Day 4: Empty spaces

We are not meant to fill the empty spaces, the holes, the vast void in others.  We are not the right shape, size, or substance to do so.  Sadly, too many of us walk away from childhood not only not knowing that's what we are doing, but also not knowing that we feel "not enough" because we could not fill those spaces within the influential people of our lives.  That's nobody's fault as people can't teach what they do not know and have not been taught themselves.

Still the issue remains that some of us spend our lives not knowing that a portion of our energy blocks come from feeling like we are not enough.  And if we are aware enough to understand that we feel that way, how many people truly understand that the reason might be that, as children, we could never fill those holes in other people.  If we just did this or that, we would be enough, good enough, worthy of love and positive attention from the people in our environment.  We struggle and strive to be able to do something worthy, something to help them see us for who we are.  But it seems they just don't.  We don't understand that we have handed over responsibility for declaration of our worthiness, of our enoughness, to a vast majority of other people and other situations, all outside of us.  When the truth is that we are the only ones who can truly declare it, as our declaration of it is the only one that matters and that that declaration has to come from the inside out, not the outside in.

I think that, as children, unless we are taught otherwise, it is natural to assess our world and worth based on the responses we get from our environment and the people in it.  I said "natural" to, I did not say it is the healthiest way.  It happens and unless we become aware of it as adults and teach our children that they are the ones who make the declaration of their value and worth, then unfortunately this unhealthy method will continue.  But I digress.     

I originally started the above post on December 31st, 2013.  Often times when I am creating and/or writing and I'm think about what to do or write next, I have to get up and start walking around.  When I got to that point with this post, my thoughts started rapid firing, the anger and resentment swelled up within me and I was ready to get up on my soap box and start wagging my finger in imaginary faces.  It wasn't pretty and it wasn't helpful.  Well, it was helpful to me because it pointed to deep dark places which still were (and some still are) in need of feeling and healing.  But to write a blog post in that state would not have been helpful.  While anger is a natural emotion, there is healthy anger and there is resentful, bitter, pissed off anger.  I didn't feel the later would be all that helpful in the state I was in.

So I let the post sit.  I hibernated with it.  I dug deep into many internal spaces over the winter.  I put it on the back burner and let it slowly simmer, allowing other background parts of me to figure it all out.  The other day my Soul and the Universe whispered some wisdom to me.  "The idea that we have empty spaces is an illusion.  We are not at all empty, we just come to believe we are."  I'm surprised I didn't understand that before because I believe that we are already whole, we are born that way.  Part of the healing journey is traveling back to the space of remembrance in which we knew we were whole and in the realization that we never stopped being whole.

Through the process of life some people come to believe they have empty spaces within themselves, perhaps it's a lack of fulfillment, or painful wounds, something or someone, that has caused them to feel this sense of a void that needs to be filled.  Lacking awareness or simply not knowing better, they search to find something or someone to fill the illusion of that deep dark hole inside of themselves.  We fill our voids with food, drugs, alcohol, sex, TV, you name it.  And sometimes, in our pain, we try to make other people fill up our empty spaces.  Sometimes we try to shape our children into the right size and stuff them into our empty spaces, not realizing that when we do that they wind up feeling like not enough because they can't possible fit into that space.  Not only because, like I said, other people are not the right size, shape, or substance, but also because there is no space to fill.

Trust me, I've felt those empty spaces inside and I know that when I felt them they felt very real, very cold, very hollow.  I searched high and low to find something to fill it up.  I tried filling it up with drugs and all that did was temporarily numb the pain while slowly taking the life out of me.  And while I am grateful for that journey, that journey is filled with a lot of pain and self-loathing.  The only true way to relieve the pain associated with the illusion of emptiness is healing.  The only way out of feeling that way is through the door marked "in."  The door to our inner world, the door that goes into all the pain, hurt and deep dark places that exist within us.  To dig deep into our stories and our perceptions and our beliefs and bring the light of healing to all of that.  And through that healing process we come to realize that we were whole the entire time, we just forgot.  Just like in The Wizard of Oz when the good witch reminds Dorothy that she had the power all along.  And so do we.

Perhaps if we changed our perspective and entertained for a moment the belief that,  no matter how empty, how broken, how lost we may feel, we are in fact brilliantly beautifully whole divine beings.  What if we entertained that thought?  What if we lived our life for just one day from that place?  What if we believed that healing is the answer, the thing that will bring us back to that feeling of wholeness from which we were born?  What if?

With love and light,
Tia