Void

Just so I don't forget again.  And in case anybody reads these things and is interested.
Meditating with Hunter just before bedtime, I got back to a place I had discovered a couple years ago, but had forgotten.  OK, I didn't FORGET; I knew I had gotten to a place.  I remembered exactly where I was the last time I was there. I remember having the same, "Oh yeah this is reality and it is always here for me. This is really cool." But then I forgot what the magic steps are to get there.  I KNEW that it is not hidden, but yet it has eluded me for a couple years.
Meditating for me is usually about concentrating on breath and focusing awareness between the thoughts.  At least as a starting point.  But there is a way you can also turn your inward gaze around backwards. There is this void that is dark, yet at the same time has light that flows through it.  It's very good.
Let me explain.
It's as if I am usually sitting in my body somewhere in my mind behind my eyes.  Usually I'm focused on whatever is in front of me, or whatever is in front of my mind's eye-- you know, thought objects, stuff I'm planning, or worried about... things I need to do.  That sort of stuff.  There's usually so much of this, that I can barely hold on to any kind of inner space... so I have to kind of just move between the thoughts... the spaces in between.  That's about as good as it usually gets for me.  I'm not really that great of a meditation practitioner.
But if you accept that the thought objects and feelings in consciousness are kind of  "in front" of your point of awareness, or the place where that awareness comes from, then you can begin to imagine that there is a "behind" that point.
I think that this might be what they were talking about in that classical Chinese Taoist text, "The Golden Pill" where they talk about "turning the light around"  (i.e., the light of awareness) and "bathing in the infinite".  I think this might be what the Buddhist texts refer to as Void.

For me it was a place of stillness.  Dark, yet with light moving through it somehow. I had the feeling that it would be good to stay there for a good long while, and that this was indeed possible, although perhaps not a good choice at this exact moment, because it would take my body a bit of time to get used to sitting for that length of time.  Also, because I need to sleep and get ready for work tomorrow and that sort of thing.

It is like a place of non-being that is more real than being somehow.   And it's always available to us.  It is really big, yet it's also really small because it can fit in the little tiny silent space between two thoughts or a brief good-night meditation session with my child.

So anyway, I don't want to forget this so I'm writing it down.  Kind of like a map, so I can find my way back tomorrow.