Awareness – by Anthony De Mello

 

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NOTESMost of what we feel and think we conjure up for ourselves in our heads.

You are never in love with anyone. You’re only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person.
Isn’t that how you fall out of love? your idea changes, doesn’t it?

We don’t want to be unconditionally happy. I’m ready to be happy provided I have this and that and the other thing. We cannot imagine being happy without those conditions. We have been taught to place our happiness in them.

Its only when you’re sick of your sickness thatr you’ll get out of it, Most people go to a psychiatrist to get relief, NOT to get out of it.

When you renounce something, you’re stuck to it forever. When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. Don’t renounce it, see through it. Understand its true value and you won’t need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands. If you woke up, you’d simply drop the desire for it.

The first step, as I said, was a readiness to admit that you don;t want to wake up, that you don’t want to be happy. There are all kinds of resistances to that within you. The second step is a readiness to understand, to listen, to challenge our whole belief system.

Why not concentrate on the now instead of hoping for better times in the future? Why not understand the now instead of forgetting it and hoping for the future?

If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re OK, you are preparing yourself tom feel bad when they tell you you’re not good.

One sign that you’re awakened is that you don;t give a damn about whats going to happen in the next life. You’re not bothered about it; you don’t care. You are not interested. Period.

I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy you company immensely, but I do not cling.

You fear no one because you’re perfectly content to be nobody. you don’t give a damn about success or failure. They mean nothing. Honor, disgrace, they mean nothing! If you make a fool of yourself, that neabs nothing either. Isn’t that a wonderful state to be in!

There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and its because you are thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.

They are unhappy people, they are miserable people. They don’t enjoy life. They are constantly tense and anxious. Do you call that human? And do you know why that happens? Only one reason: They identified wth some label. They identified the “I” with their money or their job or their profession. That was their error.

True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, “Why are you happy?” and the awakened person replies “Why not?” Happiness is our natural state.

Four steps to wisdon
1. Get in touch with negative feelings that you’re not even aware of.
2. Understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality.
3. Never identify with that feeling. It has nothing to do with the “I.” Don’t define your essential self in terms of that feeling. Don’t say “I am depressed” If you want to say “depression is there” thats fine.
4. How do you change things? You must change yourself.

Put this program into action:
a. identify the negative feelings in you
b. understand they ar ein you, not in the world, not in external reality.
c. do not see them as an essential art of “I”; these things come and go
d. understand that when you change. Everything changes.

To say NO to people — thats wonderful. Thats part of waking up. Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is NOT selfish. The selfish thing to do is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit.

You’re never so full of yourself as when you’re in pain. You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re despressed. Happiness releases you from self.

Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don’t. It’s you who give the power to them.

You’re more likely to respond accurately when you perceive clearly.

If you don’t look at things through your concepts, you’ll never be bored. Every single thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other sparrow despite the similarities.

The root of sorrow is craving. Craving distorts and destroys perception. Fears and desires haunt us.

In many ways we were drugged when we were young. We were brought up to need people. For what? for acceptance, for approval, appreciation, applause –for what they call success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don’t realize that they don’t correspond to reality.

You attitude should be: “I want to be aware, I want to be in touch with whatever is and let whatever happens happen; if I’m awake, fine, and if I’m asleep, fine.” The moment you make a goal out of it and attempt to get it, you’re seeking ego glorification, ego promotion.

Loneliness is when you’re missing people, aloneness is when you’re enjoying yourself.

To be without the drug is so unbearable a torment that it seems preferable to die. Think of that image — the body has gotten addicted to the drug. Now this is exactly what your society did to you when you were born. You were not allowed to enjoy the solid, nutritious food of life – namely work, play, fun, laughter, the company of people, the pleasure of the senses and the mind. You were given a taste for the drug called approval, appreciation, attention.

The sign of a sick child is that he is always hovering around his parents; he is interested in persons. The healthy child has no interest in persons, he is interested in things. When a child is sure of his mother’s love, he forgets his mother; he goes out to explore the world; he is curious.

Love the thought of death. Love it. Think of the loveliness of that corpse, of that skeleton, of those bones crumbling till theres only a handful of dust. From there on: what a relief.

“We live in a flash of light; even comes and it is night forever.” It’s only a flash and we waste it. We waste it with out anxiety, our worries, our converns, our burdens.