If we acknowledge our body as the material vessel that bears our soul and spirit, our wishes, aims and feelings, we must value and observe it each day. One element that often appears to me during this observation is the weight: physical, mental and spiritual. A weight that can be lighter at times and heavier at other times; and sometimes we do not even notice it because, occasionally, it appears so often that habit makes us accept is as normal and eventually we ignore it.
Emptiness as the starting point for lightness
What is our usual reaction to emptiness?
I observe, first on myself, that when I feel my stomach being empty, most often I rush to fill it if I have direct access to the food source. The same happens if I feel an emptiness in spirit: I believe that it is starving and I rush to feed it with stimuli, either through seeing or reading, or by talking to another person.
Emptiness scares us, our calmness immobilizes us, our sense of hunger makes us feel weak. If, at that moment, we resist and stay with the emptiness, the void, we will be amazed at how close this sense of nothingness is to the cellular memory of thousands of years and, finally, how much it can qualify as human.
So, here it is an article in the “Feel Strong” category, in a totally opposite direction than the one we are used to reading. Instead of always filling our body with food and liquids, our mind with thoughts and concerns, and our heart with intense feelings, let us leave the system empty for a while, to calm down, to function on its own as it knows how in these empty breaks, thus regaining its inner strength and balance.
Mostly guided by a sense of experimentation, in the evening let us leave our stomach empty for 12 hours so as to do its job without interventions; in the afternoon, when we feel this weight brought on by drowsiness, and before we choose to drink our second coffee of the day, let us close our eyes and rest the body and mind for 20’; let us try to add humor where appropriate in our relationships so as to lighten a heavy and uncomfortable atmosphere; if we feel hungry in the afternoon, let us wait and eat the last meal of the day a little more hungrily.
It is worth redetermining, each in our own way, the power of lightness and the sense of emptiness in our daily life, and we may discover small, hidden treasures.
