A Heart to Know and Ears to Hear: 4a

A poor person can approach a potential donor to seek food or cash with empty outstretched hands to receive that which is offered to him and receive great bounty. On the other hand, one who is destitute can come to a rich person's home with a small and narrow vessel which he has brought from home. He lacks the knowledge of how to collect donations in any other manner. He knows every nook and cranny of the pushka which he is carrying. Every day it is filled with the pennies people toss inside it, and he is reluctant to give it up. A donor may desire to offer him a donation that cannot possibly fit inside, but the poor person, refusing to give up his meager vessel, does not allow the donor to have that opportunity.

Similarly, a person may come to a holy place to pray. She needs help with a pressing problem, or she may be seeking inspiration. Rather than recognizing the opportunity presented before her - those spiritual powers that are present in this unique place - she arrives with pre-conceived notions that she is carrying with herself. She wants the salvation to fit itself within those pre-conceived notions. Awaiting her are gushing founts which can alter her entire existence, but she is standing there with her tiny pushka. She is repeating over and over the minutiae that inspired her to come here, but she neglects to empty herself of the baggage with which she has arrived to be open to be uplifted and to receive something greater. The holiness is speaking to her, but is not absorbed within. She is too busy trying to escape to receive.