Spirituality: An Emptying Out
As humans, we often approach the spiritual path as if it were another item on the checklist of life. Something to achieve, to conquer, to acquire. We’re drawn to the idea of more. More knowledge, more power, more peace, more answers. It becomes a quest to fill the aching void within us with something extraordinary, something “higher.” But I cannot help but point out, and in doing so burst the bubble of expectation for some, that in truth it is not a journey of accumulation; but a path of release, of emptying out.
To seek the Divine as one might seek a treasure is to miss the point entirely. Spirituality is not about getting what we want. It’s not about capturing and managing bigger and better waves. It is about surrendering what we think we need in favour of a far more profound recognition, what we ARE — the ocean experiencing itself as a wave.
The Heart of Forgetting
At the core of our suffering lies a profound forgetting. A forgetting of who and what we are. We become entangled in the stories we tell ourselves, the roles we play, and the endless striving for some imagined perfection. We lose sight of the simple truth: we are already whole. We are already home. We already ARE what we seek. But this truth is not something we acquire; it is something we remember. And that remembrance is not found in adding more to the Self but in peeling back the layers that obscure it.
This process is not always comfortable. It feels, at times, like loss. Like being undone. But what is lost in this undoing? Only the illusions we have clung to, the false identities and expectations that have weighed us down. In their place arises a deeper knowing, a quiet recognition of our Divine Nature.
Union with the Divine
To empty out is not to be left with nothing. It is, paradoxically, to discover you are everything. In the stillness of surrender, we find the primordial essence of what has always been. This is not a filling up but a falling into union with God, the Self, the sacred presence that permeates all of existence.
This union is not somewhere out there. It is here, now, in the beating of your heart, in the breath that moves through you, in the infinite silence that holds it all. It is not about becoming something more but remembering that you already are That.
ALL. OF. YOU.
The Subtle Trap
The subtle trap of "spiritual materialism" lures us with promises of transformation and power, of manifesting desires, consciously co-creating and bending reality to our will. It whispers that we can become extraordinary if only we try hard enough, learn enough, meditate enough, think the right thoughts, and say the right things. But true spirituality is not about becoming extraordinary; it is about embracing the ordinary with open eyes and an open heart. To find the ordinary extraordinarily profound.
When we strip away the layers of wanting, when we cease the grasping, the clinging and the striving, what remains is not emptiness but fullness. A fullness so vast it cannot be contained. This is the paradox of the spiritual path: we let go to gain everything. We empty out to become whole. We lose ourselves to find the Divine, to find our Self.
A Sacred Remembrance
So let us not seek to add to ourselves but to meet ourselves anew. Let us remember what we have forgotten, the sacred ground of Being that is the heart of all life. This is not a process of doing but of undoing, not of striving but of surrender. It is a quiet falling back into the arms of what has always held us.
In this remembrance, there is no lack, no longing. There is only the still, unwavering truth: we are That. We have always been That. And in the light of this knowing, the world becomes radiant, not because it has changed, but because we have seen it as it truly is… an expression of the Divine, glistening in every moment.
~ Imogen
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100%! 🥰🙏❤
Beautiful!