Nothing

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

T.S. Eliot

Have you ever allowed yourself to fall into nothing? Emptied? Nothing to do. Nothing much really to be.

Yesterday it felt like the deepest depression. Prior to yesterday, when I completely let go I still had obligations to meet. There were only so many sick days allowed so ultimately I had to make myself move. And then one day I couldn’t even make up one more obligation to meet. Surrender.

This experience of falling, or resting into zero has left a resonance in my being. Drashtu, the Seer, my practice returns me to the witness. Clarity, for me, comes when I allow myself to simply see the experience aka those hours of surrender into nothing. Observing the process of the days and weeks, months, now into a second year has helped me see what really motivates me, svadhyaya, and how mostly nothing any longer does.

Sustained in food and living perch, pushing to make money has drifted away. Striving then ceasing to strive. Allowing that these days are sustainable, what to do with time?

The meaning for my professional work evaporated when all our 2020 and half our 2021 groups had to cancel. Pandemic world. Now is the task of holding space. What I have always done is find the way to jump. Logical in following work except in a world of record high unemployment.

The experiment is in the staying put. There is nothing left in me for another move, another huge life change, especially returning to the USA. I haven’t been able to think myself into anything else.

The experiment is in the practice of faith, of waiting on the Lord. The space in between the breaths. The space between the plans, the thoughts. Maybe even the space that is waiting for love to return.

Soha Hamsa. Inhale: Soha. Exhale: Hamsa. Is nothing bliss? Is nothing desperation? Is nothing the absolute still place of a dance?