Empty Your Cup

Once, there was a wise teacher. People from far and near would come and ask for his wisdom. They would ask him to teach them, enlighten them, and he seldom turned anyone away.

One day, a very important man came to visit the teacher and asked to be taught spirituality. This man was used to getting his way most of the time and expected the same from the master.

The teacher smiled and invited the man for a cup of tea. When the tea was served, the teacher poured his visitor a cup. He poured and he poured. The tea rose to the rim of the cup, spilled over the saucer and the table, and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. The visitor, baffled and irritated, exclaimed, “Can’t you see the cup is full?”

At this, the teacher stopped pouring and smiled at his guest saying, “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when your cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”

I know that for the right practice of it the heart must be empty of all other things, because God will possess the heart alone; and as he cannot possess it alone, without emptying it of all besides, so neither can he act there, and do in it what he pleases, unless it be left vacant to him.
_{Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God}