through the first layer of that illusion by seeing ourselves, seeing our personality, the mask made of our body, thoughts, and emotions, the mask that pretends to be us, that enjoys the label of "me," even though it is only thoughts, emotions, and physical impulses acting on autopilot, without "us" initiating or directing the action. That we are not our thoughts, or our emotions, or even our body, nor any combination thereof, becomes clear to us gradually and then suddenly.

Like many great truths, it is simple. We notice a thought arising in our mind, it runs for a moment and then fades away. Next, another thought repeats that cycle. In between the thoughts, there is the emptiness of pure awareness. The great lesson is that our thoughts come and go on their own, without us intentionally thinking them. The crucial insight is that we are not our thoughts; they are just thoughts. From that insight, the whole spiritual path opens up. But for that, the emptiness of thoughts needs to be seen many times, until we are thoroughly and irrevocably convinced of that truth. Even the thoughts that are not automatic, the ones that we think intentionally, are not us. The thought "I" is not who we are.

We practice being in the stillness behind experience, behind thoughts, emotions, and body, behind the mask of personality. That stillness opens into pure awareness, consciousness, which is the first major step into emptiness, toward the Sacred emptiness. But who is experiencing that pure consciousness? Consciousness enables us, our will to be aware, to be conscious. Consciousness is an energy, an instrument, not the user of that instrument. Who is there in the silence of meditation? There is someone, the true us, the one who directs our attention and receives our sensory impressions. That is the one who is conscious, who uses the conscious energy to be aware.

Simple attention means not attaching our name to our attention. Not attaching our personality to our attention. Not attaching our separateness to our attention. Yes, it is "our" attention, directed by our individuality, our I, our will. That I is both uniquely us and intimately joined with everyone else's I. Our I emanates from the One Will of all, the Divine Will, the One Who continually creates and sustains this universe, the One Who both inhabits and transcends this universe. Because we are part of that Reality, there is real hope for us, hope that we can empty ourselves of ourselves, transcend our separateness, and serve the Source.

One way toward emptying ourselves of our separateness is to open to and connect with that One Will that is in everything, in everything around us. As you look around you, recognize that each thing you see has at least the rudimentary will to be itself and that will is essentially the same as your own will, your own attention, your own I. Not just similar, but of a piece with it. The One Will enters this universe from a higher dimension and as such enters at every point, just as a three-dimensional object can touch every point on a two-dimensional surface.

Yet we feel the difference between an inanimate object and a fellow human. It may be the same will in both, but the will of the object is severely constrained, while the will in the human can reach the level of freedom and even offer that freedom to strengthen the One Will, to open an unobstructed channel of will from the One through us. And with that comes love, the intimacy of non-separateness. To be such an unobstructed channel, we must be empty of ourselves, empty of our egoism, our self-centeredness, our assumptions of separateness.

Paradoxically, by fully accepting the emptiness of our personality made of patterns of thought and emotion and physical habit, we become more truly human, more fully ourselves. To see oneself as nothing means to not see oneself in the stream of awareness, to just see, without any notion that "I" am seeing, to just see, without inserting oneself into the seeing, to be a clear channel for experience and for the One in us all.

[1] J.G. Bennett: Recorded talk at Beshara, Swyre Farm, England; March 13, 1973

[2] Attributed to Kalu Rinpoche

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