What I Learned From Being a Box of Nothing

I had a dream.

(One thing about being deep in grief is you have people share sleep aids with you, so my dreams have been…extra.)

The other night, I was a box of nothing. I was stuck in the dream, and there was nothing but nothing, and that was what I was. A square of nothing I could not escape. I remembered what the writer Julian Washo-Collette had written about as an adopted person of his experience of being in the Nothing Place when he went back in his mind to when he was born and abandoned by his birth mother.

This was like that, only it wasn’t a place. It was who I was. The Nothing Person. My mind wrestled with the devastation. How could I be experiencing this and be nothing at the same time? Who was witnessing me be nothing? To be nothing felt horrible. I had no ego. No bones. No dreams. No eyebrows. No history. No breath. No ears. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. To witness that made it all worse. If I could be nothing and not know it, then there would be no problem.

But this was a real knuckle buster. It was like a bad day times a million. To exist and to be nothing at the same time.

Shit.

Maybe this is what it felt like to be born and to not go to a mother who, at that point, was an extension of my own self. Maybe the Nothing Place was me. Maybe this is why life has felt so weird as an adopted person. I’ve had to create an identity out of nothing. No wonder life is so tiring. Imagine the strength and will it takes for empty space to hold up and move an entire body suit!

What am I good at? I asked the box of nothing. These was no answer for a while, and I had to live with the dread of living a whole life and not being good at anything.

Finally an answer came. You are good at cleaning up.

Oh, no, I thought. That is accurate.

I was adopted by a couple to clean up their infertility sorrow. I was the older sister and my job was to clean up the house so my mother would be okay. I didn’t like having a cluttered house because my job was to leave as small as footprint as possible.

I did not want my gravestone to say She kept things clean.

But then something amazing happened. The box of nothing shifted to two beings shoved face to face in my body, filling up every millimeter. One was Life Force Energy and the other was Ego. Life Force Energy was the thing that made me and kept me alive and was there to give me the strength to do things. My body was the mechanism Life Force Energy needed to create. Without hands, Life Force Energy can’t write, for example. Ego was there to direct Life Force Energy towards the targets of my desires. Ego was there give my brain and body wants specific to it. The trick was, Life Force Energy and Ego worked as a pair. If Ego did not look Life Force Energy straight in the eyes and trust and have faith in Life Force Energy, the system of me faltered.

Another part came into play—a sort of cone that was over my body and Life Force Energy and Ego. This was Self. Self was there to understand the quality and character of Life Force Energy in order to assist Ego in figuring out what the entirety of me was capable of doing. This explains why, for example, being a famous person has never had much appeal for me. So much energy has to be expended to live out the kind of life where you are on late night TV talk shows and on stage at certain times at certain days,. So much energy would be called for me to be willing to get dressed up and have my hair done for photos and shit like that. My Life Force Energy doesn’t like that kind of lifestyle. I am more of a do something intense for an hour or two and then lie down for a while type of energy. and therefore type of person.

I have been thinking about Life Force Energy a lot the last few days since I had this dream now that my brother’s Life Force Energy went out of his body. My brother did not look me in the eyes all that often. If I had asked him to sit with me so we could just look at each other for a few minutes, I’m fairly sure he would have laughed and changed the subject. Part of the Joe Hudson’s Connection Course involves minutes of eye contact with strangers, and it quickly became my favorite part of the course. To look into someone’s eyes without judgement or agenda is to look straight at Life Force Energy and to see it and to be seen by it. It’s like hitting a home run. There you are. Here I am. I see you and you see me and so we exist because we see each other. Om shanti shanti.

Can my Ego meet the eyes of Life Force Energy and not look away in shame or confusion? Do I love and accept myself so completely that I let myself become a team? Maybe that’s what meditation is for, at least in part. To find the stillness of the met gaze within. Maybe this is the whole game—can you let Ego have its desires and can you let Life Force Energy help you fulfill them and can you let Self sail the whole ship of you towards the North Star of your destiny?

This is not about being a productive member of society. This is about seeing what you were created to do.

This is about fun and danger and surprise and hitting the bull’s eye and feeling like you are holy, is what I think.

Culture would love me to be Type A. Fucking get things done. Go go go. Just do it. Life Force Energy is your bitch. Make her do what you want. Drink caffeine so you can do more than you thought possible. Maybe take some drugs. Take aspirin to take the edge off. Exercise more so you can be strong enough to do more. Eat less or eat more so you can do more. Sleep less so you can do more. Rest less so you can do more. Fuck being tired. Just keep moving.

You can sleep when you die.

Or, you can sleep when you live, look yourself in the eyes, fall in love, and, maybe, live better.