Filling life’s holes is in fashion.
It always infuses the heart with sudden passion.
But as the cracks in our lives widen,
we lose control and everything starts slidin’.

We put keys in the holes of our fears,
and shove food down the tunnels of our throats.
We squirt life into the moist recesses of wombs,
and stack stuff safely in the corners of rooms.

The Mystery pours into rivers of thought
filling us with desire.
But if you want to know the truth
all your time is squandered in and out of holes.

We bury bodies in holes to find the light.
Then we sleep under cavernous sheets in fright.
We dump waste in the crevasses of earth,
and store faith in the illusion of worth.

What’s this fascination with filling holes?
Are we really that empty?

What really stands out with most spiritual masters is their incredible depth of presence. Their minds just don’t keep them locked in the past or afraid of the future. What really makes life holy is the human ability to be receptive to the living flow of eternal love. To be fully present. That’s when you experience true value and true human fertility and unity with nature. Being receptive to the living flow of life; that’s the key.

Whenever I fast and enter the water phase for three or seven days I feel the deep hunger pangs and I repeat a simple mantra, "We’re always trying to fill the emptiness, never allowing the emptiness to simply fill us." And I mean that in both senses. To fill us and to feel us. Eternity is timeless which means motionless. So to enter the true experience of eternity we have to become silent, still and open and receptive to eternity.

In a way this society we’ve created for ourselves has given a bad reputation to silence because it’s so noisy. It doesn’t enjoy the silence. It’s afraid of the valley of nothingness between events. I once heard that the silence between the notes is where the art resides and I thought that it applies to life as well. The silence between the events is where the life resides. Those tranquil moments where you totally relax and really feel like you belong in the world. I wrote This Holy Life about how we’re constantly trying to clog those pure spaces with action, adventure, and noise.

We have to ask ourselves if we’re really honoring the silences in life and the silences in our relationships. Because if you're not giving deep reverence to the down time between doing and crossing off lists then you forget that you are a living being, a creation and extension of the living eternal flow. And that awareness is the Mystery in full expression. Then you’ll have time for God in your busy life. You’ll be inspired to devote time to eternal being.

And that’s when you realize enlightenment. When you’re in daily conversation with eternity, where eternity is not just an abstract concept, but a living presence beyond the boundaries of space and time where you literally find yourself in the heart of divine imagery and divine being. That’s enlightenment pure and simple. That’s the experience of satori that the Japanese poets and masters describe.