The
Existential Void
SYNOPSIS:
We feel a haunting hollowness in the depths of our
beings.
This is much worse that the ordinary kinds of emptiness,
which we attempt to fill by possessions, achievement, relationships,
etc.
Can we acknowledge a primordial inward lack?
Can we discover deeper forms of fulfillment?
Can the Existential Void be filled?
OUTLINE:
I.
TWO KINDS OF EMPTINESS
II.
ATTEMPTING TO FILL THE EXISTENTIAL VOID
III.
EXISTENTIAL FULFILLMENT
IV.
SUMMARY: FIVE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
ORDINARY EMPTINESS AND OUR
EXISTENTIAL VOID
The
Existential Void
by
James Leonard Park
There is a wind blowing inside us, thru a
wasteland of emptiness.
We feel like useless seeds blown around the desert,
without the possibility of germinating to fulfill our potential.
Our nothingness is an internal vacuum with an insatiable appetite,
a black hole at our core, threatening to suck everything else in.
Our lives are essentially hollow, lacking inner strength and
vigor.
We seem to have lost our insides;
our guts have been removed and discarded.
The Void within gives a painful, drawn feeling to our faces.
We know that we are doomed creatures, fighting hopelessly for
life.
The Existential Void is quicksand into which we sink ever more
quickly.
We know we should be doing something,
but we don't know what.
When we change our activities, hoping to escape the Void,
the gnawing feeling of emptiness comes right along with us.
The Void is a dis-ease of our depths, the
distress of nothingness,
a hollowness that threatens to engulf and dissolve the rest of our
being.
This internal Void threatens to consume us
because our skin will become too thin to stand up all by itself.
At best, we can isolate the Malaise, encapsulate the gnawing Void,
before it devours our whole being and makes us disappear.
I.
TWO KINDS OF EMPTINESS
This devastating hollowness and
screaming internal Void
is really a deep encounter with our Existential Predicament.
But to describe our Malaise, we borrow words from ordinary
experience.
1. "Emptiness" normally indicates some
specific lack:
"The room is empty" means it lacks either people or furniture.
"The glass is empty" means the juice is gone.
However, "my life is empty" does not suggest what might be missing.
Nevertheless, we often treat this deeper sense of nullity and void
as if it could be
filled with something:
"If only I had money..." "If only someone would love me..."
But what if we have it all: family, friends, status, security, health,
and enough money to go anywhere and do anything we want?
Perhaps we feel the Existential Void especially when we "have it
all".
2. We understand the causes of ordinary
feelings of hollowness:
A relationship has collapsed, leaving an aching void in our
lives.
A job has come to an end and we miss whatever it meant to us.
We can feel empty when our children grow up and move away from
home.
But below these ordinary, intelligible deficiencies
lies a deeper spiritual longing, an inexplicable 'emptiness',
a lack of content or purpose to life, which nothing can fill.
3. Ordinary emptiness is temporary because the lack
is specific:
As soon as we find a new person to love, that void is filled.
But if attaining our
dreams does not make us complete,
perhaps we are noticing our Existential Void, a permanent
nothingness.
4. Usually whatever we lack refers to one area of concern:
Our need for love is not the same as our need for money.
But our Existential Void is not
limited and defined.
There is no painless place in our being to which we can fly for
refuge.
Our whole being is one empty
ache.
5. Each ordinary feeling of deficiency implies
what we need:
If we feel unloved, we can seek better relationships.
If we feel poor, we can try to earn more money.
But nothing specific can satisfy our existential hunger.
Nothing we can attract, buy, or achieve will fill our inner Void.
This inward frustration does
not imply what is lacking.
Initially we might feel impelled toward striving and
accomplishing
because in the past, achieving something has brought
satisfaction.
But ultimate fulfillment comes not
by doing, having, loving, or being entertained.
II. ATTEMPTING TO FILL THE
EXISTENTIAL VOID
Ordinary hollowness can be filled by 'the good
life'.
But the other hollowness remains empty no matter what we try.
Only after concerted efforts to fill our Existential Void
with the things that satisfy our ordinary longings
are we convinced that we cannot fill our deepest hollowness.
Those momentary experiences of happiness and
'fulfillment'
—which
fooled us that we were on the right path—
turn out to be evasions and distractions from the real problem,
techniques for covering
our inner Void, not for filling
it.
Even in the midst of affluence, success, love—the
perfect life—
the hollow Void screams thru the comforting fog.
In our secret depths, we still feel utterly empty and helpless.
We might struggle to fill our Existential Void
in
several ways:
1. Material possessions
make our lives more comfortable and happy.
2. Beyond mere earning, we want our lives to accomplish something.
We seek self-esteem, a feeling of worth thru our occupations.
3. Love and marriage
are also supposed to fulfill us.
4. Or we might seek long-range fulfillment thru reproduction.
5. And we might devote considerable time to enjoying ourselves.
Perhaps we enrich our lives thru travel, reading, education.
The happiness-game might obscure our inner emptiness for awhile,
but even the richest experiences probably will not fill the Void.
6. Finally, we might attempt spiritual
self-fulfillment.
Thru ritual practices, metaphysical beliefs, & 'spiritual'
self-help
we attempt to neutralize our Existential Void by our own efforts.
Do any of these methods really fill the Existential Void?
Not that our lives do not include enough things to be done.
We might be overwhelmed by duties and responsibilities,
but if ever we are done,
we still feel empty.
Like a mouse running around in an exercise wheel,
we run and run and run, but we get nowhere.
Life seems pointless and futile; nothing satisfies our deep
longing.
