Letters to Asoka Richie|

The Empty Chamber: When the Heart is Void of Love

Letter#6 Reply To Asoka Richie’s letter to Love

February 5, 2024

Hey Asoka,

It’s been a while, I know. I am sorry for the delay. As you may already know, I wait until I feel a story, so it may take a day or a week before the right content is felt before I write back to you.

Do know that I do read your letters over and over too. I want to step in your shoes and feel what you may have felt when you were writing back to me and it feels like our letters are truly from the deep chambers of our hearts.

Asoka, you wrote:

I have been going through some deep transitions within. More and more I am seeing how craving is the cause of suffering, and more and more I feel disgusted with it. I have said things I regret because of greed, hate, and delusion and lost friends.

It is the root of all selfishness in the mind. And I feel more determined than ever to abandon it. To never again say or do anything that would hurt another. I have been foolish in things I have written at times and I feel remorse for that. Our words can be a source of pain to others, but also joy. It’s a great responsibility.

It is painful to see how awful I can be at times; but also a valuable lesson that has helped me see clearly how craving is the cause of all sorrow and it has made me all the more determined to uproot it.

I give up trying to fix the world.

I started crying about this last phrase. “I give up trying to fix the world.”

I started to reminisce about my pain and how I ended up writing about love and filling my heart with so much of it. Sometimes it is painful to see our loved ones suffer through a cruel world.

Did you know that the millions of authors and readers on this platform would rather read and write about “How they made $$$” or “How they gained XXXX amount of followers?” or “Top 5 things to Get Rich”

We haven’t seen any trends about love. What about kindness? What about Mother Earth? Nature? Humanity as a whole? Our oneness and the connection we have to each other and to our universe?

This is the job we have ahead of us, my friend. I cannot reach each soul and try to mend mankind alone.

In our human experience, love is a quintessential emotion, a force that binds, fuels passion, and grants the warmth of connections. However, what happens when this vital emotion within us grows silent and empty?

Let me briefly try to go through an exploration into the life of a heart void of love and discuss its landscape that’s both poignant and profoundly constructive. These are my personal feelings about losing the emotion of love.

What causes a heart to be void of love? Perhaps the void emerged due to the loss of a loved one, disillusionment, or a protective response to past hurts. It is such a state when all the colors of the world turn monochrome and the music fades into a distant murmur. Joy becomes elusive, and even in a crowd, one can feel an isolating barrier between themselves and the world. The lack of emotional nourishment can lead to existential hunger, a yearning for something that seems just beyond reach.

This barren state that many of us are in may be just a transformative phase—the empty chamber may not just be a place of void but also a room for reflection and growth.

It is in this silence that we can hear our inner voice most clearly, and in the absence of external affection, we can learn the art of self-love and self-compassion.

Asoka, then you wrote:

I still feel love, but I am practising loving other beings without clinging to them. I radiate love but without expecting anything in return or taking on another’s suffering. I just wish all beings well and this makes the heart feel full.

It’s not always easy, some days are harder than others. Like today I had to make a real effort to generate feelings of love, it wasn’t until the afternoon that I felt that warmth in my heart again.

It was the birds that helped me. I felt great love swell up in me for the crows and seagulls as they flew to greet me on my walk, and this, in turn, made it easier to feel love for people. Humans are harder to love I find because they can be so judgemental. Everyone has an opinion like everyone has an arse. But animals never judge me. They are just happy to see me as I am.

I reached a flow state at one point. Everything on my walk was happening, but I had no thoughts about it and I wasn’t clinging to anything.

It all just became a flow of different energies arising and ceasing, and it felt pleasant not clinging to it. Sense impressions made contact with the sense bases, but they didn’t take root in the mind to become craving. It felt peaceful, and time disappeared. It was a beautiful state.

You added:

Often what I write seems to be speaking to me. I have learnt a lot from my own writing. There’s something about attempting to articulate things that helps me understand them better.

Asoka, you are already showing how resilient your heart is. You are remarkably adaptable, capable of finding fulfillment in various forms of love—like the birds and nature. Have you tried having bird and animal sounds before sleeping and waking up? I do listen to them and it sets the tone for my day. It does bring joy to hear the song of the humpbacks or the birds chatting away.

While your heart may be devoid of love at times, which may be desolate at times, you might be merely in a state of pause and not in a permanent state of emptiness.

I love reading about your journey inward, to the core of your being. I am so thankful for the honesty and vulnerability you share in our letters. I do know that your heart is capable of loving so deeply, in spite of its void of love sometimes, but because of the strength you have now gained in learning how to live through it.

We are in this together, Asoka.

Thank you for writing to me.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Love

Here are all our letters between Asoka Richie and Love: