You Came From Nothing. That's the Point.
What the origin of existence tells us about who we can become
Note: This piece draws from my original ideas, research, hooks, and metaphors. For editing and some wording, I’ve used AI tools trained on my own books and style, always blending technology with my hands-on curation and oversight. Thank you for being here—Jade.
It was a weekday in Winter, overcast but not dramatically so. A patient sat across from me staring toward the window. He had sought my help for deep depression that followed a divorce at the peak of what was obviously a midlife crisis. I was holding the silence. It was a long long silence. When he finally spoke he did so very slowly as if he was trying to convince himself of something. What he said has stuck with me. I haven’t been able to shake it since.
We’d been working through the usual territory... identity, self-worth, the stories we tell ourselves about why we’re stuck. His long silence was broken… “I feel nothing. I am nothing.”
Without even thinking, I said… “It makes sense. We all come from nothing and we have to choose to be something.”
He meant it as a confession of emptiness.
I heard it as the most profound thing anyone had said in that room in years.
He smiled. “I like that. I like that a lot. I am nothing and that is why I can be something.” He left my office that day changed. Something in that simple, abstract statement altered him. It was a durable change. He was different after that.
I confess I was not sure at the time what actually happened. Months later on reflection I understood what we were actually saying and why it helped so much. It is a conversation I have never forgotten.
The Big Idea
Here’s the question most of us never think to ask: where did we come from in the first place?
I know. You have beliefs about this. Religious, spiritual, scientific, agnostic. I’m not here to challenge any of that. What I want to do is take you on a short philosophical thought experiment and see if we can use it to understand something practical about the humans we’re becoming, or failing to become.
Because here’s the thing about questions of origin: they aren’t just abstract. They determine, quietly and without your permission, how much power you think you actually have.
So stay with me.
The Problem With “Something Can’t Come From Nothing”
Most people, when they really think about it, assume something must have created us. Something real, intentional, meaningful. God. The universe. Evolution. Consciousness. Whatever word you prefer.
But that logic hits a wall fast. If something made us, what made that something? And what made the thing that made that? You follow the chain back far enough and you end up in a loop where the original “something” had to come from somewhere.... and yet couldn’t have.
So which is it? Did we come from something, or from nothing?
And here’s where it gets interesting.
What if those two aren’t opposites?
Nothing Is Not Empty
Try to genuinely envision nothingness. What exactly is “no thing?”
If I have a cup with nothing in it, that emptiness is impossible to understand without the idea of something that could fill it. The very thought of nothing immediately demands the consideration of something. They aren’t opposites. They’re different expressions of the same thing.
Like vapor, water, and ice. Like night and day. You can’t have one without the other.
Consider zero. Zero represents the absence of a thing. But it’s also a holding place for all numbers simultaneously. It is both nothing in its literal interpretation..... and yet somehow generative by virtue of what it contains as possibility.
When empty space is added to more empty space, the result is still nothing. But it’s a more expansive nothing. A greater holding space for potential. More possibility.
This isn’t just philosophical wordplay. When physicists isolate empty space in a lab in a vaccum, they find that particles spontaneously appear and disappear within it. In other words even the worlds greatest physicist can’t isolate nothing without running into something.
Something from nothing isn’t a metaphor. It may be the most fundamental property of existence itself.
The Source Field
What do we call that original something-or-nothing? The thing from which all other things emerged?
You can call it God. New Age types call it Universe or Spirit. Physicist call it the field. The ground of being. I’m agnostic and have landed on calling it The Source Field or Source.
Here’s what I think we can say about Source, regardless of what you believe about its origin. It has to be inclusive, meaning it must encompass all things. It has to be integrated, meaning it must allow for all things simultaneously. That means it contains both expansion and contraction, growth and degradation, life and death, light and dark. It is balanced and flowing. Taoism captures this with Yin and Yang.
It most be holistic. If we look at nature we can see everything is included and nothing left out (inclusivity). Everything is also put together in a way that builds complexity (integration). And this integration does not lead to chaos but harmony. All things in nature flow and cycle and repeat rhythms perfectly (holism).
Source generates potential out of the possibility that nothingness provides.
Here is where this stops being abstract and explains my clients sudden turn around.
