I’ve been mini-retired for 6 months. Retirement is a great way to practice emptiness. Six months of non-doing and facing uncertainty is when I usually hit the psychological threshold and the monkey brain spirals into anxiety. You know the script – oblivion, irrelevance, destitution, tear-stained faces of hungry children, homelessness, failure. Urgh.
I need to find a job because selling my time/ energy is the way to pay bills that I know. I am still working on learning how to manifest abundance in other ways. However, looking for a job when you are empty inside is an interesting challenge. Good empty. Content. At peace. You sort of don’t want anything.
My mind tried to put on its usual “you are lacking ambition, what is wrong with you” record. But I don’t let it do things like that anymore. Instead it dawned on me – what if not wanting anything is not the sign of lack of ambition, depression or confusion, but rather an achievement? What if this means that one has achieved what Buddhists call the state of no desire, where whatever option materialises is equally attractive, possible and ok? What if not wanting anything is the next level in the emptiness practice?
It all depends on how you define success I guess. Money and title, possessions and achievements, doing and pushing, or peace and content. I dance my dance, take my curriculum, being in awe with whatever comes. Important threshold achieved, let’s see what next. Universe, I am open for business.
Nomad of the Universe 
What is your line of work? Can you just remain retired or are you nit at that age yet? Funnily enough I read your post as I was thinking about Richard Brandon’s new cruise ship setting off from Dover harbour today. The antithesis of emptiness…. I don’t know how people like Branson fit all that into their lives. Incredible how different we all are. In any event I wish you success with whatever work you are seeking. A
LikeLike
Hey Anthony, I am 15-20 years before retirement age 😊 I am a marketer so plenty of jobs out there. I will be fine… Richard Branson is no different from all of us, everything he does is to fill the emptiness 😊 however you are right, some people have a burning sense of purpose and live “extraordinary lives”. I am reading Wayne Dyer now on how they do it, the shift appears to be all about mentality and mindset and beliefs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
find something that fills your heart, that comes easily to you, and will give you just enough
LikeLiked by 1 person
I call it emptiness because this is how it feels, but Buddhists call it a state of non-desire, or detachment. Here is a beautiful quote by Henry Shukman on how it feels like: “It had only been a matter of time. I hadn’t realized meditation was a time bomb waiting to go off… I dropped into the fringes of what those Zen masters and poets of long ago had found. “Body and mind fell away,” as one old master put it. “I fell into the midst of all things,” as another said. Personal agenda evaporated, the drama and story of “me” sloughed off, and a new kind of life emerged, born of a wide silence that pervaded the world, in which all things fizzed with a great peace.” Source: https://tricycle.org/magazine/henry-shukman
LikeLike