the void part deux, or illusion illusion all around

Not long after I posted the last post about the void, I went back to Start Where You Are and almost immediately came upon a section that deals with dualism.  I realized, my whole void spiel could lead to a sense of duality, which is not where I wanted to go.  (By dualism here, I mean an idea of separateness, a convenient setup to categorize one thing as an "other", or different.)

I also chanced to look out the window, and the shadows of the leaves dancing on my roof made me think about the void being present.  Not outside my little sphere, not somewhere else, but the void is here too.  Shadows are absence of light - they can be seen, but are they manifest?  Are they... something?  So many things are not manifest, not "here", but are - thoughts, emotions, for example.  They are causations, certainly - we say we do things because of them.   But are they things?  Do they have existence?  What about the soul?  What is that?  Or spirit?  Or personality?

Yeah.  My little sphere of what I can hear, touch, see - it's an illusion.  If nothing else, it's as full of the void as what I imagined outside of it.  Nothing can be put safely away somewhere else.

I had been thinking of what was in the void, what I would have liked to relegate to the void.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Death.  Death practically equals the void.  The boogie monster, or whoever that is who is hiding under the bed/in the closet/beneath the stairs to the basement.  He lives in the void, and if only I could find a way to keep him from leaping out at me when I least expect it!

Never.  Never is of the void.  Never has become the scariest word in the English language to me.  I hate never.

But none of these things are really in the void, just as the void really is not somewhere else.  The void is right here, by my side.  Shadowing my every step.  Containing the monsters and the demons and the never.  They don't need to leap - they are right there.  Not a far distance at all.

And back I go, trying to learn how not to struggle anymore.

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I had my first after-school-let's-do-the-homework session with my Little yesterday, and I'm already fail!  We worked on science, not math, because the science was mathlike and she didn't have her book to do the math.  It was fine, until we got to the extra credit problem.  She said, "I don't have to do that", and I said, all enthusiastically, "Oh, but we do, it's extra credit and it's practice and it'll be great!!!"

Then we proceeded to stare at it for half an hour, until she finally said, "Maybe I should just ask my teacher..." and I had to concede I couldn't do it.  Now I'm determined to figure it out.  I know someone who is going to laugh at me heartily when he hears about this.
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Today I feel like a cork bobbling on the surface of a slightly wavy ocean, wondering where am I going and how is this going to all end up?

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