This week’s question from our portal “Ask Us Anything” comes from Alia.
I’ve been studying The Four Questions by Byron Katie. The last question is, “Who I would be without this thought?”
When I ask myself this, there’s just emptiness. There’s nothing. I don’t have an answer in my mind. It goes blank.
Is that okay? Do I need to decide who I want to be, even though there’s no thought there? Or do I just be okay with leaving it empty?
The first step is you becoming okay with it being empty.
We have a neurotic tendency to want to fill that emptiness with different thoughts and ideas, just to fill it.
The best thing you can do is be okay with NOT filling it… because if you can do that, then the next step is to move into your own authenticity and own what you want it to be.
You’ll know over time what you want this to be.
I can’t tell you how long it’ll take.
But the longer you sit with it—and deny your own neurotic need to fill that emptiness in your mind—the quicker you can create what you want.
Once that becomes normal—sitting with the emptiness—and it doesn’t upset you anymore, then you don’t feel this huge desire to suck in energy from someplace else.
You’ll start filling it on your own, based on exactly what you want for yourself.
There was a period of time when I went through this in my life. For three years, I sat with that emptiness—because I didn’t know who I was outside of a relationship.
When you’re in a relationship your whole life with other people and part of that defines you, and you’ve never learned who to be without that, it takes time.
It took me three years of sitting with that and just letting that space be empty, completely empty, until I was ready to fill it with something that I truly wanted.