Valuing emptiness

If we're too full of ourselves we are unable to be receptive to anything; we are especially unreceptive to that which give us freedom. Matthew Fox looks at the importance of emptiness in his book Creation Spirituality:

Healthy mysticism praises acts of letting go, of being emptied, of getting in touch with the space inside and expanding this until it merges with the space outside. Space meeting space; empty pouring into empty. Births happen from that encounter with emptiness, nothingness... Let us not fight emptiness and nothingness, but allow it to penetrate us even as we penetrate it.

There is a wonderful story about a professor who visits a Zen master for instruction. The master offers him tea and, while pouring his cup, keeps on pouring till the cup overflows. "Stop!" cries the professor. "It is overful."

"Just like your mind with all its ideas and concepts. First empty your cup and then I can teach you."

Let's all be willing to empty our cup today and be receptive to what reality has to teach us.