I've got nothing.
In some ways, I’ve said everything I already need to say in this publication.
It’s all the same, really.
Everything + nothing.
I’m not offering freshness. I’m actually, literally, offering nothingness.
But perhaps that’s all you’re really seeking?
A reminder of the simplicity of all this. That really, there is no where else to go. Nothing left to do. A breather from the clutter of life. The distractions.
I half-wrote three posts over the last week or two. They all made it to over 2,000 words each. But I got half way, to the punchline, and went… nope. Delete. Aside from the fact I was on my lady-cycle at the beginning (and I’ve learnt about myself that I really shouldn’t write when I’m in my Winter week), they were just clutter.
The posts were about my journey to and away from Alfie Kohn, the poison of privilege and an anti-transhumanistic hobby I have.
They were interesting. They were effortless to write. Fun, even.
But they were clutter.
Your inbox deserves less.
So I’ve been somewhat torn what to write about this week.
Perhaps I’ll come back to these posts, as they were interesting and fun, and I’ll spin them a little differently when the time is right.
But at this time of year (Christmas), when there is so much, on so many levels, it all feels in vein. There is just too much, and anything else is not actually helpful.
It’s distracting.
This is a time of Light.
And lightness is light. It is not dense. It is not more. It is not anything, really.
So, tuning into that, this week - I feel like I’ve got nothing (pun intended).
I am feeling that the greatest way that I can contribute to humanity and the planet this week, is actually to offer less. Offer nothing.
* * *
I started writing this publication as a way to capture, make sense of, and share of my journey over this last year - cleansing the slate, back to zero.
Unwinding my Self. My identity. The constructs that defined me. The constructs I surrounded myself with, that mirrored back truths and realities to me.
Unwinding all that I knew, and all that I didn’t know, I didn’t know.
So I could see, be, feel - in the void.
In the material world, this journey has looked like many things, including selling our house, releasing our material and worldly possessions, cleanings my body with a prolonged water fast, permanently deleting social media and releasing businesses and the ambition that underpinned them, returning to food and community and pleasure within a 50km radius of my home (except for a quick trip to the most ancient lands on this planet, returning to our Indigenous culture and heritage), releasing the grasps of Big Tech on my life, learning to operate out of the social constructs that society takes for granted (and then how to re-enter them from an un-attached place), learning the day-by-day intimate in- and out-breaths of the seasons of the land I live on, embracing them all, returning to the roots of my own Soul, learning to make my own bread and butter (and kimchi) from the source, literally, and painting, dancing, singing, sewing, reading. Allowing my life to be led, rather than driven.
As I have stripped back the layers of everythingness, I found myself repetitiously coming back to one thing. A common denominator.
In the nothingness, I found a different kind of everythingness.
Stripping back the material world, in the emptiness of less, in the true definition of Sunyata, that this publication is named after, I found myself in the void. In God.
Oneness. The Whole. The Divine. The Ultimate.
Whatever word you need to use to grasp, but I am feeling called to use the word God.
Ironically, it was only a few months ago, in a post I wrote in the Kimberley, I acknowledged the “word” God with total peace for the first time in my life (sincerely).
Him.
I mean, I joked about it at the time. But it wasn’t a joke.
It’s all very simple. It’s always all been very simple.
We are just too busy complicating it.
Today, coming to my mind, is something an old Trump-loving, 6ft wide gym buffed up, ex-army vet, American, business mentor used to say to me. We didn’t have a lot in common, on the surface, this mentor and me. He wasn’t exactly “my vibe” at the time. But I really valued his devotion to walking the Highest Path, from Unconditional Love and Service, and he was an excellent mentor. Our differences didn’t matter.
He always used to say: God > Family > Business.
I always liked this.
Of course, he was a business mentor, so the last word in that sentence is Business.
But it could really be replaced with just about anything that pertains to motivated, actionable energy in any aspect of material world living: Where we live, what we do with our days, how we eat / move / play / create, how we parent, personal and professional growth, self-development, how we work, what we do for a penny.
As my old friend used to explain — we must start at the beginning:
God first. Family next. The rest comes after.
We cannot focus on the rest, if the foundations are shaky. Or the rest will unravel. Eventually. Inwardly. On a soul level.
The discontentment. Dissatisfaction. The endless seeking.
The feeling that something is missing.
The feeling of putting ourselves at the centre of our life, rather than understanding what it means to live in divine service. That life is not about me, after all.
The feeling that we should be somewhere else, doing something else, doing something more. Experiencing more of life, somehow. Having more, achieving more, feeling more, learning more, loving more, giving more. More. More. More.
