the hole that will not be filled

You have done well in life. You have your setup -- a place to sleep, food, transportation, a bathroom, clothes, all the stuff you need and more -- and still it does not satisfy. There is a hole in the middle of you. A vast gaping yawning hole. You distract yourself from it with friends, romance, music, family, staying busy and on the move, chocolate, alcohol, weed, prescription drugs, sex, politics, religion, your popsicle stick collection. But always when you let your guard down, there it is. The hole that cannot be filled.

What is this hole? I will tell you but you will fight against it. Or refuse to understand, which is a form of fight. This hole is your hole-liness, your holiness.

Holiness, a way of being that is out of favor and also drastically misunderstood, is not, as commonly viewed, an expansion of your personality into beatific realms, is not the you you think you are gloriously magnified. Nor is holiness that thing we project upon certain figures of the past and present with awe and admiration, something we aspire to, but know we will never have.

For holiness is not something you have, it is what you are. You are hole-y. What is this hole? It is you before you were born, before you put yourself together in the form of the magnificent and peculiar personality you are now -- the persona that refuses to be annihilated, that is terrified and angry at such a thought.

We speak of black holes and worm holes and the falling through them into other realities. They are real. And are "out there." And are "in here."

Hole-liness is opening without reservation and with total abandon to the hole that cannot be filled. "Behind" us and "within" us is sheer infinity. Hole-liness is acknowledging and opening as the infinity we are before we were born into form, the infinity we shall always be, and to which we shall return. That hole is your cosmic navel.

This is not a call to navel gazing as a life style. The world we are now "in" is a training arena, a place for action and doing, for learning by endeavor. Instead of shifting into anxiety or despair or both at the presence of the hole existing at your core, love it, appreciate it, draw upon its strength and power. No sword can cut it. No force on earth can even begin to touch it. Take time to be hole-y and move on through the day.