I keep thinking of things that are the real goal of meditation, instead of ‘The Present’. It has been Connection. Now it’s The Abyss.

The Abyss is what habits hurry us away from. It is the wellspring of authenticity which is almost too simple to believe. Drained of juice, my habits exist as a tension that pulls me away from the emptiness which when I return to it, all is love and receptivity to love.

Sounds pretty abstract, but all that’s needed for love to swell larger inside us is to have less distraction, less running away from its bigness. Let me put it to you, also, that when the abstraction does hit home it’s all the more meaningful for not being targeted and concrete. Speaking in tongues has a resonance that’s harder to fake.

Ego can be defined as a repetitious, ossifying fullness. It’s your helpful butler appearing always at that moment at which emptiness can no longer be tolerated. Narrowing my point, I remember a coach at Circling retreat writing on a whiteboard, “blame is a coping mechanism.” I shall leave the connection up to you to perceive.

In the Abyss, habits expire. Ego — identity — loses its oxygen. And when it does, the whole world comes rushing in. Over and over again.

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