Have you ever experienced what has been called ‘existential anxiety?’ It is an uncomfortable feeling deep within us that there is no solid bottom to our lives. It is based, I believe, on our cultural ideal of self-determination; the idea that we must determine our own lives. This on the surface seems like a pretty good idea but there are implications that may not be immediately apparent. If we have the ‘freedom’ to determine our own lives then we must be nothing to begin with. This freedom has in fact become an obligation. If we do not go out there and ‘make something of ourselves’ then we will wind up being nothing.
I have developed a mental image of this. It is like hanging over a bottomless chasm by a thin strand that is in danger of breaking at any moment. Then I will go plummeting down into the dark nothingness below. Existential anxiety is the fear of being nothing. It impels us to build up in ourselves a strong sense of ‘somethingness’ that has value and worth.
We may get a sense of the void whenever we suffer some sort of loss. Even a small loss might feel quite uncomfortable because it lets us know that the void is there. If you are like me you are pretty good at imagining that the slightest misstep in life will topple the whole structure. If you are not like me, and perhaps that would be most fortunate, you can rebound fairly easily from a significant loss without being too disturbed by the void lurking beneath.
But perhaps it is not so fortunate to be not like me; that is, to have that ever-present sense of insecurity. Because I’ve found it most difficult to cover over the void I’ve had to look for another way to deal with it. I’ve found that no matter how high I’ve tried to build myself above the void I have not been able to eliminate it. In the Biblical sense the void is at the heart of our separation from our true nature which God has created within us.
In seeking spiritual depth, instead of trying to protect ourselves from the void by building high and strong above it we actually turn and head into it. If our inner being has been enlivened in Christ it is no longer in a state of alienation from the Life of our Creator and thus no longer a void. But we really don’t experience it as enlivened until we let ourselves fall into it; that is, until we surrender to it. I should say surrender to Him because what we surrender to is the person of the Holy Spirit. He has moved into that empty space which we once feared and have worked to build a strong wall against.
Our true nature lies beyond our own making. It is that which simply is. It is already created. It is what scripture calls the perfection of our being. This word for ‘perfect’ in the Greek is teleios which can be translated as ‘wholeness.’ Here in the depths of our being lies everything that God has intended us to be. We are drawn toward it because our deepest desire is to be what we truly are.
Our dilemma is that our greatest fear and our deepest desire lie in the same place. Going deeper, then, brings us into the conflict of letting go of those strong towers which we have erected against the very place where we yearn to be. If it be that we have allowed Christ to dwell in those inner regions we will exchange a somewhat slippery existence of self-making for a solid region of absolute being. By this I mean that we no longer need to strive to be something because we begin to find that we already are something. I can say from actual experience that if I have ventured into the void and found there absolute being in the Holy Spirit then I am no longer hanging over a deep chasm by a thin strand. I begin to sense solid ground. You see, my life has become grounded on something greater than myself. I am not my own creator.
My whole spiritual journey is to increasingly give myself over to that eternal solid ground of being which I find within me. This has become a center point around which my whole life is taking shape. I no longer try to cobble something together on the surface. Living from this spiritual center point, a place which I once feared, is bringing the pieces of my life together into a wholeness that is beyond my own self-determination.
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