Rebelling Against Nothingness

There is nothing more selfish than seeking to “lose the self,” or to “eliminate the ego.” If your goal, when you meditate or pray or perform spiritual practice, is to realize the emptiness of yourself and, as a consequence, the emptiness of all things, why not just sleep and pray for dreamlessness? What’s the point? Losing your ego or defeating your self means fleeing valid experience and squandering the time you have in this place.

On the other side of the spectrum, aspiring for “one-ness with all things” is a fool’s game. This is another insidious kind of selfishness. If you truly desire to experience “One-ness with all things,” all you can hope for is to die and be reincarnated as the entire Fullness.

There is tremendous value in “tasting” the ego-less state or the “all-is-oneness,” but what happens when this “taste” becomes the entire goal of your path? What happens when your ‘current state’ no longer has the same value? It’s the old canard about not becoming attached to the desire for enlightenment, sure, but it goes further than that: what good is the realization that everything is “nothingness” or “emptiness” if that realization keeps us from experiencing the joy of differentiation?

This is one of the reasons I find animism so appealing: it’s the ultimate recognition of the ultimate awesomeness of the ultimate experience and ultimate value of all things simultaneously.