Attaining Emptiness

We’ve had a deep hibernation this winter. For some reason it seems this earth’s cycle brought us deeper into our solitude than in previous years.  I keep hearing people speak variations of “I’m in limbo”, “I’m in the void”, “I’m empty” … yet somehow feeling comfortable with that.

When a cycle like this happens, I truly believe we’re supposed to be hiding out in our own ways, reformulating and regenerating, like the snoring, leafless trees. There can be so much human guilt attached to winter’s dormancy, when what we could be feeling instead is receptivity to the season’s mystery. But after a few months of unplugged sluggishness, we start to prod ourselves, forcing action. Time to wake up! We’ve been non-productive long enough, we tell ourselves.

Yet the season takes as long as it takes, and we remain with the bear, in psychic hibernation, until we get the all clear signal from Mother Nature.

We can’t fight the earth’s clock. I can go outside, shake a tree and yell, “Give me green!” but the trees are too busy dreaming their spring growth into being to care about my impatience.

When I disengage my mind, the driving force of translating productivity as a measure of worth, I see the potency of the winter. Stillness is powerful. Within it lies the generation of ideas, visions, manifestation, and insight. The quiet is pre-production time for spring’s big show, the season of explosive growth, birth, awakening, and action.

Right now, we’re in what William Bridges in his book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, refers to as The Neutral Zone. He writes,

“The activity of your ordinary life keeps you ‘you’ by presenting you with a set of signals that are difficult to respond to in any but the old way. Only in the apparently aimless activity of your time in solitude can you do the important inner business of self-transformation. But you don’t do it as you do ordinary things, for it is in the walking, watching, making coffee, counting the birds on the phone wire, studying the cracks in the plaster ceiling over the bed, dreaming, and waiting for God-knows-what to happen that you are carrying on the basic industry of the neutral zone, which is attentive inactivity and ritualized routine.”

Extraordinary awareness, amplified and enhanced vision, and transformative experiences are common to the neutral zone.

I’ve learned to still my mind, and cherish the quiet.

It’s March 1^st. In a few weeks the hummingbirds will make their return to my back yard, filling me with an abundance of energy. But until then, and until I sense the arrival of the tiny green buds whispering about their incredible dreams over their long winter sleep, I’ll remain in my quiet space, awakening just a little more with each passing day.

Much Love,

Kristy

“I do my utmost to attain emptiness; I hold firmly to stillness. Do that which consists in taking no action; pursue that which is not meddlesome; savour that which has no flavor.” – Lau Tzu, Tao Te Ching