Letting Go of the Void
Question:
I had only been meditating for a short while before I entered “the void”. I was meditating in my back yard one night and I guess you could say that I stumbled into it. I didn’t have a moment of “ah ha” nor did I “scramble”. It felt like an endless hole (hence the “void” lol). My body felt like it didn’t exist. I felt like I didn’t exist.
After I finished meditating, I felt a tremendous peace within myself. Not only with myself, but with life in general. But, what I didn’t realize until months afterwards, was that I was disconnected with everything. I still went about my daily routines like normal, but I knew that nothing really mattered. If I lost my job, it didn’t matter for example. I was in a completely contented place within myself, but only because of that truth. After months of not meditating, I eventually “went back to normal” I guess you could say.
I began researching what I had experienced and came across people talking about “the void” experience during meditation. That’s the only reason I have a name for my experience. I didn’t like it. As much as I enjoyed the peace, I didn’t like the feeling of being disconnected from my reality. I guess my questions are.
How many people experience this form of ‘the void’? Is it normal?
P.S. To try to explain better how I felt I will add that I felt fully connected to the universe, therefore I felt fully disconnected to this reality or time or the world (however you want to see it) because I knew how little it all really matters in the whole scheme of things. I’m not sure if that makes any sense or not, but it’s the best way I can describe it.
And my reply: The short answer to your question is, in any sustained meditation practice, especially if practiced on silent retreat, the experience of ‘void’ is inevitable as the mind develops an affinity with the mental and physical stillness of unconditioned awareness. I cannot comment on your experience because, well, it’s an experience that’s all your own – but it sounds like an experience that many meditators have, though they usually only happen during long silent retreats, where the meditator is meditating constantly.
It’s called an ‘insight experience’ – a term which refers to a direct experience of ultimate reality. It usually happens suddenly, and it’s as if everything that was previously separated – sounds, sights, sensations, skin, air, sky, earth and so on – are now an integral whole, in which one’s sense of ‘I’ has become redundant. And the entirety of ‘I’s’ life, with all its striving, victories, failures suddenly seem profoundly valueless.
Initially the experience, shocking as it is, only lasts a short while – often only seconds – before the conditioned mind shuts it down. It does this instinctively, because the experience threatens everything it thinks it knows. But the memory of the experience causes one to feel extremely depressed over subsequent days, until, as one of my teachers, Mae Chee Brigitte said: ‘Don’t worry, your ego will paper over it, and your mood will improve.’
Nevertheless, the experience always leaves its mark. The interconnectedness remains as a kind of cellular memory, subtly changing how we act, and how we feel about things for the better. And if one keeps meditating, it will recur, for progressively longer periods of time, albeit without the intensity of the first experience
So your reaction of not liking the effect of your experience, and feeling fear that it will cause you to become unconcerned about your job and the life is understandable – especially considering we live in a competitive world that depends on us being VERY concerned with such things to survive.
My only comment at this point would be, as intense as your experience was, try not to think about it too much, or speculate, or place value on it – in other words, let it go. Because if you put this experience on a pedestal: remembering it, fearing it of desiring it to happen again, you will interfere with the naked and unconditioned mentality you need to meditate – to be still.
In this a rule applies – whatever happens in meditation, let it go. Always move on. Never look back.
And this particularly applied to those times when we experience something wonderful that we want more. In meditation, this expectation becomes a hindrance because it interferes with what we’re doing – which is, to be unconditionally aware of what is happening now … and now … and now …
The only other comment I would make concerns the word ‘void’.
‘The void’ is a very misunderstood term, implying a nihilistic state – a state of nothingness or unconsciousness – and many people who have fallen asleep in meditation, come out of it thinking they’ve just experienced ‘the void’.
But nothing can be further from the truth. The void is not a lack of awareness – quite the opposite in fact.
The void is an awareness so clear, brilliant, unconditioned and un-dualistic, that we lack the language to describe it.
It happens when our attention driven mind has finally let go of everything it’s usually preoccupied by. All the stuff we assume as ‘common reality’ – of this and that – of thoughts, reactions, emotions, good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant, form, non-form, right, wrong, up, down … and so on – and all that’s left is a unified awareness of everything all at once.
Hence all the clichés that arise from meditation – of ‘beingness’, ‘cosmic consciousness’ and so on. They all refer to the void.
So, to conclude, in meditation I always emphasize the doing of it. Don’t think too much about it. Don’t agonsze over it. Don’t judge it or value what happens. Just do it and accept whatever happens.
Just do the business of meditating each day and it will take you to extraordinary places – some pleasant, some unpleasant. But whether pleasant or unpleasant, treat them all the same – like a traveler on a train looking at scenery passing by. Every new experience is simply another bend in the journey. Nothing to bother thinking about – just keep letting go and moving on.
And where are you going?
Well, basically, you’re headed toward forming a relationship with unconditioned awareness and the infinite now.
This is why everything we do in meditation has to do with training our attention to be still – that meddlesome, reactive, pedantic, thought-generating aspect of mind, which uses up so much of our mental energy – which needs to be trained to calm down and be still so the mind can re-allocate energy to its other aspect – awareness.
So that the void will happen.
…………………………………………………………………………………….
Roger’s book, ‘BEING STILL – MEDITATION THAT MAKES SENSE’ is available now. Just click on the links below:
AUDIOBOOK (including ebook & MP3 exercises) – AUD $25.00
…………………………………………………………………………………
