The Void

A short story about endings, an invitation and what may come next.

When the Void Calls

For some, there is a place in their spiritual journey held in the highest regard.  It’s a place that doesn’t arrive with bright lights or declarations and it doesn’t feel like expansion or alignment when you’re there, at least not at first.  In truth, it often doesn’t feel like anything at all, except perhaps disorientation, weariness or the constant ache of something unravelling.

This space of deep unmaking and subtle re-formation is what I have come to know as The Void.

—–

The Void is not the dark night of the soul, though it may follow one.  And it is not a place you go to, it is a state and space you enter.  A kind of energetic suspension.  A space between identities, between the life that was and the one that hasn’t arrived yet.

It is an invitation.  Though not everyone accepts it.

—–

The Void often makes her presence known at the crest of a crisis – during a significant rupture of self like a great implosion that fragments your deepest core.  It might be the loss of someone or something that defined you.  It might be betrayal, burnout or a spiritual awakening that knocks everything sideways.  Suddenly, life empties out.  Nothing makes sense and what once defined you no longer fits.  Everything you believed about yourself no longer holds.  The supports that once steadied you lie scattered at your feet.

Whilst this is happening, your resonance begins to shift.  A deep fine-tuning takes place.  It is subtle and searing at the same time – stripping you back to essence, peeling identity away layer by layer, until even the inner frameworks begin to dissolve.

Time becomes strange.

You find yourself out of alignment with people and things that once seemed essential.  They fall away like dust, never quite returning to their former closeness or form.

Outwardly, you carry on: work; family; friends; outings; conversations.  You play the part that is familiar to others even if it no longer feels familiar to you.  You play it well.

—–

So much of what once made you you has quietly vanished.  And the most surprising part?  You do not even miss it.

What remains is numbness.  And a quiet, pulsing emptiness.  A sense that something vast has opened within you.

You begin to notice it more often now.  As awareness not thought.  A stillness at the centre of your being.  A Void.

At first, you hover at her edge.  You feel her there, so deep inside – waiting, watching, softly pulling.

You do not want to look at her too long.  You fear what she might take from you.  Or what she might show you.  Or worse – that she might show you nothing at all.  But still…you return to her threshold.  Something in you is drawn to her presence.

And then one day, you stop resisting.  And you step in and let go.

The Void does not push or demand.  She simply receives you.

And nothing is ever quite the same again.

—–

The first time I entered the Void, I had no expectations. I said: “I’m here.”

I thought the darkness would be something.  But it was nothing.  And everything.

She was more immense than I could comprehend, and yet intimately close – as though she had always known me.

There were no boundaries, yet I felt held.  No light, yet I felt seen and had a sense of being intensely watched, like a deep, sacred witnessing.  It was as though something ancient and loving was keeping vigil.

—–

In the middle of that darkness, with no story left to uphold and no role left to play, I curled up as I once had in my mother’s womb.  My body knew before I did that this was a time of return.

I felt myself unravel – not painfully but peacefully.  Layer by layer, I dissolved.  Time blurred.  Everything softened and I drifted…

I slept for what felt like centuries, into a slumber of deep re-formation.  Something inside me was being re-woven.

—–

This was not a one-time crossing as I have returned to the Void a few times and each time she is the same.

The vast darkness.
The feeling of being utterly alone and utterly witnessed.
The slow curling inward.
The descent into oblivion.
The dissolution of the old.
And the return of something that is timeless.

No words are ever spoken but something is always taken and always given.

I return changed, not because of anything I did there but because of what I allowed myself to un-become.

—–

Coming back from the Void is not a grand re-entry.  There is no fanfare. No declarations.  It is quiet and soft.

Days, weeks, even months pass and you do not rush to rebuild.  Something in you knows that Others have this in hand.

You begin to feel again: a thought that feels light; a sound that feels kind; a moment where your feet meet the ground and it feels…enough.

And then one day, you know something has shifted.  You see yourself and finally begin to remember you are beyond memory.

—–

You do not leave the Void with a map.  What you bring back is a frequency.  A new inner shape.  A rhythm that is finally your own.

You become less interested in explaining yourself and more content to simply be.  You are no longer driven by roles or performance because you know now how much of that was scaffolding, temporary and external.  Instead, you begin to live from centre.

You listen more.  You speak with care.  You learn what needs learning.  And you protect your energy with reverence.

You are not in a hurry to define yourself because what has emerged is still re-forming and you allow things to flow and grow in their own time and grace.

—–

Now you carry the imprint of the Void with you as a quiet frequency. A soft knowing.  Your very blueprint has shifted.  A code is activated.  A soul contract fulfilled.

—–

If the Void is beginning to stir in your life with the quiet disintegration of what once made sense.  If your story no longer fits.  If the old structures have collapsed and your name, your purpose, your place in the world feel uncertain…perhaps you are being invited to stand at the sacred threshold?  And if you are willing to let go of what no longer serves The Void will hold you.

She will not offer answers.  She will not rush your becoming.  But she will hold space for your unravelling, your resting, and the new truths that cannot yet be named.

And when you emerge you will not be who you were.

You will move as one who has touched the centre of unbeing and delights to remember their wholeness.