Finding the empty place
Somebody, I think a columnist, wrote that one has to find the empty places in oneself to do what my sister calls "the work", i.e. figuring oneself out in basic ways. The theory was that the places where you think you know what's up, the spaces of your ordinary life, those aren't the places to look. You wander into those areas in your brain where you don't have a clue and listen to or experience the empty place, seems to be the idea. Maybe so.
He was talking about spirituality, is what I gathered from it. But any good idea can often be applied in places other than from where it arose.