Filling the Void

Love comes from the Divine. Or rather, the Divine IS love. It exists within everything, permeating this realm through cracks and fissures we create through awakening. (a concept I recently read again in Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom Way of Knowing)

I had some rambling thoughts today. Very rambling. Be warned. :)

As children we receive hugs, and cuddles and we are ideally made to feel valued important and significant. As children we wake up in the morning, wondering what the day will bring, finding the miraculous in the mundane.

Not all children are brought up to feel this way. Some children never know what it is to have their heart filled with love from those around them. Usually because those around them don’t know how to love them. Or themselves.

These children often grow with that emptiness inside of them. An emptiness that when they were younger, they filled with a special toy, or a favourite food, or a favourite program. They learned how to fill that void with ‘things’. They create a false sense of love by attaching themselves to inanimate objects.

They continue to grow and as adults still just keep on filling the void. This is not common just among those unloved as children, but also common for those who although loved as children, during the process of growing up got caught up in all the ‘feel good shortcuts’. However, those who had a good loving upbringing have an easier time bringing themselves back to the true love of the Divine because they at least had an opportunity to experience it as a child. They are more likely to have a memory of it, however vague.

For those who never had it, sometimes their whole life can be spent filling that vacant space with things that go away. They feel no purpose, or calling. They get caught up in addictions of drugs, or alcohol or food. Trying to fill that strange emptiness that they aren’t even aware of. It has always been there. Trying to fill it has become as natural as trying to fill lungs with air.

They might become abusers in relationships because they are trying to fill a void with a sense of power, they might become the abused in a relationship, because they are trying to fill their void with a false love - easy to do, if you haven’t experienced true love.

Wandering around, sad and lonely.

Wandering around angry and lonely.

Wandering around feeling empty.

It’s easy to feel lonely even for someone who has many friends. If they don’t know love.

To say Love can solve everything might sound ridiculous. But really, it’s all about the love.

Divine Love.

Open yourself to God. Not God ‘the-bearded-guy-in-the-sky-who-sits-on-a -throne’. God, the Love. The sparkle of light on the water of the ocean. The overwhelming feeling one gets when laying their eyes on their child for the first time. The amazing colour of the air just before a storm ensues. The contours and textures of the different clouds in the sky. The smell of the earth after the rain…. that FEELING you get when you allow yourself to be mindful of those such things… that is Divine Love. That is God. Tap into that source. You come from it. You will return to it. It is yours.

Everything you do, try to do it in love.

As you nurture and draw out this love, and as you share it with the world, it magnifies and grows. Think of how easily your mood can be changed from sour to acceptable when someone flashes you a sincere smile, out of the blue, while passing you on the street.

Don’t fill up on nothing.

We have to learn how to connect to that eternal source of love. We need to fill ourselves with it, and share it with those we come into contact with. We draw the love out from within ourselves, from the Divine source. From God. That love flows back to God and creates an even greater abundance from which to draw upon within ourselves.

If we keep filling up on nothing, then ‘nothing’ is what we are going to have to draw on.

Fill up on love.