The Sound of the Void

Flickr-the void-Marco BellucciIda Lawrence, Contributor
Waking Times

How good it is when you begin to heal and you’re suddenly aware of the change – it’s the wonderful ‘wow I feel better’ moment. Whether it’s physical, emotional or spiritual, back into balance is mighty nice. Now, I’m guessing that there are readers who are consistently in balance and rarely experience the ‘I feel better’ moment. They’re always better, and that’s a beautiful thing. I’m happy for all of those who enjoy wellness throughout their lives. Health practices, right living, right thinking, self-protection; plus maybe just a bit of genetic good luck can go a long way toward an illness-free life.

And yet I know there are plenty of spiritually-minded beautiful and loving people who experience stress, anxiety, disease, weight issues, addiction, depression, age-related discomfort… all sorts of impacts from growing up and living in an ‘energy-hostile’, conditioned, programmed, toxic world. What peace and oneness we may know at birth we soon forget as the dis-ease of this 3-D experience takes over. We begin to do as we are supposed to do, or as we are sometimes forced to do… and we experience harm to our true selves and to our physical bodies as well. Something starts to know discomfort… something starts to retreat to the back room of longing.

Was Carl Jung right when he said, “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size?” My life experience tells me yes: how much ground can you gain if you ‘fight’ anxiety, for example. If energy-depleted or out of balance is what we are, we can accept what we are, forgive ourselves, love ourselves and decide to change. Healing involves a change of heart, which is intention; followed by dedication, effort, commitment, and belief.

Belief: an essential element of any change is believing the change has already occurred. Trust yourself… the circumstances you imagine already exist!


  • For the past few weeks I’ve been observing the effects of stress on the people around me. Stress, whether it manifests as physical, emotional or spiritual, is such a factor in depletion of energy and going out of balance. Meditation, on one level, is a tried and true way of dealing with stress, raising energy and bringing balance. It is also favorable for some other wonderful outcomes including direct experience of the unified field of intelligence, also referred to as the void or the morph.

    I understand that meditation may not be a busy person’s first choice for healing, stress reduction or even consciousness work. There are other choices that people make… from martial arts to yoga to ayahuasca, and even to reading a book or walking in nature. These things are great choices, and if they work, they work. Still, there are unique benefits to meditation; benefits that may actually have the effect of tipping the collective consciousness back toward balance. So I encourage it and I do it… gratefully.

    When people tell me that meditation takes some getting used to, and they are not sure it’s benefiting them, and they are not sure they’re making any progress… well, what’s new? That’s no different than my own experience. Unlike in years gone by, when people would spend decades devoted to a master, we are living in a ‘sped up’ world. Once society tells us that our ‘growing up’ is done, responsibilities come on fast. Few of us have the inclination or the resources for a ‘tune in drop out’ lifestyle. Most are inclined to do like I did… come to meditation as a life-saving, lifelong growth process.

    A little bit of my story: My first experience with meditation was kind of funny, and a total flop. A friend of mine had made the wise observation that I needed to calm my mind, and he suggested that I meditate on an object… any object… even a paperclip. So when the children were napping, I began to sit still and force my overactive mind to focus on a paperclip. Ha! Every argument in the arsenal, plus plenty of body aches and itches, came up to tell me what a stupid idea meditation is. After about two weeks I signed off with a “No thanks, I have things to do.”

    That’s the funny thing about change. If you don’t come to the realization yourself, and it’s pushed on you from someone else, it won’t last.

    The next time I felt the need to meditate and explore within was after raising two families and years of political activism. I knew I was in trouble spiritually. Self esteem had dropped to an all-time low and my stoic, ‘I’m doing the right thing’ attitude was crumbling. Feeling a kind of desperate need for self, I returned to the consciousness and self-help books that had sustained me in the past. There I found a recommendation for the theta metronome sound.

    I made the decision, dedicated the time, and began listening to the ‘irritating’ beeping rhythm. Eventually that beeping became almost like a friend. I could definitely see the benefit of slowing down my brainwave activity in this way. In this meditation you don’t focus on any imagery… you let the sound take the attention. Later I would realize that the great gift is in the space between sounds, but at that time I didn’t know it, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was the trance state, the relaxation, and the inner vision that began to open up.

    So what happened next? I came into contact with meditation for self-clearing and energy raising, moving and expansion. This happened through contact with a remote healer who was also a meditation guide. The energy work is done through visualization. Self-clearing, which uses some guided imagery or sometimes simply intention, was done in group meditation. The focus of the group work was on inner child, letting go of attachments, connecting with inner feminine and masculine and so on. I have enjoyed all of this work, and benefited greatly from it.

    Still, I felt the need for something that would carry me forward as a lifetime practice… something that would take me to the void or morph, and to the unified field of oneness. I had read, from Deepak Chopra, that, “Silently repeating a mantra as you meditate is a powerful way to enter the silence of the mind.” I had also read that healing comes faster through use of a mantra, and that the ideal is to receive a mantra from a teacher who is familiar with your individual resonance (your energy /sound /vibration /light).

    Through a reading and remote healing I had come to know Soren Dreier, and when I saw that he had a new offering based upon his accumulated skills of energy reading, remote healing utilizing sound, and Ruby Road (detachment) meditation – with a mantra based on the individual’s resonance – I realized that life had sent me, again, exactly what I need.

    This type of meditation targets stress… at first, surface-based stress, and then it goes deeper into emotional stress. After that, even deeper… into the void. Beautifully, the mantra is protective, so I could completely surrender to the experience, knowing that I wouldn’t encounter anything to break the peace.

    As my story demonstrates, there is a natural inclination within us to be healed from the onslaught of a world not so friendly to consciousness. Something loves us, something wants us to be in balance, and it must be our own ‘I Am’. Opportunity comes, and it meets our needs. We call it synchronicity.

    Could it be that the oneness that we knew at birth never did leave us; it stayed in that back room of longing as nudge to move forward… a spiritual need? I think so: somewhere deep inside we have always heard the sound of the void, and that is what helps us shape our reality.

    About the Author

    Ida Lawrence is an author, blogger, copywriter and editor based in Atlanta, Georgia. She has contributed to and edited two books on racial justice and human rights, and numerous articles on human rights, self-empowerment and related subjects. Her latest book is entitled The Warrior’s Way to Heaven on Earth. Ida has also published a companion book of blog favorites from http://talk2momz.com/.

    This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.

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