‘We cannot even let the other person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves’ - Scott Peck

Born to two Quaker parents in 1930’s New York, the psychiatrist and celebrated author, Scott Peck, began his bestselling spiritual classic ‘the Road less Travelled’ with the statement; “Life is difficult”.  His subsequent writing detailed four stages of spiritual development, the lastof which might be described as ‘emptiness’.  

Emptiness within a spiritual context, does not correspond to more modern notions of ‘not-having’ or ‘loss’ of meaning, purpose, satisfaction or love.  In the process of spiritual practice, both the nature of emptiness experienced and the experiencing itself is transformed. In short, the cultivated emptying of the ego (the sense of self, the ‘I’) enables a subtle but profound shift from a life in which emptiness is experienced as suffering (after all, the ego suffers the vicissitudes of the world), towards an understanding of emptiness as an opening to a more profound, interconnected and even joyful existence.  It is the key to the paradox of selfhood; We must let go in order to have (life). As a psychotherapist, I’m privileged to have witnessed this perennial truth in even the most tragic of circumstances and lives.

One can come across spiritual emptiness in the most difficult of times or settings.  In fact, in many spiritual accounts, the shift in emphasis and understanding of emptiness is often triggered by a traumatic shock to the status quo in our lives.  In my personal life, I remain indebted to a teaching of emptiness that still reverberates in my silence from many years ago, when working as a young social therapist on a secure forensic psychiatric ward.  Gary was a giant of a man, with an untamed look in his eye and a sense of imminent danger that intensified the many florid warnings about him from the nursing staff at the unit. He reminded me instantly of the wild man ‘Enkidu’ from the Babylonian myth ‘The Gilgamesh Epic’.  On my first day there, I was directed with some urgency to avoid either turning my back upon Gary or generally being within a couple of metres of him, in case of one of his frequent and sudden physical attacks. This appealed to a sense of naive fear in me about the forensic psychiatric environment and Gary, unwashed and uncontained, initially became a symbol, for me, of the unpredictability of working there.   

But over time I began to dimly notice some inconsistencies between the collective myth of Gary and my experience of him.  Some months had passed when, on a regular trip to the local hospital to have his unwashed feet clipped of dead skin, I was suddenly left alone with Gary in a hospital clinic room.  Protocol dictated that at least three staff escort Gary at all times outside of the psychiatric unit; He was immensely strong and such a situation, precarious.  Before I could catch my breath and raise the alarm Gary leant closer towards me and whispered a question; “Do you know why I don’t wash and why I lash out at people?”.  I mutely shook my head in reply. “It’s so that people stay away from me in case I ever truly lose it. I’ll never get out of here and I sometimes feel so fucking angry about it, but at least I can take care of people in my own way by keeping them away from me”.  It was the first time I’d seen Gary’s taut face break into a faltering smile and the first time I’d seen tears in his eyes. It was also the first time I’d ever truly seen or heard him, despite months of ‘observation’.   

In the most dehumanising of environments, Gary introduced me to a compassion and spiritual emptiness so radical that it still shakes me to my core.  The tragedy of his situation; his long-term incarceration and the lack of insight into his complex suffering from those around him, should have been enough for him to be caught in a destructive cycle of frustration and depressed anger or rage.  And yet, hidden within his apparent deep menace to others was a profound and empty-of-self awareness inspiring a desire to take care of others in whatever way he felt was still available to him.  In a suffering world, there are many examples of the spiritual emptiness that lies at the heart of caring for others. What does your emptiness look like right now?

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