Dear Sunday: emptiness

🦦🕰🍂🫁🌹🌲📘🌊🦋💎🪞🐚🕯💨

All day, I let go of thoughts. When I start seeking the answers, I consider it an indication I need emptying. For me, emptiness is the path to wholeness, all day.

When I’m out of alignment, I ask others their opinion. I noticed yesterday when I called Cody about a question I had (I already knew it was a no), that I seek opinions and outsource my inquiry when my No and an outer Should are overlapping.

I have never outsourced an opinion (even for validation) when I felt clear.
Clarity to see my yes and no occurs when I have an open heart.
A decluttered mind opens my heart.

Among many other gifts of emptying, we can integrate the polarities of the psyche when we allow space for emptiness. Suzuki Roshi shared in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “There is always a possibility of understanding as long as we exist in the utter darkness of the sky, as long as we live in emptiness.”

Kristin L. Thompson for Time Life, 1992

It is an everyday act of understanding to empty. A decluttered mind leads to an open heart leads to clarity leads to authentic Yes and No leads to living out our essence! It’s not just our birthright to live our creative essence, I think it’s a moral obligation to society.

---

ALL DAY is a reader-supported publication with essays, letters, and thought projects. Your presence here is special to me, I love you & us. Your reciprocity means the world to this project. I invite you to become a paid subscriber. Check out what some of the ALL DAY readers have to say.

---

I’ve noticed emptiness is easiest at the beginning of something. You move into a new home and it’s empty. You start a new job, and the desk is empty. You begin a new poem, an empty page. Meet a new friend, emptiness in the space between you two. And then we fill the rooms, the desk, the page, the friendship. Perhaps we spend too much time filling and devoting too small a portion of our lives to emptying. At what point does the constant barrage of filling get in the way of being? And perhaps the scariest of all: what if the filling isn’t something we notice because it’s merely in the margins of time?

Years ago I took a sabbatical from all smart screen technology. I was curious why—if I am a mindful person living a life of joy and alignment—I felt drained, why did something feel off? 

Foliation, Acryllic and Selenite, Suze Woolf

I didn’t use my phone or computer for one month. I kept a journal on my phone shelf so I could document my feelings when I went to the shelf out of habit. I wondered what I went there for. Why was I drawn to my phone? Always, it was for connection. To check in on a friend through text. To see a familiar, far-away face on social media. This was not surprising. I kept on.

When was I going to the phone?

I noticed I was going to the phone when all was well, kids playing peacefully, dinner was prepped, simmering, and dishes clean. I had a shocking realization. These moments didn’t last long, they were fleeting moments. Dinner would bubble over the pot if I stayed too long. A child might need help digging through a massive pile of legos to find the exact right one (one of my many quiet skills) shortly. My tea kettle might whistle. A notable moment would need my attention soon.

Margins of time, as I began calling them, like margins on a page are a small bit of time surrounding other more notable moments.

After noticing and naming them, I filled the margins in time during my sabbatical with authentic true connections. I watched my tea leaves unfurl. I read a poem. I wrote a postcard. I looked a child in the eyes and said I love you. I wrote a note in my journal. I wrote a haiku. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “How can I make you happy right now?” I listened.

In radical margins, I did nothing! Sweet, sweet emptying.

I reclaimed my margins. In bed, before drifting off, reflecting on my day, a deep-bellied satisfaction settled over me. This is incredibly simple, I thought one night. Imagine this! Emptying as the true path home. The simple truths are always the most profound.

So, it’s spring, the season known for new beginnings and cleaning. It’s a downright perfect time for decluttering the mind and the home. If we aren’t cluttered in body and soul we have presence, clarity, understanding, and peace. All day.

Questions for Emptiness

1. When was the last time you held on too long to something you knew was over?
   
   I’d been holding onto this idea of success (career, accomplishments, etc.) for a few years now, and when I let go my whole body softened. I felt at ease. I felt the presence of the authentic Self. And ALL DAY was born of that emptiness.

   Pivot after pivot, the path becomes our own.
   

2. What would happen if you let go of something you’ve gripped onto this week/month/year?
   
   I have to reckon with the fact that it wasn’t mine after all.
   

3. What everyday object (or three) symbolizes emptying for you?
   
   An inkwell full of ink. A mug at dawn. The dryer.
   

4. Who were you before you were home?
   
   The One Who is at Home

   Each day I long so much to see
   The true teacher. And each time
   At dusk when I open the cabin
   Door and empty the teapot,
   I think I know where he is:
   West of us, in the forest.
   
   Or perhaps I am the one
   Who is out in the night,
   The forest sand wet under
   My feet, moonlight shining
   On the side of the birch trees,
   The sea far off gleaming.
   
   And he is the one who is
   At home. He sits in my chair
   Calmly; he reads and prays
   All night. He loves to feel
   His own body around him;
   He does not leave his house.
   —Francisco Albanez

Perhaps these questions will enter your meditation practice, perhaps you will hold them and let them go as you begin this week. Perhaps you write them down. Perhaps just reading them here is enough.

As you read this, I’m on a little getaway. I love you. I love us. I’m so grateful for this project.

Please tell me everything, I’m on the other side of a letter.

Yours,
Lindsey