So often, we are trying to pull the strings in the reverse order. Material world first.
Even those who understand “frequency first”, still disguise and bypass, by playing in the reverse order. How does it make you feel that I see you, cheeky chicken?
However it looks for you.
Work harder, create more, manifest higher, more personal growth, move to more places, create more art, so we can be more self-expressed, so we can give our family XYZ, so we can feel more bla bla bla, have more time, have more freedom… and then because that’s a bit of a rate race, we never have time for the rest (aka, God).
This is oversimplified, obviously.
But whether you feel trapped in your circumstances, or are a bondife liberation-seeking Queen, you are happy, grateful, but….
Always, a but.
Imagine, truly having nowhere else to go?
Not that you’ll settle and live a simple, boring life doing nothing. Or perhaps you will, because “a big life” doesn’t mean more and everything.
Either way, you won’t need to create it, create anything, because it’ll just unfold, and you’ll be carried by Love. You’ll be carried and held by the Father.
Ahh, what a relief it is to be carried. Like a little child who’s fallen asleep in the car, and is carried by her Daddy to bed, head resting on his chest as he walks you inside.
My journey into the Nothingness, started backwards too…
It unravelled Business > Family > and essentially led me to have the space for all the things beyond the clutter of the material world: the divinity of life.
There was a definitive moment just over a year ago I knew I had to let it all go.
I had been unwinding my life for nearly 7 years before hand, but for every strand unravelled I re-ravelled with a new and disguised thread of ambition. I surrendered the ambition of “a career” for the ambition of “passion projects”. I surrendered the ambition “of building a life in The System” for the ambition of “building a life Out of The System”.
It was just swapping one matter of Business for another, and I knew that at some point I was going to have to surrender this silly little pattern.
Because “business” cannot come first, unless it’s the first thing you’re unravelling.
The material world cannot come first, unless it’s the first thing you’re surrendering.
We must start from the Void of divinity.
Which is not really nothing, but everything.
Today, I am reflecting that it’s always been that simple and I’ve always known it in my mind, in front of me. It just took giving myself the literal space, to integrate it.
So, today, while I ponder on that, I also am wondering, so how do I now write about everything?
Perhaps I will take the silly season to ponder what sunyata might feel like in 2023.
* * *
My posts in this publication, have been like little chapters in a book, journeying into and journeying back out of the void. Business > Family > God.
The reverse order.
Instead of me trying to fill you up with more words today, I’m just going to keep it simple. I’m going to offer you some space.
I will pause on publishing posts until after Christmas (although I suspect I’ll still write them - so you might get a bundle all at once later). Holiday reading. When you’re sitting around doing not much, you’ll have a companion to keep you open and expanded to to importance of not filling up the space.
It is only when we are truly empty, in Sunyata, that we can receive everything.
Until then, I’ll leave you with some links to some of the past posts I’ve written that seem to be the favourites of readers. If you do need to fill the space, or need to be reminded not to, then either start at the beginning (again), go back to ones you missed, or just choose one at random because you like the sound of the title.
There is more than enough here, and you’ll probably read it all in an entirely different lens than you did the first time. You’ve returned closer to home since then.
As I said, there isn’t really much more for me to say.
Nothingness.
It’s now just time to continue this exploration as the waves of time keep rushing over.
A hand-written pilgrimage: Ode to the shattered laptop screen.
In the discomfort of true spaciousness **reader favourite.
I sang a solo **one of my favourites.
Enjoy and blessings to you and yours xx
P.S. Why I don’t have a PayWall (anymore).
Initially I put these writings behind a PayWall. I felt that the words were sacred and worthy of exchange. Some of my most beautiful pieces are still behind this PayWall because Substack won’t let me change that retrospectively, unfortunately. But I realised that having a PayWall didn’t sit right with me.
These posts are not exclusive. I am here in service and in art, only.
So I removed it, and now I just gift people my writing. Which feels right for me.
I envisage a different currency.
I’ve seen some people write “if you enjoy my writing, the way you enjoy a delightful cup (or two) of coffee a month, then consider becoming a paid patron”. Which I think is a pretty beautiful way to put paying artists for their work into perspective. I subscribe to a few paid Substack subscriptions myself for this reason.
But when I sat with that idea of marketing this way myself, I came back to: No, I’m not writing for any other intention other then divinity. This just is. Nothing more.
You are, of course, welcome to become a Paid Patron of my writing anytime, for any duration. And I will gratefully receive your gift, the way I hope you will gratefully receive mine, through my words.
Either way, it’s all perfect.
I just wanted to let you know. It might change again one day.