Finding Peace and Joy In The ‘No-thingness’

Like Neo in the movie The Matrix (1999) our minds occasionally slip into luminous moments of complete stillness and clarity — tiny mental pauses where all thinking stops just long enough for us to glimpse the truth of all existence.

In these fleeting spaces between our thoughts, it becomes clear that the comings and goings of life are just that… temporary ‘blips’ of experience that arise and pass through our awareness.

I have come to know these moments as realizations of ‘no-thingness.’

In these brief pauses, something quietly opens up within us. We notice the obvious — what has always been there — hidden behind the busy waking mind and its constant commentary. Our awareness shifts from being consumed by temporary events to seeing what’s always there: the background, the container, the eternal.

These silent mental breaks reveal something much deeper and greater than our own existence and awareness.

There’s a word for this in ancient Sanskrit: svabhāva. It means one’s true nature — the essence of who we are beneath the roles, stories, and conditioning. The term is used in many yogic and Vedantic texts to describe the innate reality or unconditioned self beyond our human ego and thoughts.

Our true authentic self is not something we become. It’s something we remember. When we glimpse the silence between thoughts, we’re not discovering something new — we’re reconnecting with our original divine self. Not the self that reacts and worries, but the self that simply is. Svabhāva is the part of us that doesn’t come and go. It’s the constant presence behind every changing moment. It is the essence of living a truly conscious life.

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