You Can Never Fill the Hole
Feb 5th, 2009 by padma
Image by Younglings
Do you live with a panic deep inside of you? You might not even know it is there, but you can probably feel it. It drives you to continually find new ways to improve yourself and to better your life. It drives you to eat more, drink more, or spend more money. You keep trying to find a new rush to fill up the gaps in your life, but you keep ending up in the same position.
The panic I’m talking about is a hole that doesn’t seem to fill up no matter what you try to fill it with. Some people think money will fill it, some think that family will fill it, while others think that helping others will fill it. However, every time that you do something that you see as the peak experience, every time that you reach a goal, this feeling doesn’t go away. In fact, you start to get more desperate…you try and try until it begins to eat you alive. Then it hit you, maybe like it hit me: no matter what I do, I am never going to fill the hole…ever.
You see, the hole I am talking about is a hole in your spirit that keeps telling you there is something wrong in your life. The problem is that in most people, it manifests in material ways, rather than spiritual ways. You think that becoming a millionaire, helping the poor, or finding love will all help to fill the hole. The problem is that it doesn’t work…none of it does.
I thought that money would help me, but it didn’t. Then I started running, but I kept wanting more. I started competing, but just competing wasn’t good enough. I wanted to win…then I wanted to always win…can you see the pattern? Every time we reach what we think is the “peak experience,” we realize that the experience wasn’t what we expected at all. I was thinking about my personal goals and I kept noticing that every time I thought I’d found the true path to happiness, it never came.
That’s when it hit me – like a ton of bricks actually, that no matter what pursuits I go after or achieve, I will never find a physical way to fill that hole. All my striving, all of my hope, was based in a physical world that relies on that hope and striving to pull you deeper into it. You see, that is the trap that binds us to suffering. This ego creature is so masterful that it will find any way that it can to trick you into thinking you are on the right path. Only when you realize that you’ve lost your way will it give up and try something else.
This is what happened to me. I thought I was on my path, but I was being tricked into thinking that. I was never going to fill that hole, instead I would just be travelling further and further down the rabbit hole until I reached a point of no return.
The only true way to fill that hole is by spiritual experiences. Even those are fleeting, but they are much more real then the physical experience. I don’t care what religion you follow, but the truth is that if you want to stop striving then you have to find a way to satisfy your spirit. For me, I know exactly what I must do, and it is something I find a way to avoid every day – meditation. I know that I must withdraw myself from the world of Mara and go inward, but I keep getting tricked into giving up. Realize that when you are tricked into physical pursuits, that even should you accomplish them your cravings will still go unsatisfied. This monster is never full and it will devour every part of you that it can. Stop feeding the monster and go inward, toward the spirit. Only then can you find your true path and only then can you fill the hole.
Don’t live a life of quiet desperation where you feel a panic inside of you every day. You know the way to happiness and you know it is the right thing to do. Escape the trap of suffering and follow the way…live your Dharma.
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