Facing the Void

It seems as if we are always running after something, chasing a mirage, an illusion of what we think will make us happy. But we’re a bit like stray street animals chasing cars; when they catch one, they don’t know what to do with it.

We’re also running away as much as we’re running toward our illusions and desires. Perhaps we are running away from pausing or slowing down our lives. We are trying to avoid the void – the emptiness we feel when we face the stillness within.

We incessantly try to fill our lives with every imaginable possession and emotion and with constant doing, grasping, and achieving. But deep down – if we only realized it – we just want to relax, rest, and be satisfied. We want to have the faith and strength to let go, the way a baby rests in his mother’s lap, completely content. 

Why do we avoid the pause, the void? Perhaps because we think that if we stop running, if we pause, we will cease to exist. The mind is constantly engaged, whether with emotions, sensations, perceptions, or with the accumulation of knowledge, possessions, and relationships. It is always so very busy. It tries to make sense of everything it does not accept until it has exhausted itself in analyzing, conceptualizing and categorizing. This is the nature of the mind – never at rest, always in motion.

Guru Amar Das explains to us in the Adi Granth: “O Mind, your real form is that Divine light. Realize your true form.” Saints tell us that the mind can realize its true form only by embracing stillness, by willingly and boldly facing the void and becoming the void. If the mind will, just for a moment, have the courage to listen to the soul’s call to pause and rest, it will realize the mysteries that the void encompasses. Then the mind will experience the divinity Guru Amar Das describes. It will be able to experience the vast ocean of love that is beyond its fears, concepts, and analysis. It will drop away, allowing the soul to at last reunite with its divine source.

Our meditation is nothing but giving the mind reassurance and strength to face the void, to cease its wandering. With meditation, we build pauses into our thoughts, and with practice we can extend those pauses. It is during the pauses that true knowledge, true realization, and real learning take place. That is when our real nature is revealed to us.

When we still our minds in meditation, our dormant faculties of inner sight and inner hearing awaken. Enveloped in this so-called void, we sense the outstretched hand of our true companion, our Master. Beyond our concepts and illusions, we are able to realize that he has been with us all along, guiding, protecting, and nurturing us, always giving us the true love that our mind has been longing for.

Eventually we discover that what we thought was a void is actually full of love, light, and the presence of our Master. It is where we can bask in the company of our true companion and realize our true self. This is why the Masters have always emphasized the importance of meditation. It is only with meditation that we can create that pause in our thought process that will allow the shining light of love to seep into our consciousness and transform us. Soami Ji reassures us in Sar Bachan Poetry:

Why are you confused and disheartened, dear soul!
Take it from me
  the Master will ferry you across the ocean.
Kal cannot touch you
  if you hold tight to the banner of Shabd.
You should become enthralled with Shabd
  and refuse to be swayed.
Ignore all misleading talk –
  acknowledge the path of the Master as true.
Rise up and establish yourself in the realm of Agam,
  as Radha Soami has explained to you.

The pandemic, social distancing, and lockdown gave us the perfect opportunity to cease all our outward activities, reset our priorities, and devote time to our real task. It is as if nature forced us to pay attention to our Master’s teachings and act on them. Like a bulldozer pulling us along with it to the right path, our Master uses every opportunity to draw our attention toward him.

It is only through our meditation that we can develop that patience, endurance, and faith to boldly face the stillness within. As our fear and illusions fall away, the soul becomes pure and light in what we once called a void. The soul then leaves the company of the mind and becomes the light itself.