The Empty Space
“The gift flows to the empty space”.
What is the empty space? Is it simply an absence? In the conventional way that we use the word empty, which means containing nothing, such as the ‘room is empty of furniture’, the empty is simply a state in which there is no object to occupy space. When we refer to it emotionally, empty has a negative connotation…not simply as an absence of feeling, but as a kind of hollowness that is uncomfortable to the point of leading towards despair.
Spiritually however, emptiness has a very interesting twist in meaning. It really refers to unconditioned possibility — a state of total receptivity, in which grace can occur, and from which spontaneous action can arise.
So when it is said that the gift flows to the empty space, what we mean is that the mysterious -something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain — seems to occur when one is empty. This is very important to recognize, because within this recognition lies the key to Divine action. Not Divine action in the way of an outside entity acting upon an object, but rather a movement from within the field itself, an intuitive response from the intelligence of the unlimited consciousness, that is always in accord with the whole and thus fulfills the moment.
What is it then that we have to be empty of, in order for this to occur? Well, we have to be empty of whatever gets in the way…of The Way. It is like a city that decides to do repairs on a highway when there aren’t any problems with the road. There are simply a bunch of bureaucrats that need something to do, and there are budgets that need to be spent before the year ends, and workers that must be employed to meet political promises, and the list goes on. We fabricate situations that obstruct the way things were working naturally, and in order to keep up with these fabrications we create an entirely new set of situations that keep the wheel spinning.
Perhaps this is why Lao Tzu wrote that ‘governing a large nation is like cooking a small fish — too much handling will spoil it’.”
So the empty space is the way things naturally are if we do not contrive them. So let’s say we have contrived a whole bunch of things, starting with our identities and rippling out to countless situations and relationships in our life — how would we find the empty space? Simply by letting go of our attachment to them…they would find their natural place in the order of things.
Too simple you say…perhaps, but not easy. Without trust, we cannot willingly let-go. For trust usually follows faith, and for many, faith comes from belief…and belief itself is another fabrication. So how do we trust without belief? We need wisdom.
Wisdom is gained through a combination of experience, reflection and logic. We begin to catch on to how life operates by living it with wakefulness, and in the process we change our choices, our actions align with what we want, and so we bring about what we want in life. Doing so, we develop trust in the life process and how it is a mirror of what we carry within ourselves. When we gain this, we have faith in our destiny because we are living correctly, consciously.
So wisdom requires us to see clearly, and to see clearly, we must be detached…which is akin to being empty. The gift we receive is wisdom, which flows continuously to and from the empty space.
