Leaning into the Light: Embracing Emptiness to Make Room for Joy

Leaning into the Light: Embracing Emptiness to Make Room for Joy: I’m currently happier than I’ve ever been. I have a new job, my addictions are not running the show, and I’m making friends at levels I ...

Embracing Emptiness to Make Room for Joy

I’m currently happier than I’ve ever been. I have a new job, my addictions are not running the show, and I’m making friends at levels I haven’t since I moved to Delphi when I was eight. I’ve always been a fairly happy person, but this joyous state goes deeper and is not dependent on external events.  It’s rooted in the belief that everything is working out, even things that appear to be challenges, and confirming signs of this truth flood my days.

What’s allowing so much joy to seep into my consciousness?

 I think it’s the space that’s been created by not packing my calendar, not filling my belly to overstuffed, and doubling my time in meditation.  These acts have allowed a spaciousness to form that’s inviting.

Oddly, I’ve become way more productive by doing less. I now write for 30 minutes first thing in the morning, and that’s allowed me to complete tasks as well as tap into inchoate creative energies before the list for the day gets going in my brain. It also frees me from the nagging sense of disappointment I feel every day I don’t write, because writing is my heart’s desire and what’s next for my personal, creative, and spiritual growth. I’m getting confirmation that what I offer is helpful and clear, and while I’d like my writing to be dense, mystical and astonishing in its vocabulary and syntax, that’s just not the kind of writer I am. Rather than wait until I become that writer, I’m allowing what I do know and the way I do put it to come forward daily.

Sitting with emptiness means accepting things as they are, without trying to fix, change,  or make it more comfortable or familiar. Every step in life is a new one if I’m paying attention, but if I’m a hair away from fully awake, ordinary tasks can feel very routine and dull. The difference, an inch perhaps, changes my world. Listening to the deepest desires of my inner being requires enough stillness each day so I discern that voice and not the ego’s long list of “shoulds” that would “improve” me.

Today, I’m on a course of exploration rather than self-improvement, and the difference is a lightness in my day. 

So here’s what I recommend: Look at your calendar and see where you can schedule in some unscheduled time. No irony intended. And look at your menu and see where you could eat less and explore feeling emptier. (Lent for Christians is the season to sit with that emptiness and see that it’s not deprivation but discipline, which turns out to be the path to freedom.)  And look at your surroundings and see if you’d like less input, so you can be still with your interior wisdom for a few minutes each day.

I suspect you’ll soon be experiencing more joy than you’re used to, and that’s a new, more interesting situation to get used to, isn’t it?