How I overcame The Nothing

I have become more acquainted with my astrology chart recently, thanks to Anna, the co-host of my podcast, This Spiritual Fix. She is fantastic at understanding astrology, and I am more of a Human Design girl these days, so learning more from her passion is a pleasure.

I was looking at my North Node, and its placement in the third house and was shocked by what this placement meant when I read: A person who has their North Node in the Third House is actually trying to figure out how to feel invested in the life that they create for themselves not for the sake of filling an image of who they feel they should be or need to be, but for the enjoyment of life itself. Reading this, I couldn’t help but be amazed and pleased, because the ultimate point of my life, according to the prescience of astrology, is to overcome The Nothing. Let me explain.

The Nothing is the most esoteric of the Inner Villains. Its depth and impact is often overlooked in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, where it can quietly creep into our minds and take root. For many years, I grappled with this inner adversary, trying to understand why we should embrace our creative power in a world filled with suffering and the relentless pursuit of escape and consumption. It seemed that every spiritual or religious doctrine I explored echoed the same sentiment: life is something to be endured, transcended, or escaped from. It was a narrative that left me disheartened, questioning the purpose of my existence and my place in this world.

In my quest for answers, I delved into various belief systems, from Buddhism to Christianity, Islam, and A Course in Miracles(ACIM). These teachings offered insights into the nature of suffering and the desire to transcend it. Yet, my interpretation led me to believe that the world was an illusion, so why should we engage in the world if it isn’t real? If we weren’t even meant to aspire to feel, but become observant but unreactive to sensation. Or to simply forgive or become equanimous to the world we find ourselves in?

The iconic '80s classic, "The NeverEnding Story," brilliantly encapsulates this sentiment through its villain, The Nothing. This destructive force erases the storybook world within the tale, leaving a void in its wake. Only when the boy reading the story takes action, naming the childlike empress, does the storybook world have a chance to return to existence. Within us, the Nothing takes many forms, from the pain of self-awareness to the unconsciousness of existence or the relentless pursuit of shortcuts to escape the human experience.

A scene that traumatized a generation of children, this was my experience of early childhood and it allowed the Nothing to guide so much of my spiritual journey. What is life if not a giant swamp of sadness I thought?

In my own journey, I succumbed to The Nothing, attempting to bypass the human turmoil and thus creation through meditation, forgiveness, and other means. I sought to avoid suffering and to find a quick escape from the trials of life, believing that the world was my prison and I was meant to perform a multi-life jailbreak. However, I reached a breaking point when I realized that my intellectual understanding of the world as suffering was not making me any happier, I was becoming a victim of it. I had thought myself into a corner, and it was time to explore a different tactic.

The turning point came when I confronted the concept of love. While some of my studies had emphasized love as the foundation of reality, I questioned what love really was. Was it something you simply felt or something that you did, or something that was done to you? What if I hadn't felt love at all? Why was it apparently everywhere, but everyone was walking around suffering? If love was the air we breathe, the water through which we swim throughout our lives, why was everyone miserable? I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was homesick for a place that wasn’t Earth, and if so, who was keeping me at this summer camp of misery? Was it me? Or some malevolent, neglectful god? It got dark.

But life had more in store for me. Growing up without the meaningful experience of love had skewed my spiritual perspective away from its essence. I turned inward, critiquing myself and then the universe, searching for answers to my discontent. No matter how far back I ventured into the depths of consciousness, I couldn't escape the fear that gripped me. It was as though I had been running from The Nothing for so long that I had become it, a force that erases instead of creates and it was time to break free. As I delved deeper into the dimensions of reality and explored my psychic abilities, I encountered a profound realization during a dissociative journey.

Sometimes we all need that moment where we are standing at the gates of our higher consciousness about to soil our pants.

It was during a self-guided journey over a year ago, that I asked the question, what is love? Over and over again. I got a lot of answers, but the one that stuck was: whatever I decided it was. What if it was the sensations that overcame my body when I turned on my heater on a cold morning? What if it was the feeling of a tinier person sitting in my lap for a cuddle when they first wake up? What if it is the feeling of a great orgasm or even a so-so one? What if I create my own idea of what love is? Suddenly, the world is filled with love.

It was during this transformative phase that I realized that the key to overcoming The Nothing was not to vanquish it, as it taught in so many shadow work practices, but to push it through its redemption arc. The Nothing is overcome with the force of creation in the story, that is how its arc is completed and we need the fractal heroes of the story to do so, both Atreyu and Bastion, representatives of our human self and our higher self. So how was I stepping into my role as the hero of my own tale? By creating the world I wanted to live in, not physically, but energetically. By seeing the world as different than I was told it was.

Therefore the key to helping myself lies not in bypassing or escaping the human experience but in embracing my ability to create a world filled with love and understanding. If I can’t find it, I am going to make it. As I reconnected with the beauty of life, I discovered that love was not just theoretical; it was the essence that infused every moment with meaning and purpose if I say so.

And that love was not something to be experienced passively, but in fact the the art of expressing what love was, was an act of creation that embodied love. In other words, the creative act of defining love was itself the embodiment of love. Love is the act of expressing our creative will on Earth, done with the consideration that what we create is here not to harm but to expand love.

How I feel after Redeeming the Nothing.

We further overcome the Nothing when we stop becoming unconscious throughout the day. This may sound impossible, but trust me, it sounded absolutely insurmountable when I read that it was an achievable state. I am not fully there, I love me a good escape or dissociation every now and then, but seeing the world as a place to create, turned the percentages in my favor for that goal.

My journey from despair to love taught me that The Nothing can be redeemed when we consciously create our lives, embracing the profound power of creating love and understanding. Life, with all its challenges and imperfections, is a gift to be treasured and celebrated. By shifting our perspective and learning to appreciate the beauty within our existence, we can conquer The Nothing and find true happiness in being human.

Oh, and do you think we get brownie points for getting our North Node right on the test?