THE VOID

What has the "modern human" lost? Why are we lost? Maybe the whole life is an effort to return to the source that we fell away from?

“Truly in the heart there is a void that can not be removed except with the company of Allah. And in it there is a sadness that can not be removed except with the happiness of knowing Allah and being true to Him. And in it there is an emptiness that can not be filled except with love for Him and by turning to Him and always remembering Him. And if a person were given all of the world and what is in it, it would not fill the emptiness.” ~Ibn Qayyim Al Jawziyyah

The Void, in other words the disintegration, and consequently the human’s loneliness starts with the birth.

Human beings have both spiritual and mental tendencies from the first moment of birth that make them turn to search to find out where they belong. Sometimes they are aware of this search, and sometimes they are not. In any case, the search is consistent.

We all suffer for a reason. The deepest pain of all suffering is the pain of this “disintegration”. Due to human nature, we have the need to feel as a whole, therefore we evolve in order to exist as flawlessly as possible.

This integration process is called evolution or maturation in spiritual disciplines or kamalah in Islamic Sufism. According to all religions, human beings’ search for integration needs to follow its Creator’s coding. According to Islamic Sufism, only once freed from the veils, the heart of the human begins to grasp the Truth. The ultimate goal of all human’s ultimate efforts is not to “become one” with God (because God is already one), but to grasp the “meaning” of this unity.

The most significant dilemma of the modern human emerges right at this point because s/he cannot believe what s/he does not see!

Therefore, instead of searching for inner spirituality and sende it, s/he delves into the delusion of consuming and numbing himself/herself to forget this driving pain, just like a lover trying to ignore the pain of a lover who lost the beloved .

When the meaning in human life diminishes for a certain reason, we dive into the illusion that we can fill our internal void with external factors such as antidepressants, alcohol, over- eating, indulgences and wild entertainment. These are merely tools to distract ourselves and suppress our inner need for a search for the true meaning.

The irrepressible pain inside all of us is the pain of integration, because we all subconsciously desire to join unity out of our loneliness, away towards eternity. All prayers and religious rituals are an effort of the same completion process towards eternity, where the human travels from the individual consciousness to the Creator’s absolute Consciousness. You can observe the same pain in philosophical and literary texts, like in the works of Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy.

Filling this incompleteness, in other words the void, is the most profound need of the modern human, who has lost the essence of the meaning.

Pythagoras was the initiator of philosophical-religious sect life in ancient Greek, and he suggested that a fire burns in the center of the Universe, and the world, sun, moon, stars, and all objects revolve around it: Zarathustra’s everlasting fire! Everything in the universe dances around this center.

The unsatisfied, modern human is very far away from this center. That is why our souls are getting cold. That is why the eastern lore sees knowledge as a constantly burning stove where anyone who feels cold can get warm in contrast to the modern western philosophy which sees knowledge as a power and as an action plan to control nature.

The heart and soul rest on the divine ground. Because this ground is lost, modern humans slip and fall into vicious circles with each step they take towards the center, due to the slippery ground beneath their feet.

A person needs to be warm, and s/he needs to burn in order to dance and whirl. Author Carlos Castenada’s guide, the Indian shaman Don Juan, told his students that the true warriors had to choose their own place of death and that they would do their last dance on this place when the moment of death came.

The modern human cannot dance with death because s/he is unable to find his/her place to die!

Thrown into the universe, the feeling of being alone sometimes turns into a feeling of “abandonment”. This feeling is enhanced with traumatic experiences as roles are being shared between people on the stage that we call the world if unpleasant roles have fallen to your share while you give yourself the “leading role” with the perception of your childhood memories of being a prince or a princess of your parents. But, on the contrary, if you are in supporting, irrelevant, insignificant roles instead of roles that the world applauds; the feeling of loneliness gradually increases into a huge burden on your shoulders despite the abundance around you and accompanies you with every step as your void.

Either way one feels the urge to search for the Truth!