I begin with a teacup in my hand. It feels solid, familiar—a container ready to be filled. I imagine it heavy with liquid mercury, dense and gleaming, its weight pressing into my palm. The mercury, thick and metallic, feels like the burdens of thought—beliefs, emotions, and stories I carry. It fills the cup completely, leaving no room for anything else.
Now, I picture myself standing waist-deep in the vast ocean. I tip the cup, and the mercury pours out, vanishing into the waves. The cup empties, but it is not truly empty. Seawater rushes in to take its place. The dense burden is gone, but the cup is still filled—with something lighter, more fluid, yet still within the confines of the ocean’s field.
I lift the cup from the sea, holding it high in the open air. The seawater drains away, and now the cup is filled with air. It feels different now—weightless, expansive. Yet even this air is something, a content that fills the space within the cup.
I take the cup further still, into the vacuum of outer space. The air leaves, and the cup becomes empty. But this emptiness isn’t nothing. It is filled with the field of space itself—a vastness that extends beyond comprehension. The cup seems to float in this field, no longer defined by what it holds.
And then, I take one final step. I allow the emptiness to empty itself. The cup, along with everything I thought it contained or could contain, dissolves completely. The boundaries of the cup vanish, merging with the infinite field of awareness. What remains is not nothing, but a luminous clarity—a clear light that holds everything and nothing all at once.
I sit with this. I reflect on the risers and plateaus of a staircase—the way each horizontal step provides a pause, a moment to grasp knowledge, a framework, a concept. Yet without the vertical risers, the stairs would never climb. The risers are the moments of understanding, the connections that bridge one level to the next. Each horizontal plateau leads to another, higher perspective, while the risers ensure I never lose my footing.
The teacup was my staircase. The mercury, the seawater, the air, and the space were the plateaus, each step revealing a broader view. The act of emptying—of pouring out and letting go—was the vertical riser, a moment of transition, of understanding that what I thought was solid or fixed could dissolve into something subtler, more expansive.
Now I think of the Big Dipper, the constellation etched into the night sky. Its stars form a familiar shape, a dipper, but this shape exists only in my mind. The stars themselves are scattered, separated by vast distances, connected only by the lines I draw between them. The Big Dipper is empty—empty of any inherent “dipper-ness.” It is a pattern I impose, a story I tell.
And so am I. This self, this “I” I carry, is a collection of stars—thoughts, memories, sensations—stitched together into a shape I call “me.” But just as the Big Dipper dissolves when I see it from another perspective, so too does this self dissolve when I step back and observe.
As I sit here, breathing, I notice the moments as they arise, like the stars of the Big Dipper, like the mercury in the teacup. One moment flows into the next, each filling and emptying in its turn. The thoughts come and go, like the bingo numbers flashing onto a screen. Some I cling to, some I reject, and others pass by unnoticed.
But beneath it all is something deeper. As the thoughts empty, a clear space remains. It is not nothing. It is awareness itself—the clear light that shines through the empty teacup, through the Big Dipper, through me.
I am empty, and because of this emptiness, I am free. Free to hold mercury, seawater, air, or nothing at all. Free to step onto the next riser, to let go of the patterns I impose, to see the clear light that is always here, illuminating each moment.
The Big Dipper is empty, and so am I. In this emptiness, I find everything.
Spiritual Gravity 