Open Topic
This week the topic was brought forward by the participants in the group. It was a very deep and spiritual combination of topics with one rather conceptual anomaly.
We had ‘the void within’, ‘thresholds and what lies beyond’, ‘sex, masturbation and kindness’, ‘democratic lottery’ and ‘what is it to be and become an elder’.
We started with the Void, an attempt to bring forth the topic of emptiness internally.
The conversation commenced like pulling upon the tiniest thread to bring forth enough understanding for the group to understand at least the baseline of what was being offered.
Surprisingly it didn’t take long for everyone to grab ahold of the thread and pull forth a very deep and insightful conversation about the nature of being.
The void was explored in many ways within the group, the space of nothingness within, where we sit whilst in deep meditation, this space calls for us when we are tired or when we are in nature, a bandwidth that we often fill with noise from our minds. This space may be our nothingness, our essence, when we are truly ourselves. However, in a beautiful paradox it is only when we have forgotten ourselves and become a part of the whole that we truly embody our true nature.
When the void is empty what emerges from it?
I shared an experience in which I was on a date and I authentically felt like saying nothing and wanted to drop into this void that seemed to be calling me. But instead I was anxiously speaking, entertaining and creating noise in fear that I would be perceived as the nothingness that was calling me. In an effort to change this anxious behaviour I sat back and felt into the void. I was silent, my shoulders dropped and my muscles relaxed as I slipped into this nurturing territory. I felt the fear pass over me as I let go of attempting to control how I was perceived.
It is what it is.
In this void the idea of the void itself emerged and I attempted to speak of it with my date. I felt a little self conscious about talking about ‘the nothingness I felt within’, as I did wonder if she thought of me as some kind of depressed sadist. Fortunately she did not and I had one of the best dates I have ever been on. Dropping into the void had somehow aligned me with my present self, or the greater nervous system and there seemed to be a natural energy within that connection.
Each participant in the group was aware of this aspect of being we were referring to as ‘the void’. We had touched upon a very human experience.
We then combined the topic of thresholds as an approaching void, a crossroads in which we are flung into the void of nothingness. And as this nothingness approaches we are anxiously filling it with plans and ideas in fear of what? Becoming nothing, having no plans?? Is this a fear of others expectations? Of the question; and what are you up to?
We are expected to know and this is a stressful situation when a void is approaching fast and we can make rash decisions like becoming a doctor or a lawyer… Jokes aside we can make career decisions with very little listening to our own inner calling.
Ritual was discovered within the discussion as a tool in which you build a parameter within the void using intention and within this space we listen for what emerges. Even in ritual I think we have forgotten to listen and we fill the space with ritualistic performances.
But perhaps nothingness is too much and having a simple occupation creates the perfect combination. Like gardening, or drumming, playing instruments of any kind, singing, knitting, weaving, dancing, etc.
For these practices within ritual are not of the mind but of the body, placing ourselves within this space we have been calling the void or somewhere in between?
We are once again touching upon Krishnamurti’s ‘freedom from the known’. The security of delusive knowing has gone too far and we are replicating irrelevant systems much like the growth of a cancer and we are feeding upon life itself rather than living our own lives in the space of relevant nothingness.
‘First there was the word.’ - First Testament
However, before the word was the void and we existed within this void of words, knowledge and definitions. We existed as everything and nothing all at once; living our pure essence as an integral part of nature. Then we ate from the tree of knowledge and started to build a matrix of reality through collected stories we call knowledge. Still within the reality of the void we had built a complex delusion of story and now we live totally within this delusion seperate from everything but now with distance between us and the void we see it and understand the actions we have made and the answers to our soul’s longing. To be connected again, to be a part of it all but do we need to forget in order to exist in the unifying existence of the unknown? Or is there a middle way?
In the second conversation we spoke of the pathways needed to be walked in order to be shaped into an elder. Connection to many and everything was one.
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