Emptiness: Grasp the Nature of Your Mind.
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The real nature of the mind is empty, which transcends all limitations of form.
Deep down, most of us feel there’s more than that which we create in our current lives.
This more ultimately turns out to be an endless void in which everything appears, comes and goes. Emptiness.
The magician called mind
All we feel and experience in this life is constructed out of mind-material. Our thinking is capable of weaving an increasingly complex network of manifestations. By thinking, we create and manifest and subsequently assign value to that which has arisen. Everything we like or dislike appears by using our magician called mind.
Our mind tends to perceive everything it created as separate and labels it. By doing so, we automatically assume that things (forms, materials, opinions) have a permanent existence. And there’s our pitfall: when mind labels something — for instance nice, not-nice, of value, worthless — we start believing it to be true.
This self-labeled feeling of a truth makes us act and feel according to the adopted value of experiences and things that appear in our lives.
We humans like to collect material things, beliefs, thoughts and more thoughts and even smarter thoughts… and our mind labels them as important to us and if they would be with us for the rest of our lives and after. The more we label, the more we have to adapt to, the more feelings we create. This asks for new forms to deal with, which makes our mind create more labels and so on.
We allow the labeling of the mind to determine our mood, our actions, our entire existence, and for most of us, the story of our lives.
Find the mind
During the COVID-19 crisis, we got even more confronted with our loud and busy minds. Isolation from everything that normally used to distract us from overthinking made the noise in our heads become louder than ever. The need to get away from it grew and we felt the urge to numb our senses (because thoughts produce feelings).
We desperately wanted to go out (or hide) before we would get caught up in physical or emotional excess, causing our nervous system to work overtime. We started looking for something or someone to calm us down and give us a more pleasant feeling.
Actually, thoughts itself are not the problem. They come and go, just flow by. Experiences come naturally, even if you don’t wait or look for them. What causes the problem is when our mind starts believing what we think and experience. So where to look for this mind that creates our worries and manifestations?
We don’t know where our mind is, when it will appear or disappear, will show up active or passive. We can’t grab it, we can’t smell it, we can’t see it. It is always both there and, at the same time, not there. Wherever you will search, whatever explanation you would like to give about its temporal location (in my head, in my heart, in the sky, etc.) will not make you find the approximate whereabouts.
You will not be able to name the mind when you do not find out its real existence. Of course you’re welcome to try. You can search for it everywhere, but you will not find your mind, you will not trace it in some place inside or outside your body. So what to do? Nothing. Just recognize that there’s only one condition for everything (also your mind) to appear. An empty space.
Emptiness
Everything we perceive is mind in motion. We now know that all we are able to perceive is created by ourselves. But before a creation can manifest, we need an empty space. Otherwise a manifestation cannot appear. Together we run around in this clear void, this empty space, without realizing that it is precisely this that allows us to be there with all our thoughts, experiences and manifestations in the first place.
For a moment, try to find this emptiness by grasping the nature of your emotions. For example, you are angry about something. Where do the anger and corresponding thoughts come from? Where were they before they appeared to you? Where did your anger go when it has passed? Chase it, try to find it, and you will discover that you will end up with nothing.
It is empty, just as empty as the space in which the anger manifested itself. Space and your anger are essentially indivisible, one. Empty as such. I can hear your thoughts get into gear again. It can’t be that simple, I need to do something, first I have to figure this out before I will believe this, etc. But you will not find emptiness by (over)thinking because the mind labels and emptiness cannot be labeled.
It is empty, formless, it has no beginning and no end.
It is very normal the nervous system starts to revolt when the door to emptiness opens because it is conditioned to react on thoughts and appearances. But you can calm down your thinking by focusing on the empty space in which everything comes and goes. Emptiness is the condition to make creations observable for your senses. Don’t worry, creation will not come to an end when you let go of thoughts.
To end ‘next’
At a certain moment, form falls apart and emptiness is open to the next manifestation. With the decay of the form, energy is released again to be used for manifesting something new. It’s the nature of life.
When we are in a lucky circumstance to recognize emptiness, a common reaction is Okay, what’s next? This will trigger us to start the collecting of new thoughts and things all over again. Stop next. There’s no next. Only now and emptiness, just as it is. But you’ll lose it in a second the moment you get caught up again with your thinking.
The beauty of clear emptiness is its limitlessness. At least try looking for the edges of it. Where does it stop? Recognizing emptiness in everything is a precious life skill which will heal our restlessness, our hold to unhealthy life-patterns and deformed relationships.
Self-motivation helps us become aware of what we really are and take responsibility when we have connected with that which we are not, but at the time have taken for being true.
The fact that mind and emptiness are equal, and being able to experience this, brings a lot of peace.
By being connected with emptiness, you will start radiating calmness and you will inspire others to want to adopt this feeling.
Relax in this endless emptiness, there is nothing, absolutely nothing to chase and hold on to.
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Marina Tielke is a Dutch creative writer of spiritual and psychological novels, fables and articles. She is a life-artist who adopted the opinion that sustainability starts by being whole and living our full love-potential on this earth. She gets her inspiration from nature, own groundbreaking life-events and her former profession as a body-oriented psychotherapist. She lives her life as a modern hermit from truth, simplicity and sowing love.
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