The Great Gift of Emptiness
Ultimately, most of us live in some kind of conflict with life, suffering
through it, because we grasp after powers and possessions we've imagined as being fixed, as substantial; and, accordingly... that if we could just make these things our own then we -- our life -- would be made equally real and substantial; our pain would be replaced by pleasure.
It is only by the light of higher self-awareness and our receptivity to it, that we start having certain "shocks." These shocks show us that our mindset, as well as the "thinker" born of its machinations, is, and always has been...an illusion.
Revelations of this magnitude are an initial glimpse, our first introduction to... emptiness: the realization there is no such self as we've imagined ourselves to be, let alone that must be protected at all costs. By grace, a much bigger picture unfolds within this new order of self-awareness, one that is beyond the mind that it reveals:
We live within, and are a part of an ineffable, inexpressible reality whose ever-fluctuating flow can never be grasped, let alone channeled or controlled.
This revelation changes our conception of all we see within and around us, and therefore our relationship to reality. It is the difference between someone who runs, anxiously, to find the "pot of gold" at the end of a rainbow, as opposed to the one who sits calm, relaxed... having realized that the real gift at hand is the appearance of the rainbow itself.