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qosI'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.
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.
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Re: Walking in the void
Date: 2003-11-06 06:29 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2003-11-07 10:44 am (UTC)I like the chosen name.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-09 06:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-09 09:06 am (UTC)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.