The Void

[qos]

I'm hijacking my own Comment in response to a Friend's friends-only post, because the topic, the Void, is one which has been of significant impact in my life.

My Friend wrote (among other things)
i was half asleep and the void opened up in front of me.

To which I responded:

This is the first time I've 'heard' someone else describe a sensation that was all too familiar to me during my sophomore year of college, after I had an existential crisis which knocked me out of Christian faith of my childhood and started me down a very long road of spiritual quest. I would be fine all day -- but every night after I was in bed I would feel the Void opening up all around me: awareness of my own mortality, a belief in the non-existence of God, in the inevitability of suffering, in the absence of order or justice or meaning. . . and terrible, terrible loneliness.

After a year or so of this, I realized that if I was not able to come to terms with it, I would eventually commit suicide, because it would just be too painful and too pointless to go on. I never reached that point, but I could see it out in the distance.

Eventually I came to a new understanding of the Divine, one that would have been impossible without having looked into the Void and being shattered by its vastness. The God of my childhood had been big, but never *that* big. And I was never again able to believe any one human person or institution could claim to know the Name of God, or be God's only voice in the world. Nothing large enough to encompass the Void could ever fit neatly into a single human faith.

I still experience "Void attacks" from time to time, but now I try to find the blessing in them, and to remember Matthew Fox's assertion: "The void is simply the concave surface whose convex is cosmos." (Original Blessing, p. 153) I still get scared, but now I have a different kind of faith to help me through.

Comments

Walking in the void

[cookingwithgas.livejournal.com]

I suspect most self-reflective people who are not so arrogant as to assume that the truths of the universe have been revealed to them, experience what you call the void. I have been there, but we have come to markedly different resolutions. My resolution was partially shaped by extensive reading of the existential writers, combined with a fundamental lack of belief in anything beyond this world. When we cannot look to that which is beyond for meaning, the only three choices left for those that require or desire meaning are annihilation, looking within, and looking to the world. The first choice has never struck me as terribly valuable. If this is the only experience of consciousness that we have, then ending it seems a complete waste. Instead I chose to look both within and to the world at large. I have found enough within myself and enough within the material world that I have reasons enough to continue. I accept that the world as a whole is uncaring, unfeeling, and unaware. That is simply what is. Call it the "shit happens" theory of existence. However, that the world is this way does not require that a life be lived that way. In fact, and now I am pulling almost directly from existential thought, it enables a radical freedom in choosing what meaning to create in the world.

Re: Walking in the void

[qos.livejournal.com]

To me, 'confronting the Void' is one metaphor for what theologian Paul Tillich describes as "ontological anxiety": the awareness that we are finite and will one day die (to oversimplify). Everyone faces the Void and must deal with it in some form or another. How s/he responds to it is a fundamental expression of that person's "religion" -- what they believe about existence on the deepest level.

I have a lot of admiration for people like you who do not believe in the Divine but who have the courage to choose a life of meaning in the face of the Void. I was on that path for a while, but I find it easier now that I have reason for faith again. (I know: some people consider "reason for faith" an oxymoron, but that's my experience.)

Re: Walking in the void

[cookingwithgas.livejournal.com]

The person I mentioned in previous post, Hoa Tran, said something very similar about living without belief in the divine. He did not see how I could function without faith. My answer to him was fairly simple, essentially, what choice do I have? I am not sure that faith is something that can be chosen. It seems to be a place that you either come to, or you do not. I don't really see it as courage, so much as a recognition that the other choice, annihilation, either as an action or as a life style, is not particularly palatable.

Ontological anxiety sounds very similar to the concept of absurdity in existential thought. The basic idea is simply that the fact that we will die, and our consciousness will not continue, makes existence, prima face, absurd. However this very absurdity is part of what creates the radical freedom to create ourselves and our world.

As for reason for faith, the catholic tradition has long supported the idea of faith informed by reason, perhaps not quite the same thing you are discussing, but certainly something the is perhaps parallel. The unitarians, as I understand it, also work with the concept.

Re: Walking in the void

[qos.livejournal.com]

I want to be careful about drawing too close a parallel between my experience of living without faith and your own, since mine only lasted a couple of years, and ended with my discovery of a new kind of faith. But I think I do know something of what you describe about "what choice do I have?" (Interestingly enough, that's usually my response when people comment on something I've done they think is courageous.) When faced with the Void, or the absurd, one has two choices: deal with it, hopefully with courage, compassion and creativity, or get bogged down in fear, nihilism, and/or denial and become truly miserable.

May I recommend the book "Waiting for the Galactic Bus," by Parke Godwin? It's one of my all-time favorites. I don't think it's in print anymore, but I can usually find it in a used bookstore or online. It's a comic science fiction novel about religious themes that is quite serious in its underlying message: taking responsibility and having the courage to live with reality.

I like your subject of "Walking in the Void." One of my chosen names is "Dancer in the Void."

Re: Walking in the void

[cookingwithgas.livejournal.com]

I am not sure I have answered the void with compassion, at least not in a general sense, but I do aim to be at least be interesting and interested in life. I am always up for book recommendations. Amazon has it available used, so I will pick it up when I have gotten through my latest order.

I like the chosen name.

[kaypendragon.livejournal.com]

Our public library had "Waiting for the Galactic bus". It was a wonderful piece of writing but I think that the sequel "The Snake Oil Wars or Scheherazade Ginsberg Strikes Again " is more relevent to your discussion. (Amazon has it reasonably cheap if you want to read it! Or better yet, check your local library!) It actually deals with (among other things) a character who lives IN the void.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thanks for visiting, Kay!

For some reason, The Snake Oil Wars has never made as deep an impression on me as Galactic Bus, and it didn't even cross my mind in the context of this discussion. Thanks for mentioning it.