The absence of something, anything, and everything is not nothing

The Absence of Something is Not Nothing

Well. Hey there. Welcome back. Let me start this out by being poetic. The absence of something is not nothing. The absence of everything is not nothing. And no, I’m not quoting some famous poet or one of my favorites, like Nietzsche and so forth. That’s just something I am saying right now. It’s something that I realized.

If you’re familiar with the sword and the sunflower and the origin story of that, you know that it came about magically, abruptly, one day from a walk in a cemetery in which my mind was unusually clear. And when I mean clear, it felt like it was, for all intents and purposes, empty. It was the absence of something. In fact, it was the absence of anything and everything. It was just there.

An Overthinking World

And as I’ve said, in talks and so forth, if you are someone who overthinks or feels like you have a certain version of ADHD or autism. You may find that having a quiet mind is darn near impossible, that a few moments in which you have a clear mind like this is, as I’ve said before, Christmas, multiple Christmases, a decade worth of Christmases. But the absence of something or anything or everything is still not nothing.

It’s a very nuanced, poetic point that I’m trying to make, and the only way to make it is in a nuanced, poetic way. There’s so much to what makes existence existence, and there’s so much to what makes us, us that even with nothing, there’s still something.

Mediums, Space, and Light

Sound travels in a medium, meaning sound travels through air. Sound travels through water. It does it at a different speed, but it still works. And sound travels through objects as well. And again, different speeds and so forth. Sound does not travel through space. There is no medium in space in which it can travel. However, light travels through all those mediums, although it has a difficult time with obviously solid objects, but it also travels in space. So what’s the medium for that? Well, I mean, you can dig deep into physics and they talk about the ether and so forth. But. According to light, there’s still something out in space where we think there’s nothing.

Non-Local Consciousness

Do your thoughts go on when you don’t? Does your consciousness make it past the end of your physical life? Do you have a soul? Does a soul do that? Are you your soul? As I said, this is going to be a very poetic episode. In the episode called Non-local Consciousness, I make the case for our consciousness not being contained in our heads?

I mean, we think about that. We think, okay, our brain is where all this stuff happens. But my description of the brain and thought is quite different than perhaps what yours might be. And in non-local consciousness, I talk about that in detail. So in a way, what if our brain is the medium that thoughts need to travel from somewhere else? That’s not local. Oh boy, am I right.

The Elusiveness of “Nothing”

If the absence of something, anything and everything is not nothing. Well, then what is it? Well, when I thought I had a completely clear mind and I was taking my walk. I didn’t cease to exist. I didn’t become brain dead. No one tried to harvest my organs. And you’re going to push back and say, well, Mark, that’s kind of silly. You obviously still had memories and reasoning. You were still breathing, you had autonomic functions. You were still sensing your environment. I’m sure you were thinking, no, I wasn’t thinking anything. Okay. But all that other stuff was happening. You had enough brain power to propel your body to make sure you weren’t in danger, to record the environment.

Well, yeah, that’s kind of what I’m saying. There’s so much missing to nothing that we just are incapable of experiencing it. Depending on who you listen to and what you subscribe to. And I don’t mean a podcast, even though you should. You may feel that even after you pass away, there’s still not nothing. There never has been, and there never will be nothing for you. You’ll always be part of something. It seems like nothing is as elusive as true love. It’s as undefinable in a way.

A Moment to Reflect

You might want to pause right now and reflect on what I’m saying before I get to the next segment. No, really like pause it.

Okay. Welcome back. If you paused it, and why do you care? Well, first of all, it’s fascinating to think about, isn’t it? I mean, you know, it’s one thing to deal with time, energy and resources and plan and so forth, but it’s another thing to think about, oh, I don’t know the entirety of existence. But on a more practical standpoint, have you ever approached nothing as far as at least thoughts? I mean, people say they’re, you know, they’re staring off into space. They’re daydreaming. You drive for a while and seven miles later you’re like, oh, I guess I was on autopilot. But in those cases, invariably it’s because your thoughts were elsewhere. They weren’t non-existent.

Meditation as Catch and Release and the 3 AM Wake-Up Call

You want to talk about meditation? Have you already thought of that while I was saying this? Meditation for some people is the the absence of thoughts. And there are people who are argue and say, well, no, it isn’t. It’s it’s a serenity, it’s something else. And there are some books that will say it’s sort of a catch and release. And I think that’s the easiest way to get into meditation is to consider it almost like fishing. So clearing your mind and when a thought comes in, you don’t resist it and push at it. You go, okay, that’s fine, it’s here. And then you just sort of release it like a little fish swam into your empty stream.

And in my episode, the three a m wake up call, you’ll find something similar in which you have thoughts that are telling you to get out of bed because the toilet was running a little longer than it should have. And oh my God, the house is flooded and you have to write your boss at two in the morning, even though he’s not going to read your email until two p m and you go, okay, thank you. That’s that’s that’s helpful. That’s noted. I’m going to go to sleep now. And you find that that really quells the voices because they feel validated, kind of like children pulling on your shorts and saying, mom, mom, mom, mom.

The Two Fountains: Choosing Creativity Over Fear

If you have attempted to meditate or you do meditate, you may find that you may get to know yourself a little bit better because you’ll know where some of those errant thoughts are coming from. You’ll know where that constant fountain of thinking is. And, and for me, there’s a big difference between a constant fountain of terror and fear and being afraid of what the next day brings you, and how you’re going to handle things, or how a difficult person in your life is going to respond to something, especially if you’re forced to work with them, versus a fountain of creative thoughts and wonderment. And how does that work? And I wonder what that’s like.

And perhaps that’s the lesson here. perhaps that’s the direction at the end of this episode is that even though we really don’t ever get to experience the nothing on the way there, we can at least be more in touch with ourselves and which fountain we prefer, because there’s far more of the former the fountain of terror, the fountain of fear. Then there is of the latter, the fountain of creativity and wonderment. And if you can get close to the nothing and pull back, perhaps that’s when you can really lend a hand to that latter fountain and just enjoy it. I know I tried to do that, I fail miserably sometimes, but I do try to do that.

Thanks for listening, as always. Take care.

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