PURPOSE, EMPTINESS, STEW

A prayer I’ve been walking with recently: purpose.

Let me find it, feel it, live it.

Let me utilize its energy while it sweeps through me like wind. And let me release myself to emptiness when the feelings, ideas, and associations I hold around “purpose” all dissolve into the mundane; into the pattern of my breath, into the currents of the sea, into the scorching heat of sun-blazed sand.

Into the second stew I’ve cooked since settling back down south. Into the gradual handing-over to my mother of knowledge and skills on tending my beloved feline’s needs.

Into my daily psychic development practices and into the satisfaction that came this morning when I nailed the ephemeral target on the head.

Since coming to Florida, I’ve experienced so many lush moments. I’ve felt deeply connected to a sense of purpose. I’ve used that sense of purpose to stoke the flames of meaningful relationships, enjoy my environment, and write amongst many other unquantifiable, unnamable significant and insignificant things. I’d like to think I’m doing good, useful things, and being of service to the energy of purpose when it comes to me.

That’s just the dynamic—being of service to a prayer. The answers will always come, and I believe it is an individual’s responsibility to heed their answered prayer through cultivating reciprocity between oneself and that answered prayer. And I’m being taught, now, that part of spiritual reciprocity for me looks like treading these swelling-and-subsiding expanse-gardens of emptiness with careful intention.

In between moments where I feel connected to a deep sense purpose, there’s an emptiness. Today, that emptiness feels particularly present. This is a bit of an exploration on my felt-samadhi—my feeling of the space—between purpose and emptiness.

It can be easy for devilish voices to fill that empty space. It can also be just as easy for inspiration to enter that space. And at this exact juncture comes the need for awareness and discernment. Then comes a choice: what do I respond to—fear, or love? The discomfort of uncertainty or the positive potentiality of it? And then a realization: I’ll respond to benevolence. I’ll devote myself to service. I’ll pour my resources into good intentions. I’ll use my freedom, talents, vital energy, and will to peel back the veil between worlds so that I may reveal, from my perspective, every angle, flavor, color, texture, and scent of the goodness I discover in these quiet, still spaces within me, because it’s possible and I have the powerful means to create.

This is something that ignites me like nothing else—being of service to my prayers and to goodness through creative expression. In those creative, impulsive, purpose-filled moments is when my identity as an artist blossoms and bears fruits.

When I’m traversing the empty spaces within me between receptivity and creative outpouring, I sometimes notice demons—they reach out their hands into those empty spaces and grasp for meaning, validation, or significance. They whisper evil nothings and dance ugly dances.

There’s this fascinating internal oscillation I’ve noticed in me between “my expansive, dreamy, dharmic vision for what I want my life to look like” and “that wonky space that feels like the bardo except I’m consciously walking through it while embodied in human flesh”.

It’s kinda cool, kinda interesting. And because I can witness it, it doesn’t get to bare weight on me. Those demons can’t touch me. And this exact experience is just one definition of happiness, to me.

I want to allow myself to steep in emptiness… to seamlessly traverse through it. When thoughts and emotions pass through the empty space in me, part of me—some mechanism in my psyche—seems to want to grasp on to them and make meaning of them. All this does is distract me from some very simple things I’ve come to remember about myself again, since steeping in the balm of Florida life and good old memories refreshed:

I feel a deep passion for sharing my heart, my experiences, and my stories, and I love knowing that I can impact others’ lives in this way.

I find deep joy in relaying the currents of mine and my loved ones’ lives back and forth and weaving a symbiotic tapestry of shared experience. I love knowing I can experience this through women’s circles, rock climbs, music-making sessions, road trips, and really so many things. What a joy it is, pouring my lifeblood into these things that matter to me.

Life is like some sort of empty pot. Each time a human is born, a pot appears—it belongs to its human, only its human, forever. It’s their pot. It’s the pot of their entire life.

As these humans grow, they’ll learn that cooking up certain permutations of stuff in those pots will either yield life-supporting goodness, or it won’t. And those permutations of stuff will either taste good, or they won’t. And there are so many endless flavors and styles and choices that we, as the purveyor-chefs of our own lives, have over both what goes into and what comes out of our pots.

I made a real stew today. It’ll last at least a week. I cooked enough for a large potluck. 

Once I learned to make a basic soup, I took that recipe and switched it up a few times to create many different kinds of stews and soups. It’s now become a staple—the process of making and eating and sharing soups and stews—in my life. My stews taste consistently good at this point, I think, and thankfully I’m not the only one who thinks so. I like knowing this. And for the sake of making metaphor out of stew, I want to say that I have found, in a spiritual sense, a trend of which flavors and vegetables and decisions and perspectives blend well to create a most harmonious set of circumstances.

I am sinking more deeply into my values these days, and I am feeling good about myself. It’s a simple feeling I could wax on about for days, but I hope I’ve done a well enough job of that task through writing these words.

I am content in my emptiness.

I feed my answered prayers by being of service to them in ways I see fit, given the resources I have readily to offer. I find a wonderful sense of validation in this process.

I am connected to a deep, rich, overflowing well at the core of my being.

And I am using it all in service to my values. To goodness, to community, to healing.

To vulnerability, to connection, to play.

To self expression.

To love, to wonder, to magic.

To patience.

To good flavors, to fun adventures, to silly things.

To potlucks and hearty pots of stew.