The Brothers Grimm have a profound fairy tale called "The Magic Porridge Pot."
A mother and her daughter lived in poverty. One day, the girl went into the forest to pick berries and met an old woman who asked for some. In return, she gave the girl a magic pot. At the command, “Cook, little pot,” it would make porridge infinitely until someone said, “Stop, little pot”.
From that day on, they never went hungry again. But one day, after the daughter left, the mother started the pot and forgot how to stop it. Porridge flooded the house, then the street. Everything was drowning in porridge, and no one could stop the endless flow.
Fortunately, the girl returned from the forest and said, “Little pot, stop.”
The fairy tale illustrates why some women and men are afraid to unleash their true life force. They believe there is emptiness inside them, that they have no energy, that they are incapable of creating anything.
Reality is exactly the opposite. Within them lies an immense power of generativity, creativity, and abundance. It presses against the protective dam of the mind, desperately trying to break through.
Meanwhile, the person heroically tries to plug the hole with her own body while a powerful stream of “porridge” struggles to reach the world.
No wonder this battle drains all her strength and eventually breaks her body.
She is terrified of the very abundance of Life that both she and everyone around her desperately need.
But why?
She (or he) forgot, or was never taught, how to say, “Stop. Enough. No.”
Inside us, there must be a regulator, an interrupter of pleasure, a keeper of boundaries. Otherwise, food becomes poison, a good intention becomes violence, and paradise becomes hell.
The paradox is that a person can become truly creative and fruitful only when she knows with absolute certainty that she can stop the process at any moment.
That means deliberately creating Pause. Emptiness. Hunger. Nothing.
Surplus and Scarcity fundamentally need each other.
Want Abundance in your life? Learn to love and value Emptiness.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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