Lack & Void *

I am enjoying reading The Void by A. H. Almaas, where he outlines a process of: sense of lack > experience of hole in body image > awareness of space > awareness of the emptiness of space > awareness of the fullness of space.

Space is often initially experienced as "other" and the experience of it is resisted, then after resistance falls away or is reduced, space is more immediate and still "other", then - the process of dissolving conventional identity starts, space may be experienced as "I", and eventually there may be just the emptiness and fullness of space with no I anywhere.

This is of course a variation of what mystics from many traditions say: our conventional sense of emptiness, lack of meaning, or lack in general, is a yearning for awakening - for finding ourselves as not lacking anything.

Somewhere, there is the knowing of what we are. Yet, our conventional identity prevents us from seeing this. Everything we are which does not fit into this identity is placed "out there" by a story added onto it. And in the awakening, we see that we already have - or rather are - everything we are looking for.

All of this - the nature of who (or rather what) we are - is already alive in our immediate experience. We already know ourselves as it. But then we place a number of stories on top of it, creating an identity of an isolated "I", an identity of this not that, and it is temporarily obscured. So no wonder there is the conventional sense of lack and emptiness. We are missing a conscious knowing of who we already are, in our fullness. We consciously know ourselves only as a little fragment of what we are, although the rest is right there under our noses. As the Sufis say, we are like a fish looking for the water - which is already there surrounding it.

Simply said, we are everything arising right now - in this very moment, absent of I anywhere. This is the divine mind, Buddha Mind, Spirit, emptiness dancing, right here already. Right under our noses, yet appearing so far away when there is the holding onto an identity of "I" as a fragment of this.

I also find it interesting how Almaas is using an approach in unfolding the initial, conventional sense of lack and emptiness into an awareness of ourselves as space. It is very similar to the unfolding process in Process Work, although PW has not (yet) gone quite as far into the nondual. They are still at the edge of it, exploring the edge in different ways, peeking occasionally over at the other side, curious about it. (They seem to be at the edge as a group, individuals may well go further).

Labels: almaas, emptiness, process work