Inner emptiness

A new study suggests that In fact, some people even prefer an electric shock to being left alone…

People were asked, what they would prefer, to be alone in a naked room with nothing in it, no stimulations at all, or to receive a low electric shock –

The researchers then decided to take the experiment a step further. For 15 minutes, the team left participants alone in a lab room in which they could push a button and shock themselves if they wanted to (in order to get out of the room). The results were startling: Even though all participants had previously stated that they would pay money to avoid being shocked with electricity, 67% of men and 25% of women chose to inflict it on themselves rather than just sit there quietly and think, the team reports online today in Science.

“I found it quite surprising and a bit disheartening that people seem to be so uncomfortable when left to their own devices; that they can be so bored that even being shocked seemed more entertaining,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychology professor at UC Santa Barbara who studies consciousness

This is something we live with every day, yet the patch-work of cover-up the nothingness inside, (that we do all the time), fills up our free time with occupations such as : going to concerts, reading a book, going to a restaurant, watching T.V. traveling abroad, working long hours – all this are a frequent time fillers. They are covering partly the nothingness and the void which are peeping from below. We are in an ongoing escape from the inner empty room (of the study), most of what we are engaged in, are replacements for what could and should be: vital inner life, or inner being, or a connection to one’s soul, to something alive inside, otherwise when left alone, without any stimulations at all- it is at first, great suffering, and then, even madness, for the abyss within us is so dark and frightening in its vacuum emptiness, that we fear to fall in and be swallowed by it, as absurd as it may seem.

Nothingness frightens us, especial: emptiness, usually emptiness has got negative connotations: here are some examples:

1. a. Having no occupants; not being used: an empty chair.

b. Not having an incumbent or occupant; unfilled: an empty post at the embassy.

c. Not put to purposeful use; idle: empty hours.

• Lacking force or power: an empty threat.
• Lacking purpose or substance; meaningless: an empty life.
• Needing nourishment; hungry: “More fierce and more inexorable far / Than empty tigers or the roaring sea” ( Shakespeare )
• Devoid; destitute: empty of pity.

When we populate a city, or a house – we don’t like open and empty spaces, we hurry and fill them up; with roads, buildings & asphalt – in the city. And in furniture, carpets curtains, tables, chairs etc. – In our home, Just not to face a space full of nothing, for it is a metaphor for us about one of our greatest fears: the steep abyss within us, threatening to swallow us into its endless nothingness.

Conclusion: We don’t know how to be alone, don’t want to be alone, we hate to be alone.

Being alone is not being lonely, being lonely is wishing for the warmth of another human being, which is very natural and human.

 But to be able to be alone is only possible if you have no need for external stimulation, because you are charged, fully energized… and this is because of two essential reasons: one is having lively inner life or inner being (connected to, by the person), the other is to be connected to by entities & influences of creation. Then forever you will not be alone.

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https://tinyurl.com/y5pe6ad7 (A book In Hebrew: “A journey into the inner being”).

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A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

G. I. Gurdjieff