I once had a small experience of the ego's loss of balance in the face of this void. I spent a whole day with my [Sufi] teacher as I had to accompany her to a friend's wedding. Soon after I had taken her back to her apartment I found myself in an electronics shop buying a computer, which I realized when I arrived home I neither wanted or needed. As I looked back at the incident I saw that because my teacher is merged into the nothingness, sitting beside her had been like sitting beside a vast, limitless emptiness. My ego, terrified and threatened by this emptiness, had rushed me off to the store to try and fill it. Luckily I was able to return the computer before even taking it out of its box.
*The Bond with the Beloved: The Mystical Relationship of the Lover & the Beloved.
She said to the Sage, "I feel so empty now, since I started meditating. I don't understand! Is something wrong?" "No," replied the Sage, "you must feel empty for a time. The empty is the emptying of that you aren't. Hang in. Be patient. Later, you'll feel the fullness of that you are and have always been."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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Our spiritual growth entails noticing how we flee the sense of loss of egoic identity. That identity fills our awareness. When it begins losing dominance, the feeling can be of losing ourselves, being swallowed up in that void, like a black hole sucking us into itself.
This conversion can feel like an ego homicide, as the Self disempowers the illusion of self-identity. In the death throes, the ego struggles to retain its centrality and illusion of preeminence.
Not without wisdom did the Christian scriptures identify this transformation with crucifixion. Christian spirituality sees the image of the crucified Christ as the archetype of the transformation of the self-in-God.
So, we run off to something for distraction. Vaughan-Lee recognized he was avoiding the sense of this void. In spiritual growth, we become more alert to when we feel the threat to ego and the impulse to get busy, buy, engage in entertainment ... to fend off the threat, rather than letting the inner work do its work in our passive, alert acceptance. Hence, we can sit in meditation and busy ourselves with some meditation technique, filling up the space with doing meditation.
We can be encouraged here, for this felt sense of needing to hide is a sign of a movement into inner transformation. Practicing compassion toward ourselves, we can work with the fear, often subtle, and the ways the small self tries to hide away.
The ego knows a fantastic place to hide is religion, spirituality, or good deeds. Attachment to a spiritual path is a superb hiding place, as is trying to be a holy man or woman. Focusing on being a good Buddhist, Christian, Taoist, Hindu, or person can block the inner gestation. Staying busy doing good for others is a hiding place.
The void, or emptiness, is not a threat. Yet, the ego sees it that way. The void is our friend. If we befriend the void, we discover the emptiness is a fullness. We find by losing our small sense of self, we witness an amazing expansion of identity, one which progressively includes all others. We realize our previous life was like living in a prison cell. We were afraid to open the door and walk out, when all the time the key was in our hand. We walk out and think, "Why in the heck didn't I do this sooner?!"
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2024. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
