For instance, the loss of the will is generally related to fears about castration, as we discussed earlier. The loss of strength is related to repression of anger and also fear of separation from mother. The loss of compassion is always due to suppression of hurt. Each “hole” is filled generally by the same thing, with variations depending on the childhood history, and cultural and social circumstances of the person. Compassion, for instance, might be replaced by sentimentality and belief that one is a loving person; intuition might be replaced by excessive ideation, and strength by a show of being tough.

But the fullness of the Work is not the same thing as the fullness that people experience by filling their holes. The experience of filling a hole is not usually experienced as a fullness, really. You don’t experience fullness when somebody is filling your holes. It always feels shaky, and doesn’t feel really satisfying. It feels like a temporary kind of relief. There is a sense of grabbiness, of holding: you don’t want the other person to leave. You don’t want them to change the way they behave toward you. At a deeper level, it is actually a blockage, not an openness. While the fullness of the Work is the absence of blockage.

When we relate to someone else in a deep way – the deeper it is, the more this happens – we fill those holes with the other person. Some of our holes get filled with what we believe or feel we’re getting from the other person. We feel valued because this person appreciates us, and this fills our holes. We don’t know consciously that we’re filling it with their appreciation, we just feel full when we’re with them; we feel valuable. So, when I am with that person, I really feel I am valuable, but unconsciously I feel the other person has my value. The other person not only makes me feel valuable, but whatever the other person is giving me, is part of me, is part of that fullness that I experience.

A hole refers to any part of you that has been lost, meaning any part of you that you have lost consciousness of. What is left is a hole, a deficiency in a certain sense. What we have lost awareness of, is of course, our Essence. When we are not aware of our Essence, it stops manifesting and is lost. Then we feel a sense of deficiency. So a hole is nothing but the absence of a certain part of our Essence. It could be the loss of love, loss of value, loss of capacity for contact, loss of strength, the loss of will, loss of clarity, loss of pleasure, and any of those qualities of Essence. There are many of them. But when they are lost, they are not gone forever; they are never gone forever. You are simply cut off from them.

Allowing ourselves to tolerate the holes and go through them to the other side is more difficult now because everything in society is against this. Society is against Essence. Everybody around you, wherever you go, is trying to fill holes, and people feel very threatened if you don’t try to fill yours in the same way. When a person is not trying to fill his holes, it tends to make other people feel their own holes. So, it’s becoming more and more difficult to do the Work. And the Work is also becoming more and more needed.

Most of our discontent, pain and discomfort is the result of losing a part of ourselves. It's not because of the economy; it's not because we are ugly or fat or this or that. These are not the real reasons. So trying to get fulfillment by solving these supposed problems doesn't work. The dissatisfaction comes from not allowing ourselves to experience a part of us. We are full of holes, and the only way we can be fulfilled and complete is to stay with those holes so that part of us is allowed to manifest and function. This cannot happen as long as we try to fill our holes with something else.

A hole is usually filled with part of our personality that has the memory of what was lost, the memory of the situation that brought about the loss, the memories of the hurts and conflicts. We have to go through the hurt at the deepest level, get close to the hole itself, and then we will see the memory of what was lost. When we see the memory of what was lost, the Essence that was lost will start flowing again. So, any deep loss is an opportunity to grow, to understand more about yourself, to experience holes you believe can only be filled by someone else.

When we stop defending against feeling a hole, the actual experience is not painful. We simply experience empty space, a feeling that there is nothing there – but not a threatening nothingness – a spaciousness, an allowing. This spaciousness allows Essence to emerge and it is Essence and only Essence that can eliminate that hole, that deficiency from the inside.