2.5
February 19, 2014

How I Found Freedom in Emptiness.

Photo: Mr Mash

In the last few months, a wonderful and strange transformation has taken place.

Due to a steady yoga practice combined with energetic healing over the last three or four years, I have let go of a lot of what used to get in my way. It was not conscious.

It happened, I think, because I let go of needing to understand and control what was holding me back. I let go of the traumas that I thought defined me. I let go of my anger, which I honestly thought at one point was the basis of my lively personality.

Now that I look back, I see that I was afraid to let it go. Afraid to let go of the thing that had held me back for most of my young adult life.

It is a wonderful feeling in many ways. I am happy most of the time. When I get angry, I feel it, but let it go within minutes. Sadness is heartfelt, but also quickly disintegrates. I get sudden rushes of blissful feelings on a pretty regular basis.

I am incredibly comfortable and even excited by the idea of the body dying. I recently had a doctor’s appointment that provided insight into my body’s aging process, and I was entertained by it.

My creative spark has ignited to the point that I have to write down all of the ideas as they arrive, because I lose them with every new idea that pops in to replace it.

I have had to re-calibrate my dating life. I have made attempts at relationships over the last several months, but none of them took because I had no earthly idea why I would want to be in a relationship with someone. For all of my dating life, my relationships were mostly based on a shared co-dependence that I no longer need.

The void that I tried for so long to fill with relationships is gone.

OPENI am almost exclusively relying on my intuitive sense to guide my life. I am able to separate emotions (in most cases) from logic in my decision making processes.

I would be lying, however, if I said I was completely comfortable with this. Most of the processes, emotions and desires that I used to categorize as “the human experience” have all but vanished from my life. I went to a therapist several weeks ago to check in about the situation, and he told me that though it was only a single session and the first time he had met me, I seemed pretty well-adjusted.

It is a lot like I am experiencing the world again for the first time. I look at the sky a lot more than I used to, I am more entertained by simple things. I sometimes get caught up in small details of life that I used to take for granted. I react emotionally in fewer and fewer situations, and when I do, I look back later and wonder why I did.

I am empty. It is not an emptiness that is lonely, it is an emptiness that is light. An emptiness that feels like freedom, like boundless opportunity.

I am noticing more and more, and it is being pointed out to me, that I am different, and I am absolutely delighting in it.

I have been ruminating on the question, “What do I do now?”

What do you do when everything that held you back, every obstacle that you were clinging to for so long, is instantly removed?

What do you do when you are empty?

Just about anything you want.

 

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Editor: Renée Picard

Main photo:  RPMashiter / Flickr

Other image courtesy Sara Young

 

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