I have been there, in deep, vast surrender, many times myself. I know the ancient and timeless void very well. When I began to know the void intimately – beyond concept or description – I fought against it, complained about it, wanted something to be different, took the stance that something was wrong. Finally, when I surrendered (completely surrendered), I became a friend of this deep, dark, and vastly empty space.

Recently, while sitting in the morning sun, on my front deck, I realized I had wanted the void to be friendly toward me. This was my mistake. For me, the void is neither friendly nor unfriendly. It simply is. It is the gift of neutrality the void has to offer, but even the word neutrality is too weighty for the vast, empty nothingness that lives there. The void is simply nothing; it is nothing known anywhere else; it is the royal nothing. It was this complete absence of something – anything! – that was so utterly disorienting for me; no way to make sense of anything because that is not the culture of the void. There is absolutely nothing there… not even that thought… or this thought… or any thought at all. Black of night, without stars, beyond darkness.

Now I love it! I love the dimensionless space of the infinite void. I find comfort there and have a different kind of romantic notion about it. Nothingness, beyond dark, where nothing and everything simply is, without shape or form or sense making or hope or joy or anything else. Nothing. No-thing. No thing exists there, and somehow all exists in the void’s vast, empty silence. I find this paradox to be the sister of “all is one”. The void reminds me “nothing is”.