The Time for “No-Thingness”
Approximately two weeks ago, I was travelling in the Black Sea Region of Turkey with my friends from the Izmirna Photography Club when we experienced some organizational issues with our tour agency.
Basically, we were up on a plateau over 2,000 meters above sea level with nowhere to stay the night because all the rooms had been booked by another tour agency. It was 10:30 at night and the 40 of us were exhausted with nowhere to spend the night. All the hotels in the area were called, but none had vacancies. There was literally nowhere to be found at that time of night.
Everyone was so annoyed at the situation, but then someone made a fantastic suggestion: “Let’s go to Georgia to find a hotel.” So, we decided to go to Georgia in the morning after spending the night in Turkey. Everyone burst into anger at this suggestion, and some people began to shout, “Find me a room. I don’t want to go anywhere.” No one wanted to cross the border in the middle of the night to get a room in a hotel that we couldn’t be sure existed. We had lost all our confidence in the tour agency by that time, but we all got on the bus anyway. I said to one of my friends, “I’ll eat my words if this isn’t the case, but whenever I’ve stepped into the unknown like this, I’ve had wonderful experiences. Sure, we’re angry now, but tomorrow everything will be fine.”
And it turned out this really was the case. We crossed the border in the middle of the night and checked into a hotel at 4am for some shuteye. We spent some wonderful hours in Batumi the next day, and we realized that if we had spent the night in Turkey and crossed the border in the morning, we would not have had as much time to walk around Batumi. It was the cosmos reminding us once again how “miracles come from obscurity.”
We are all in an obscure period. Life seems to tell us, “Yes, my friend, it’s all over. It’s time now to change and transform. Now is the time to realize yourself. Now is the time to leave behind all the things you couldn’t give up. To meet with the new, you need to say goodbye to the old. This is the only way to become attuned to the new energy. You cannot exist on this planet by hanging on to the old.” If you resist change, you start to see its side effects in the form of diseases. When you accept the new energy, you need to make some choices. Some people quit their jobs, others end their marriages, some change their attitudes, and some even wake up from a long dream and change the destiny of a country.
We don’t know what will happen in a few months time. We just feel everything will be all right, but when we look at what’s happening at the moment, we just see a scene similar to the No-Thingness card in the Osho Zen Tarot deck. The No-Thingness card is a very meaningful card in that Tarot deck. It is all black without any illustrations on it, just totally black! The description of the card summarizes its meaning: Being “in the gap” can be disorienting and even scary. Nothing to hold on to, no sense of direction, not even a hint of what choices and possibilities might lie ahead. But it was just this state of pure potential that existed before the universe was created. All you can do now is to relax into this no-thingness… fall into this silence between the words… watch this gap between the outgoing and incoming breath. And treasure each empty moment of the experience. Something sacred is about to be born.
But How?
The human mind never stops—it always works, wanting to know what will happen next and how long it will take. We all fear death, and we always try to cover our asses, but we forget to look forward, so life goes on weirdly. While I was meditating on these things, I wanted to draw a card from my Osho Zen Tarot deck. I asked myself, “What do you think about this obscurity?” just before I came across the No-Thingness card! I smiled at this. I love the Osho Zen Tarot deck, because the chances of drawing that card is 1 in 79, but when you ask about obscurity, you always seem to find it.
I then asked a second question, “But how? How can we achieve this? What should we do?” and then I drew the card Trust. This card is illustrated with a man falling through space with open arms, and this is its meaning: Now is the time to be a bungee jumper without a cord! It is this quality of absolute trust, without reservations or secret safety nets, that the Knight of Water demands from us. There is a tremendous sense of exhilaration if we can take the jump and move into the unknown, even if the idea scares us to death. And when we take trust to the level of the quantum leap, we don’t make any elaborate plans or preparations. We don’t say, “Okay, I trust that I know what to do now, and I’ll settle my things and pack my suitcase and take it with me.” No, we just jump, with hardly a thought for what happens next. The leap is the thing, and the thrill of it as we free-fall through the empty sky. The card gives a hint here, though, about what waits for us at the other end—a soft, welcoming, yummy pink, rose petal, juicy…c’mon!”
Yes, now is the time! Open your arms and show yourself to the new energy. Trust in the universe and jump now !
