In this special bonus episode, Thomas reads a short passage from the Tao Te Ching and shares spiritual practices and conceptual tools to help you let go of unhelpful ideas you’re clinging to and create spaciousness in your mind and body.
EPISODE 114
January 23, 2025
Bonus: Emptying the Mind
Share this:
Listen Now
Guest Information
Thomas Hübl
Thomas Hübl is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator whose work integrates the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has been facilitating large-scale events and courses that focus on meditation and mindfulness-based awareness practices, as well as the healing and integration of trauma.
His non-profit organization, The Pocket Project, works to support the healing of collective trauma throughout the world. He is the author of the book Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds.
His new book Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World is available now wherever books are sold. Visit attunedbook.com for links to order it online.
For more information, visit thomashuebl.com
Notes & Resources
Key points from this episode include:
- Letting go of images we create in order to see what’s really here
- Emptying ourselves so that we can be open to new information
- Observing the ideas we create with curiosity, and without judgment
Episode Transcript
Thomas Hübl:
Verse number one: “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The unnameable is eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire. You realize the mystery caught in desire. You see only the manifestations if mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. The source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.”
So the Tao invites us, or Lao Tse invites us to contemplate on our spiritual ideas, interpretations, imaginations. Because on the path we are maybe going towards enlightenment, towards a realization, towards a deep revelation, towards getting deeper immersed into the nature of the divine. But all of those things, I actually, the way we imagine that is not it. It’s ideas about its images that we create of the divine, of the Tao in our minds.
And the deep spiritual practice is actually to empty ourselves and our minds by becoming aware, by transcending, including, and slowly letting go the images that we create in order to realize more that which is always already here. So the Tao that can be named, the name becomes like an animated image in my mind. But when we empty the mind and this animated image ceases, then there is more space naturally. And in another part of the Tao it’s written, “And the master keeps your mind always at one with the Tao. How does she do it? Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.”
So becoming aware of the many ideas and interpretations about life that we are holding creates naturally more and more space. It’s like when you read a book, how often do you think that you’re looking at paper? Most of the time, once you start reading, after a minute or so, you’re so absorbed by the meaning that you forget that you’re looking at paper. But the letters and the meaning and the words only exist because there’s paper without paper. No words without space, no creation. And that’s why by emptying the page and by taking some of the letters and words out, there is paper. And even if the words are there, there’s paper. So once we realize the nature of the Tao or emptiness or that which has no name, we can be in life, we can read a book, but we are aware, we are looking at paper.
So there’s always space that gives us space for the things to arise that we experience all the time. Body sensations, emotions, thought, processes, perceptions of the world. All of that happens in a space. And so for today, I want to leave you with a contemplation of just looking at what are–and without judgment, oh, I shouldn’t have any spiritual ideas. More like, oh, with curiosity. I discover what kind of ideas I made myself, what kinds of images I made. And remember, an empty photo is also a photo. Like the idea I shouldn’t have ideas is also an idea. So that’s why we find a contemplative way with curiosity and amusement to get to know how creative we are in creating images of that which we are seeking. And I think that’s a fun journey.
