You Need a Little Emptiness Before You Know What is Real

Sister Hazel gets credit for the title of my post (from their song "Lay it Down".) Those guys have some lyrics that really speak to me, and on this particular night that line fits just right.

As an introvert and highly sensitive person, I often crave alone time to rest, let myself settle and recharge my batteries. But I realized today that most times when I do get my precious down time, I fill it with junk. It seems that no sooner do I settle myself on the couch with myself when I am plagued with the desire for something (not someone, but something) to fill the space with me or take the edge off. I reach for a glass of wine, a cookie, the remote or the laptop...or all of the above. Instead of being in the space with myself, all I end up doing is blunting the experience with habit, some might say addiction.

It's odd to me that I am seeking now to escape my own company when growing up, I was the one I spent the most time with. I holed up in my room and filled the hours with reading, drawing, make-believe performances,  imaginative play with my dolls and stuffed animals. Those days I discovered so much about myself. But slowly--and then rapidly--those days dwindled as I felt the social pressure to be with people (my ex-husband's family found my need to withdraw from time to time "rude"...) I am seeing now, as my quality, creative, regenerative, pensive, restorative alone time dwindled, so did my real, intimate knowing of myself.

It's time to find myself again. I'm pretty sure I'm not at the bottom of the cookie jar or bottle of wine, and I'm sure as hell not finding myself in any of those "reality" shows (although I suppose that's not wholly true, because I don't tend to watch things that don't resonate for one reason or another with me.) The me that's on Facebook is the me everyone sees, but I want to be with the me I used to be...get back to the me of me. The me of it all, as pop culture would say.

I think in this life we get lost and found a countless number of times, as things ripple and shift around us (and on us, as those of us in midlife know all too well!)

I found a site called tricycle, which explains that in Buddhism:
"Emptiness is a mode of perception, a way of looking at experience. It adds nothing to, and takes nothing away from, the raw data of physical and mental events. You look at events in the mind and the senses with no thought of whether there's anything lying behind them."



No analysis. No action. No judgment. No worries. No stories about anything that add suffering. That sounds lovely. I'm very good at adding suffering to my experience. It's been a while since I've given myself space, a little emptiness to know again what is real. Or to know nothing but the emptiness...