I've said before that every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft. A builder looks for the rotten hole where the roof caved in. A water-carrier picks the empty pot. A carpenter stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint of emptiness, which they then start to fill.
Their hope, though, is for emptiness, so don't think you must avoid it. God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scopion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it, as dangerous and swarming with snakes. This is how strange your fear of death and emptiness is, and how perverse the attachment to what you want. Now that you've heard me on your misapprehensions, dear friend, listen to Attar's story on the same subject. He educated and provided royally for the boy and later made him vice-regent, seated on a gold throne beside himself.