Since my retreat experience this summer, I have been exploring my newly discovered and deep power to feel. It often feels like I have learned to unleash an energy of feeling that I never before knew was there. I have heard myself describing it as ‘going deeper,’ as I attempt to explain what this new depth of feeling is like.
What I wasn’t expecting is that I had also uncovered a deep feeling of emptiness and longing. It is as if there is a void that wants to be filled. I am sometimes not even sure if it is a feeling of joy or absolute emptiness. It is a strange combination of feeling the exhilaration and terror of a free fall into a bottomless chasm.
I feel like I have come home, but it is often more like stepping into a familiar void than into a place of welcoming fulness. This is a place of scary emptiness and longing even while it is a place of intense excitement and glee.
The act of letting go in mindfulness is for me an act of courage. It reminds me of what it felt like the first time I stepped off the ledge on a zip-line and I went plunging out of control into thin air. I still don’t understand what it means that as I am in free-fall into an empty void I am also feeling an intense sense of longing. The void wants to be filled, but I don’t know what the longing is about or what I am longing for.
I am sure that I never knew what I was in for when I opened this new treasure chest of deeper feeling. The treasure chest is not full of golden nuggets or diamonds. It is an absence of all that I have known. It is a beckoning chasm without dimension .
This is a place of no space, no time, no contact, no grounding.
It is no small wonder that I have been inviting others to be there with me. It is not just that I think it would be a good experience for them to become more mindful. I am also terrified of being in that scary void alone.
I can only speculate about what is happening. It seems to me that becoming more open-hearted means creating a relaxed void that draws in all manner of reality. Awareness creates something like a magnetic form of absorption. The longing is the tension of the void wanting to be filled.
I am confident that others have been here before me, and I hope to learn from them. Right now, it is simply a mystery to be felt and observed. .