Thanks for the deep sharing — a good read. I searched, too, leaving Catholicism, played around with some New Age stuff for a time (The Summit Lighthouse). None of it really clicked. I love the Tao te Ching & a lot about Buddhism.

What you notice is that no new Buddha comes out of that school. All the founders of the lasting faiths were rebels of a sort, leaving everything else aside as unsatisfactory, going their own way. We don’t get that by following anything or anyone.

After touching down into the emptiness you initially described — that scared you — I made peace with it, finding in it a greater wisdom than anything. The first thing it teaches or illuminates is that we know nothing — that all we took to be valuable knowledge is as dust in the wind.

Such realizations irrevocably alter your life. If you don’t make changes, then you didn’t really get it — or have it taken away (what you thought you knew). One thing clear in your story is the external search, rather than going within.

Just wrote this, today — Dancing with Emptiness — Reality Shifts. You might enjoy it, perhaps even take another look into the internal emptiness, which is rather like a new birth, or birth into a new realm.

Have you considered shamanism? Lujan Matus has a lot of videos where his journey into the emptiness shines — a real Master — ever so deep. It’s a radical shift out of head, into Heart or Inner Being — far more peaceful, there. 😉

Wishing you only the best, whatever choices you make.

Namaste

~♥~