The feeling of emptiness

(adapted from the article by Sri Om Swami)

Emptiness is a feeling that everyone experiences at one time or other, in life.  It is not a disorder but a mix of loneliness, sadness and disconnection. There is an anecdote about a child playing in the sun with toys. Suddenly the child started crying.  The child’s mother rushed out to find out the cause of the child’s crying.  She found the child pointing to its shadow imitating its actions and wanting to hold it. When the mother tried to explain that the other figure is only shadow which it cannot hold, the child did not understand and only cried louder.  Then mother gently held the child’s hand and asked it to touch its own head and stroke its own face.  The child did so and seeing the shadow imitating its action, giggled aloud with the discovery that the child could make the shadow do what it wanted by doing it to itself.

Pleasures in one’s life is like the shadow only.  So as long as one is conscious of their transience, while enjoying them, all is well.  The moment one wants to grab it and hold it, then the struggle starts ending in failure.   Everyone has a centre of bliss that affects one’s emotional and spiritual balance like the centre of gravity that determines the balance of any physical object.  As a child learns to crawl, it has its mother as its centre of bliss. At that stage mother’s milk is the sweetest food and mother’s lap is the safest place to rest, for the child.  As the child grows, initially the centre of bliss shifts to toys which it prefers over mother’s lap.  Later as it starts schooling as part of its process of growth, the centre of bliss changes to friends and the old toys hold no interest for it.  Its friends and dreams take the place of its toys and mother’s lap.  As one grows still older and crosses teens, one’s attention shifts to sensual pleasures and as a growing youth one wants to stay out of supervision and have fun.  Later one’s centre of bliss changes to one’s career and one’s ambitions.  Then the desire for acquisition of wealth, drives one to acquire more and more enjoying the effort and exertion as well.  Also one starts having a family which also becomes another centre of bliss.  But a day comes when one is physically old and no more has the energy and strength to exert and children have also grown, old and focused on their respective lives and one is left alone, with one’s thoughts only, for company, most of the time.  What had been the centres of bliss so far, he cannot access anymore and life seems to be empty without charm or purpose.

The way to escape this feeling of emptiness is by cultivating an internal centre of bliss which does not depend on any external source for its sustenance be it parents, family, career etc.  The inner journey of discovering internal source of bliss starts with cultivating consciously the emotions of contentment, gratitude and compassion.  One cannot be empty, if one has contentment; one cannot be sad, if one is grateful; one cannot be angry, if one is compassionate. And if one fills oneself with love, one can realign one’s emotions and recalibrate one’s thoughts.  Still, if at anytime one is faced with aching emptiness threatening to become unbearable loneliness, one need not despair but just wait it out. It will pass away yielding place to periods of joy which one must enjoy with the feeling it is only a shadow and it is impermanent like life itself.

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