“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.”
~ Eric Hoffer
As a society, we aren’t very good at filling our empty spaces within in a very constructive manner. We tend to fill them with busyness, false laughter and smiles, drugs, food, gambling, alcohol…but none of those things suffice in filling the holes in our souls. We seek happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong ways. I heard a commercial the other day for Hershey’s chocolate. Here’s what they want you to believe: “Hershey’s Drops…perfectly sized bites of rich and creamy chocolate happiness.” Happiness in a piece of candy? Um…no.
Margaret Paul, PhD. has this to say: “When you abandon yourself by judging yourself, ignoring your feelings by staying in your head, numbing your feelings through substance and process addictions and making others responsible for your feelings and for loving you, you will feel empty. You are causing your own emptiness by your self-abandonment.”
Well that sounds pretty hopeless, eh? Not so.
We each must learn who we truly are – minus the addictions and crutches and false facades we put out there for others to see. The true you comes from finding your personal source of spiritual guidance. When you open yourself to really learning the truth of who you are…about showing love toward others and, especially, yourself – you open yourself to having that inner emptiness filled.
As a Christian, I’ve always heard about “that God-shaped” hole within. Only He fits there and can fill it. You must find, for yourself, what truly belongs in that space.
Start by shifting your attention from protecting yourself from pain, from avoiding responsibility for your feelings through addictive and controlling behaviors to learning, with that higher power, how to truly love.
My challenge to you today is to open your heart and your mind to the possibility that, if you reach out for guidance, there will be an answer.
Stop trying to fill the bottomless pit within with all the wrong things. Allow yourself to really feel what it is that’s eating you – and stop trying to eat, drink, smoke, work, or gamble it away.
challengeschanges 