You Behave Like Source
We humans seem to express the same properties as Source.
We can imagine things into existence that have never before existed. We can integrate different attributes and create something more than the sum of parts. We are both participants in this world and co-creators of it.
There’s a reading of Genesis I find fascinating for this reason. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void.” “Without form” and “Void?” Sounds like concept of nothing to me.
In the beginning, there was nothingness. And then something became aware of itself.... noticed its own reflection in the dark depths of that void.... and from that awareness came the word. And from the word came creation.
We follow the same sequence. In our beginning, we are nothing. That nothing represents the empty space, the potential and possibility, for something. In that emptiness, we develop awareness. A will to create.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a biological sequence. Consciousness precedes identity. Identity precedes action. Action precedes transformation.
The Breakdown: What This Actually Means for a Life
Here’s the framework I’ve been working with for years, and it matters more now than ever.
We humans are individual pieces of Source potential. Our capacity to reason, to choose, to create, to integrate or separate, to evolve ourselves and others... these are not personality traits. They are tools we use to move from Source to potential, from potential to being, from being to Next Level Human Being.
But here’s the tension most self-help misses entirely.
We are somewhere between the Source from which we came (nothing) and the purpose we can choose to create (something). We are what I call “purpose potential.” Not nothing. Not fully something. Emerging.
That emergence can go two directions.
When we use our imaginative and integrative capacities toward useful creation, we become part of the positive expansion of ourselves, others, and the world. We grow, and we contribute to growth.
When we channel those same capacities toward destruction, toward tearing things apart, toward defaulting on our potential, we degrade. And the degradation isn’t just personal. It contracts Source too. It shrinks what’s possible.
This is the part nobody we miss: our daily choices about who we’re becoming are not just personal decisions. They are, in a very real sense, cosmological ones.
The Three Imperatives
Out of this understanding, there are three things that matter if you want to integrate, grow, and expand. I call them the Three Imperatives. They are the reason we are here.
Learn. Teach. Love.
Learning turns potential into awareness. Teaching, which means sharing, contributing, giving, turns awareness into purpose. Loving, which means considering, integrating, creating, releasing, uses purpose to evolve Source itself. And then it flows back to us.
In this way, Source gives us life. And we give life back to Source.
Striving toward anything outside these three imperatives degrades us, degrades others, degrades the world. It shrinks rather than expands what’s possible.
Practical Takeaway
This week, run this filter on your choices.
Ask yourself honestly: is what I’m doing an act of learning, teaching, or loving? Or is it something else disguised as one of those things?
Because the MUD (Misguided Unconscious Decisions) we’ve all accumulated since childhood has a way of hijacking these imperatives. We call avoidance “self-care.” We call controlling others “teaching.” We call dependency “love.”
The filter isn’t complicated. But it requires you to be honest with yourself more rigorously than you’re probably used to.
That is the actual work.
Coming Back to the Man in My Office
He said “I am nothing” like it was the end of the story.
But nothing is not empty. Nothing is holding space. Nothing is pure potential..... waiting for awareness to arrive and recognize itself.
His nothing wasn’t a deficit. It was the raw material. It was potential.
In that exchange he suddenly saw that the future he imagined could be reimagined. He saw that starting over was suddenly possible. Not only possible but required. He could choose to create something out of his nothing… in fact he all of a sudden understood that was the point.
The question isn’t where you came from or what happened to you. The question is what you’re doing with the empty space? Life happened. How are you going to happen back.
Source is in us, and we are in Source. The way we live is either a self-expanding cycle of creative possibility or a self-perpetuating degradation of it. We are participants and influencers in that ebb and flow.
Unlike any other animal, we are aware of that fact. We are capable of doing something about it.
That is what makes us different. Coming to terms with that power is where it begins.
PS: If you’re ready to break free of feeling like you came from nothing and become the kind of person who naturally grows, contributes, and evolves the world around them, explore my Next Level Human coaching program today. Spots are limited… don’t wait. 👉 http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
It's kind of crazy how we limit ourselves when we forget about the vastness of our existence
This resonates, what comes up: no decision is a decision, no choice is a choice. It's empowering and tastes of FREEDOM 🙏