Hi Reader,

This newsletter marks the end of this series. Fittingly, it's about the idea that nothing ends.

The last few weeks I've written about the spirituality/empiricism distinction, what God is to me, whether God exists, and I even took a crack at naming an empirical God: SE.

I've continued to reflect on these things, and the only thing I want to state about them this week is that to me, saying SE exists is little more than saying there's actually something really real out there (or maybe "out there") and that I'm going to treat it with as much seriousness as I can.

And also, life is too short to take things too seriously (and it seems likely my ability to know anything is severely limited), so I'm also going to maintain my sense of humor and keep things generally lighthearted. My calling is that people experience coming home, and if home is a joyless wasteland then my calling sucks.

So, most importantly, enjoy your life. Which includes not reading anymore of these words if that sounds good to you.

Now: about that nothing ends.

I keep saying "that" nothing ends and not "how" nothing ends, which I realize might read funny, but it seems like a better way to express what I'm trying to say. I don't know how nothing ends. I mean, I don't really know that nothing ends, either; I'm just trying to articulate a felt sense more than a function of reality.

I'm also trying to flip my perspective and look at the other side of something I wrote a few weeks ago, which was that this word, "everything," is vague. It could refer to a bunch of stuff or one stuff. And then we have its opposite, "nothing," which must refer to... no bunches of stuff or no stuff, I guess.

And if, as we discussed before, SE is in (or just IS) a constant process of self-creation, then SE has no end. In other words, there is no non-SE. There is no nothing. So nothing ends because nothing doesn't exist.

But then, do you see how that's a little suspicious? Because the phrase we're looking at, "nothing ends," makes sense. We could state it differently, "everything persists." How is that different?

It's different in the same kind of way that "everything is a funny word" can be read two different ways ("everything" plural vs. "everything" singular).

If I'm saying nothing-plural, then that IS the same as saying each individual thing in existence persists (and, implicitly, changes form and contributes to the changingness of all forms).

But if I'm saying nothing-singular, then that's an absolute statement. "Nothing" (as in, the thing-that-is-no-thing) DOES end.

But does it? Earlier I said it doesn't even exist.

So is this just a trick of imprecise language, a silly word game? I mean, honestly it might be. And isn't that just a pitch perfect way to end a series where I said I'm trying to treat this as seriously as I can...

But I think there's another way of looking at this, a way that initially feels infinitely sad to me but which I think (hope, maybe?) if I continue to feel my way into it eventually will feel like peace, which is this: everythingness cannot exist without nothingness. SE cannot (does not?) exist without the raw material of existence, and the raw material of existence is nonexistence.

What I'm imagining is this metaphorical plane of existence/nonexistence, above which is stuff and below which is formlessness and void. Everything (plural) is constantly rising and falling above and below the plane, coming into and fading out of existence. This includes the me I call me and the you I call you (and this is what the sadness is about, I think).

The peace, on the other hand, is about this: despite, or maybe because of, life's struggle to rise above the plane and become a magnificent cresting wave of everythingness, joyous and fragile (and increasingly fragile the higher it goes), there is a kind of satisfaction when a wave crashes upon the shore and disappears into the sand. But satisfaction isn't the right word, because this disappearance isn't "right" or "good." It just "is." In the same way that you ARE and I AM, and in the same way that in the "places" we call the past and future, we AREN'T. (Thus, it IS that we AREN'T.)

In the vast scope of SE, we spend most of our time being nothing. There's beauty in being something, but in order for us to be this something that we are, our nothingness must end. So nothing ends, and nothing ends. And all good and bad judgements cancel each other out and are rendered meaningless. As is, I suspect, everything.

When I manage to most fully embody coming home, it's most common for me to feel that death is nearby. I think what I am striving to learn, to grow towards, is that the rising wave of life, though a struggle, just as thoroughly deserves to be felt as, and called, home.