Nothingness

It can look like a dark, seemingly endless tunnel when your world stands still for weeks, even months or longer, where nothing new happens. Same old, same old. Fear creeps into your soul. More than just boredom, you feel emptied, drained of passion. A sense of malaise becomes your general mood. I’ve been there many times. Most recently, I’ve dealt with the darkness and I’m not talking about writer’s block. If you're in this mind-space and looking for some detours, here are a few I’ve learnt moving on from those negative days.

One avenue many folks take is to turn to the spiritual for guidance and solace. "God will make a way when there seems to be no way", is a saying I've often used. My undergraduate studies in anthropology, when I was looking into the different notions of “self” and the experience of the divine cross-culturally, revealed there are many, many gods people pray to for comfort in times of confusion and distress. In particular, Jews believe that God can create something from nothing, or yesh me-ayin. This notion appears in the second sentence of the Torah, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters”

The idea of being co-creators with the divine is not new. However, mere humans must create from something. I happen to study at a Canadian university with professors who were Marxist anthropologists. Students were taught how to use his concepts to gain insight into indigenous cultures. Karl Marx posited that making and transforming things is the essence of humanness. He discerned that our appropriation of nature is fundamental. What we make must be personal to us and then we can fully contribute to society. I can attest to the joy of pulling the words from the depths of myself when I draft out my writings. There is no artificial intelligence at work here. Marx attributed the desire to play a part in one’s community to a basic instinctual drive which can be honed. He termed it “species being”. It is similar to the idea of altruism, except not everyone is endowed with the propensity to act altruistically or to be kind to others, and so it must be finely developed and valued by a society. Hence, Marx viewed capitalists as exploitive and capitalism as destructive in its processes.

Although we can not create from it, the idea of nothing does appear in our lives quite a bit. It shows up in some unusual ways. For example, you are full of resentment but a common response when a significant other asks what’s wrong is, “ Nothing!” Or when we do make something from nothing it’s pejoratively equated to exaggerating, as to make a mountain out of a molehill. Anyways, at times it’s good to do nothing. Empty mind meditation is useful to achieve a mental state of no thoughts. Zen mind/beginners mind starts with a sense of knowing nothing, relatively speaking. However some folks might find the need to start all over again in one’s career or a new city to live can be scary too. When fear settles in life can become like an endless, dark tunnel.

“I don't think we should make people feel ashamed of that difficulty. The Torah tells us about people who had witnessed extraordinary miracles and still became afraid when they faced new dangers. Fear is a very human experience, and even people with deep faith can struggle with it. What matters is what we do with that fear.

When something is troubling you, speak to HaShem {God} about it. Tell Him what you're worried about, what you're hoping for, and where you need help. You don't have to make yourself sound brave if you're not feeling brave.” - Rav Dror, rabbi and founder of the Emunah Project that helps people build emunah or faith, to trust and connect to HaShem.

Another avenue out from nothingness is expressed in a song produced by Kimo Sound using only artificial intelligence. The “Rise Slow” lyrics include the lines, “I don’t need the light to find my way. I just keep moving through the dark each day. Not fast. Not loud. Not for the crowd. Just real, just deep, just mine to keep, oh. I rise slow, but I rise sure. . . " The key points are to be authentic and to move, to keep going even if you are afraid or don’t know the precise direction. Of course, you can feel like a nobody headed in the unlucky and wrong way. However, when good luck does come, you begin to think of yourself as a somebody. So one wonders, “What is luck and how can we create it for ourselves?”

Another avenue to escape that feeling of nothingness coincides with another phrase I use. “Every day above ground is a good day”. It starts by seeing the light. See opportunities and luck can follow you too. So, rise slow and when you walk about town notice the patches of light as they play along the ground, on the leaves of trees, or windowpanes. Then rise up more to pay attention to the synchronistic moments and not just to those important, meaningful coincidences but also to the small, serendipitous kind. For example, when you think of someone and then they call you, or you spot your favorite number on a car's license plate. These little connections to the outer world will make you feel happy and affirm you’re on the right road and above ground. Then start to trust your hunches, trust in your intuitions, trust when you feel a rush of energy urging you to get up and do something or go somewhere, trust in that quickening heat coursing through your body, and then act on the indicators. Do not be a procrastinator. Action and trust are the keys to start your engine and go from nothing to zooming.

The final detour is a most important one. By it, I am reminded of the tarot card the Nine of Swords. Traditionally, the suit of Swords correlates to the mind, inner thoughts, intellect, and ideas. This lower arcana card represents mental anguish, nightmares, worry and overthinking. It’s usually depicted by nine knives piercing a heart that bleeds. To make or transform something, to move and become authentically, essentially you is the calculus of a good life. The opposite is when you feel trapped, emptied, can’t move and paralysis is setting in. When you are overwhelmed by the darkness of your own negativity and harmful mind it is the time to seek help. Don’t act slowly either. Whether to talk to a trusted family member or close friend, or go to a professional therapist is entirely your choice. Help is needed now.