Words

Words

Awakening should be a surprise. When you don't expect something to happen and it happens, you feel surprise. When Webster's wife caught him kissing the maid, she told him she was very surprised. Now, Webster was a stickler for using words accurately (understandably, since he wrote a dictionary), so he answered her, "No, my dear, I am surprised. You are astonished!"

Awareness

Anthony de Mello

How to solve problems?

How to solve problems?

This reminds me of this fellow in London after the war.
He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it's a big, heavy object.
The bus conductor comes up to him and says, “What do you have on your lap there?”
And the man says, “This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I’m taking it to the police station.”
The conductor says, “You don't want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.”

Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the bomb from your lap to under your seat.
They don’t really solve your problems. They exchange your problems for other problems.
Has that ever struck you?
You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one. It’s always going to be that way until we solve the problem called “you.”

Awareness

Anthony de Mello

What is awakening like?

What is awakening like?

There’s a story about Ramirez.
He is old and living up there in his castle on a hill.
He looks out the window (he’s in bed and paralyzed) and he sees his enemy.
Old as he is, leaning on a cane, his enemy is climbing up the hill - slowly, painfully.
It takes him about two and a half hours to get up the hill.
There’s nothing Ramirez can do because the servants have the day off.
So his enemy opens the door, comes straight to the bedroom, puts his hand inside his cloak, and pulls out a gun.
He says, “At last, Ramirez, we’re going to settle scores!”
Ramirez tries his level best to talk him out of it.
He says, “Come on, Borgia, you can’t do that.
You know I’m no longer the man who ill-treated you as that youngster years ago, and you’re no longer that youngster. Come off it!”
“Oh no,” says his enemy, “your sweet words aren’t going to deter me from this divine mission of mine. It’s revenge I want and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
And Ramirez says, “But there is!”
“What?” asks his enemy.
“I can wake up,” says Ramirez. And he did; he woke up!

That’s what enlightenment is like.
When someone tells you, “There is nothing you can do about it,”
you say, “There is, I can wake up!”

Awareness

Anthony de Mello