The Opposite to Emptiness Isn’t Fullness
Looking towards the sky with surrounded by tops of trees
I’m part of a number of communities at the moment, each and every one fill my soul. I’m also building communities in my life with my friends and my family, and through the work I do. It’s odd isn’t it, that we have to build communities with friends and family, but I believe in our current culture that’s exactly what we need to do.
We have become so isolated, we put “self” at the centre and forget about how entangled we could be with those we live, with those we love, with mother nature and the world around us. In fact entanglement, co-dependency have become the enemy, but I wonder what we have lost in that. It’s true we have to cultivate a sense of who we are, and at the same time we can learn more about who we are in being with others. We can learn about who we are together. We cannot know who we are, solely on our own. Yet in this world that’s what most of us are trying to do.
On Saturday I sat in one of the communities I’m part of. There are people from all over the world, and we are all strangers, none of us know each other and yet there is a sense of community, a sense of belonging and of home. I sat with two perfect strangers and we shared our hearts, our tender grief. It moved me, there was a sense of “how can this be.” The depth of sharing in that moment was profound and yet I know that I can feel fearful of sharing parts of me with the people that know me, that love me. Many of us sit in the terror of abandonment that we protect ourselves so deeply, leaving, moving away before we allow our hearts to hurt again. Perhaps not even daring to let ourselves seep into our relationships, so deep is the hurt. This is part of how we’ve learnt to be in the world. Keeping parts of us shut off, closed down. particularly the parts we don’t deem as acceptable or loveable, or that we may judge as wrong.
Francis Weller is my teacher and mentor, and he’s the inspiration behind the words I share with you today. He’s what I would call a true elder in this world, even though we’ve lost the meaning and connections of elders in this culture, there’s a remembering in all of us about what it means to be an elder.
Francis says that the opposite to emptiness isn’t fullness. We’ve tried that. We’ve tried to fill. With food, with shopping, with books, with courses, with all the other things we consume. Clawing to prove ourselves worthy.
He says that the opposite to emptiness is relational, coming back into relation. This is something I’m moving toward with every part of my being. To come back into relation with others, with mother earth, with soul, with heart. Somehow it’s so at odds with everything we’ve learnt in our Western culture today, but I think most of us have this longing within us. This emptiness that we’re not sure how to fill, we’ve tried, oh how we have tried. Now I think we need something different, we need to come back to our very roots, we need to come together.
Francis talks of entanglement in a soulful way. I wonder if we can let entanglement become just that, something that means we’re interwoven together, with mother nature and with the world. That we create communities where we share our vulnerability and our hearts, where connection deepens and we’re held.
This is what my soul longs for, and this is my wish for our world, to come back to remembering.
If you’d like to join us in community, come to The Quiet Place.
You can also listen to Francis speak about emptiness and how deeply impactful this is in our world today in this podcast, Emptiness and Grief.
With gratitude to my teachers and the communities I’m part of, everything here I’ve learnt through them and these words are particularly inspired by the podcast I’ve shared with you here. To Francis Weller, Andrea Lucas, Holly Truhlar, Erin Geesaman Rabke, Carl Rabke and Alexandre Jodun. With particular thanks to the Soulful Life Community and Entering the Healing Ground training.
