Short Story: Arnold meets a Jewish Rabbi, and understands then the fullness of emptiness
By emptychair
@innertalks (23746)
Australia
March 27, 2017 6:09pm CST
Arnold was already well into his sixties when he came across a spiritual teaching that he had not paid much attention to ever before in his life.
This was the Jewish Religion.
Arnold had met a Rabbi who was giving a talk about emptiness in his local library, one Friday night.
Rabbi Rachnivov had entitled his talk:
# Let the non-emptiness of real emptiness be all emptied out #
Here is what he said that night:
"Emptiness only achieves its true state from the fullness of love emptying itself into nothing but emptiness. The emptiness anyone feels inside of them is not true emptiness. This is the false emptiness of feeling some non-love in your life."
"When you know only love, not only are you filled with the spirit of that love, but the emptiness of yourself in relation to that love, connects you to oneness in such a way that you become oneness and oneness becomes you, so that emptiness lives in you when you are emptied of yourself into oneness."
"The way to achieve this is to love fully. There is no other way."
"We become aware of the wrong kind of emptiness, if we feel that we need to fill it."
"When we fully love another person, the emptiness that we feel, is because we feel fully, that we have given completely of our love."
"When we do this, we feel the real fullness then of the real emptiness."
All through the Rabbi's talk, Arnold had been stewing over what his title had really meant. It seemed to be double-talk to him, meaning nothing really at all.
Just then, the Rabbi concluded his talk with these remarks.
"Some of you might have wondered about the meaning of the wording of my talk. When we are attached to working something out of nothing, we become full of these attachments then."
"Just let things be, and nothing will reveal itself to you as the something that you were not seeking. You always seek after the wrong thing. There is no need to seek at all. Just love, and all else will come to you then."
"The emptiness that is true is the emptiness never emptied out, but filled with the falseness of its filling."
"The rightness of any writing is never right when it is wrong, because wrongness and rightness are never achieved in any writing, nor is emptiness ever emptied out from itself."
"The emptiness that is real must then be seen to be real, by you removing the falseness of non-emptiness, not from the real emptiness, but by merely seeing that it was never there in reality at all, in the first place."
"All is real in its emptiness, and so oneness then becomes something then within you."
Arnold went home that night a changed man. His confusion had left him, being dragged out of him by his mind trying to unravel any sense in the Rabbi's talk.
He had lost his ability to be confused by the end of the talk.
Funnily enough, though, he felt the emptiness of this loss, as love for the Rabbi.
As soon as he had felt this, a wonderfully warm feeling of utter fullness had filled him to the brim.
Arnold had gone home that night, almost walking on air, as that was how free and empty he had felt.
Full and empty at the same time. Now he knew that this was what oneness itself was too.
2 people like this
2 responses
@atoz1to10 (6780)
• Australia
28 Mar 17
This is why people often say that one's never too old to learn new things...
Thanks for sharing...
2 people like this

@Shiva49 (28405)
• Singapore
28 Mar 17
It sounds like an oxymoron, but obviously it is not.
Living with a feeling of fullness all the time is in a way like not being open to new ideas and living with a closed mind.
We should be prepared to learn, unlearn and relearn all our lives and not block out fresh air.
When we allow love to waft in, we are elevated to a higher awareness of what life is about.
After all, the whole creative process is love in motion.
Love drives our very existence, breath.
We seem to take much for granted!
We have to stay connected with the most basic of existence - love - siva
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23746)
• Australia
28 Mar 17
We can become so attached to the idea of our wanting emptiness, or to experience it, that we then sometimes will fill the emptiness with our attachments... LOL....
Yes, it sounds like a contradiction.
You are right, if we stay connected to love, all else will be taken care of then too, as the Christian bible tells us.
"Seek love first, and all else will be provided to you then, as well."
That's paraphrasing the more well-known quote:
"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."
Matthew, chapter 6, verse 33.
1 person likes this
@innertalks (23746)
• Australia
29 Mar 17
@Shiva49 The emptiness we feel is right next to our ability to love or not to love, because emptiness is always empty of love, and nothing else can fill emptiness but love. Yes, only selfless love can fulfil us.
1 person likes this
@Shiva49 (28405)
• Singapore
28 Mar 17
@innertalks It is said if we pursue a selfless life then we feel really fulfilled.
If we are egoless, then we are one without borders.
Nothing can faze us then, and we spread love from our very being.
We can also meet the right associates and thus get elevated - siva
1 person likes this







