It's human nature to fill the space. If there's a lull in conversation or a silence when we're with someone, the human urge is to say something, anything. If we have some spare time, we wonder what we're going to do, how we're going to spend that time. How will we fill the space in our time? Also in our homes, it's easy to fill them up with things. We're always filling the space.

It seems unusual to sit with someone in silence, doing nothing. It feels okay if we're on our phones or reading books, but not just sitting there. Even on our own the mind keeps active with thoughts. We find something to do. If not we feel bored and the mind complains that there's nothing to do.

This is where the spiritual practice of just being comes in. It's not what the mind wants. It's afraid of the nothingness. But the nothingness is our spiritual saviour. The nothingness is the prefect peace of our true being. We truly are the stillness, the silence, the peace, the emptiness, the spaciousness, the nothingness. Our true nature is the core stillness that allows movement. We are the invisible nothingness that allows the apparent visible everything. We are the permanent full emptiness that animates the changing world.

This emptiness scares the human self, so it fills the space with things. The human self distracts itself from the silence, the emptiness, the peace. At least until it gets to a point of looking for that peace, looking for the quiet. Then the human self seeks quiet places and quiet times to sit and be at peace. Maybe the human self meditates. Maybe the mind relaxes a little.

Sometimes it seems that more work needs to be done to reach that placeless place of peace. We need to recognise that the mind's impulse is to avoid it.

Sit back and just be. Let go of thinking and doing, and be as you are. You are not the human who is afraid of silence and emptiness. You are the Perfect Peace of Stillness.