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…according to a recent study. Well, maybe not. But if I said that there was a study to show that, you’d probably believe me, right? The fact is that I don’t have any idea how many Americans have an internal feeling of emptiness, but whatever the true number is, it sure as hell is not going to make the front page of the papers, unlike an article like “Bacon Found to Increase Risk of Colon Cancer by 30%”, which for a number of reasons that I won’t go into here conveys little of value to the average reader.
I have been reading a website called “Guide to Psychology” by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D., as well books like Shame and Guilt, Masters of Disguise, and it occurs to me that there are not hundreds of emotions, only a few really, like shame, guilt, anger, fear and love, and that “my shame” is not really all that different from yours. And Dr. Richmond says that most of his clients complain of feeling like “mush” inside, which is typically the result of an inability to be honest about their feelings. And those who have feelings that they have trouble being honest about? Usually have to do with childhood and various failures of parenting, and the development of illusions that were necessary to survive in childhood but which now cause a psychic drag.
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We may not want to exclude mea culpa as a possible etiology for the intrinsic void within us.
Doug,
Bacon is itself a good tx for inner emptiness. Hawaiian pizzas are even better.
Of course, it they so advertised, Hawaiian pizzas would be a drug. What would the placebo look like in that case?
H
Hi Doug,
The thing is, humans have lost their relationship with nature and other modes of being. Psychically, we are all bereft children. We see Nature as “out there”, something to go and see, but that is not really so. We see “matter” as material. We see emptiness as inert. Our spiritual and intellectual worldview is that nothing on Earth is sacred except humans, and this only by virtue of our “soul’s transcendence”.
In fact, Mind and Nature are not really separate at all, a truth born out even by science. It is not really Newton’s clockwork Universe. Humans are truly the Earth earthing, the Universe universing, as is the mushroom in the forest, and the mountain, all interconnected creative modes of manifest being. This is the essential relationship of our lives, but born of our history, we find ourselves unable to partake, unable even to see.
As bereft children, we have nothing to buoy ourselves except religious traditions that have in large part lost their relevance, consumerism, exploitation, addiction. We don’t know what we are, what we are about! It is no wonder an epidemic of depression, anxiety, despair prevails.
Someone commented about the inner void, the inner emptiness. Well guess what? Emptiness is not inert, guys. 99.9% of the “stuff” of the Universe resides as sacred “no thing” in this emptiness, manifesting in and out of “reality”. All that “is” is sacred. THAT meaning, that connection, I believe, wards off even the possibility for depression.
Monica
I am one of the “walking wounded” as a result of my childhood, but my psychiatrist reminds me occasionally that not everything we feel is a result of childhood. We can learn to make changes in how we handle our lives that can impact how we feel. I don’t think that a damaging childhood closes the door on future happiness. It’s more of a challenge, but we can overcome.