The Void is a hunger that is not filled with eating,
an inward question not satisfied with words.
We might discover our Existential Emptiness
when our basic life-purposes and fundamental world-views collapse.
We feel our
Existential
Malaise: emptiness, meaninglessness, desolation.
We might attempt to fill our Existential Void
by
collecting things,
hoping to make up for the substance being eaten away from inside.
But the gnawing internal 'nothing' gains strength as it devours us.
The more the Void eats, the faster it chews.
If we construct our lives without taking the
Void into account,
we build on the sands of illusion; such castles will fall.
III.
EXISTENTIAL FULFILLMENT
But can Existential Freedom fill the Void?
How might we allow the Existential Void to be filled?
The first step toward accepting release might be recognizing our
Malaise.
Only when we have truly confronted our Existential Void,
when we no longer believe all
feelings of emptiness
can be filled by possessions, achievement, marriage, children, etc.
—only
when we feel our total, uncaused, permanent, comprehensive Void
are we impelled to begin our quest for Existential Freedom.
Once we have separated our Existential Void
from
our ordinary needs,
we might face another hazard—self-reliance.
We want to make our way in the world without the help of others.
So when we confront our Existential Emptiness,
our first inclination is to try to do something about
it.
Later we might simply try to ignore
the Void by getting involved
in our self-sufficient, value-affirming, optimistic ways of life.
After some frustrating years of trying to fill
our Void,
we might be ready for the longest step of all—the
existential leap.
We cannot see thru the dark cloud;
we can't know Existential Freedom before we
leap.
But if the haunting Existential Void is powerful enough,
if freedom from emptiness becomes more important than everything else,
we will find a way to open ourselves for Existential Freedom,
perhaps after some false starts and getting lost in some blind alleys.
Leaping across the Abyss is not experimental
or temporary.
Nor can this transformation be accomplished in a short period of
time.
Commitment means cutting off all the other means of 'fulfillment'.
Up to the point of surrender, we have coped with our Existential
Dilemma,
trying to 'fill' our haunting emptiness in various ways.
All such methods of 'self-fulfillment' must be
abandoned:
If we have tried to fill our Existential Void with other people,
that orientation toward relationships will have to be reversed.
If we have tried to fulfill ourselves thru our jobs,
that self-reliant attitude must change completely.
If the Existential Void is filled,
we do not need the
people we love
anymore
(altho we can still certainly appreciate
them).
We no longer use
other people to complete our lives.
Is our Existential Void gone?
Are we released from our emptiness?
Do we experience a consummation of being?
IV. SUMMARY: FIVE DIFFERENCES
BETWEEN
ORDINARY EMPTINESS AND OUR
EXISTENTIAL VOID:
Ordinary
Emptiness
Our Existential Void
1. Specific lack,
deficiency,
1. General, free-floating sense
absence, or
loss.
of
utter
hollowness.
2. Caused by easily-understood 2. No
connection with the objective
situations in
life.
world; an inward nullity.
3. Temporary—until
the situation 3. Permanent—no
matter what changes
is changed, the need satisfied.
objectively, the nothingness persists.
4. Limited to specific dimensions. 4. A hollowness of
our whole being.
5. Knowing what we
lack,
5. Nothing we can get, achieve,
we know where to seek
it.
or accomplish will fill this Void.
Questions for Discussion
1. For what period of your life did you confuse
ordinary emptiness
with
your Existential Void?
2. What did you use to fill your Void?
3. How long were you satisfied with material
possessions?
4. How did society teach you to seek fulfillment in
the wrong places?
5. Have you tried to fill your Existential Gap with
things that don't fit?
6. Are you now convinced that possessions,
achievements, relationships,
children, adventure, & religion will not fill your Existential Void?
7. Does the Existential Void explain why people who
'have everything'
sometimes kill themselves?
8. Has the collapse of a reason for living disclosed
your Existential Void?
9. How much must you give up to find Existential
Freedom?
10. How terrible would your Existential Void have to
become
to
motivate you to take the existential leap?
11. What other commitments are preventing you
from
opening yourself to Existential Freedom?
12. Has Existential Freedom released you from trying
to fulfill
yourself?
This
cyber-sermon was adapted
by the author
from a chapter entitled "Filling Our Spiritual Void"
in his small book called:
Opening to Grace: Transcending Our Spiritual
Malaise:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/OG.html
AUTHOR:
James Park is an existential
philosopher
and author of five books in existential spirituality,
all of which will be found in the Existential
Spirituality Bibliography:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/B-XSP.html
Much
more information about
James Park
will be found on his website:
An Existential Philosopher's Museum:
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/
Created
May 23, 2008; Revised 5-29-2008; 11-12-2010; 6-30-2011; 12-2-2011;
12-21-2012
FURTHER READING ON THE
EXISTENTIAL
VOID
AND EXISTENTIAL FULFILLMENT
James Park Opening to
Grace:
Transcending Our Spiritual
Malaise
(Minneapolis, MN: www.existentialbooks.com, 2007—2nd
edition)
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/OG.html
James Park Our
Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, &
Death
(Minneapolis, MN: www.existentialbooks.com, 2006—5th
edition)
Chapter 5 "The Existential Void: Discovering Our Bottomless Emptiness"
p. 77-87.
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/XP.html
James Park In Quest
of Fulfillment:
Money, Achievement, Marriage,
Children, Pleasure, & Religion
(Minneapolis, MN: www.existentialbooks.com, 2007—2nd
edition)
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~parkx032/QF.html
Write to the author of "The
Existential Void"
James Park welcomes your questions and comments at:
PARKx032@TC.UMN.EDU