{"id":3738,"date":"1990-01-01T13:58:00","date_gmt":"1990-01-01T18:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/?p=3738"},"modified":"2023-04-13T13:59:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T17:59:38","slug":"awareness-the-perils-and-opportunities-of-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/?p=3738","title":{"rendered":"Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
by Anthony de Mello<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foreword<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

A man found an eagle\u2019s egg and put it in a nest of barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken. He scratched the earth for worms and insects. He clucked and cackled. And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Years passed and the eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The old eagle looked up in awe. \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         \u201cThat\u2019s the eagle, the king of the birds,\u201d said his neighbor. \u201cHe belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth – we\u2019re chickens.\u201d So the eagle lived and died a chicken, for that\u2019s what he thought he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Astonished? At first I felt downright insulted! Was he publicly likening me to a barnyard chicken? In a sense, yes, and also, no. Insulting? Never. That wasn\u2019t Tony\u2019s way. But he was telling me and these people that in his eyes I was a \u201cgolden eagle,\u201d unaware of the heights to which I could soar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         This was Tony de Mello at his best, proclaiming the message of \u201cawareness\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are we talking about psychology in this spirituality course?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         It\u2019s only when you\u2019re sick of your sickness that you\u2019ll get out of it. Most people go to a psychiatrist or a psychologist to get relief. I repeat: to get relief. Not to get out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither is Renunciation the Solution<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Anytime you\u2019re practicing renunciation, you\u2019re deluded. How about that!<\/em> You\u2019re deluded. What are you renouncing? Any time you renounce something, you are tied forever to the thing you renounce. There\u2019s a guru in India who says, \u201cEvery time a prostitute comes to me, she\u2019s talking about nothing but God. She says I\u2019m sick of this life that I\u2019m living. I want God. But every time a priest comes to me he\u2019s talking about nothing but sex.\u201d Very well, when you renounce something, you\u2019re stuck to it forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Don\u2019t renounce it, see through it<\/em>. Understand its true value and you won\u2019t need to renounce it;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Masquerade of Charity<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s on Your Mind?<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         And so in order to wake up, the one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good, Bad, or Lucky<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         We differ from others – from criminals, for example – only in what we do or don\u2019t do, not in what we are<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Illusion of Others<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Are you ready to be brainwashed by someone who\u2019s enlightened? You can be brainwashed by anybody, you know. What does it matter whether someone\u2019s enlightened or not? But see, we want to lean on someone, don\u2019t we? We want to lean on anybody we think has arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         But then, you forget that you have it all right now anyway, and you don\u2019t know it. 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? Isn\u2019t the future just another trap?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Self Observation<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The trouble with people is that they\u2019re busy fixing things they don\u2019t even understand. We\u2019re always fixing things, aren\u2019t we? It never strikes us that things don\u2019t need to be fixed. They really don\u2019t. This is a great illumination. They need to be understood. If you understood them, they\u2019d change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding Yourself<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Like the little girl who says to a little boy, \u201cAre you a Presbyterian?\u201d and he said, \u201cNo, we belong to another abomination!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stripping Down to the \u201cI\u201d<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         \u201cI\u201d is something other and more than the body. You might say the body is part of \u201cI,\u201d but it is a changing part. It keeps moving, it keeps changing. We have the same name for it but it constantly changes. Just as we have the same name for Niagara Falls, but Niagara Falls is constituted by water that is constantly changing. We use the same name for an ever-changing reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Happiness Happens<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         There\u2019s a famous story about the lion who came upon a flock of sheep and to his amazement found a lion among the sheep. It was a lion who had been brought up by the sheep ever since he was a cub. It would bleat like a sheep and run around like a sheep. The lion went straight for him, and when the sheep-lion stood in front of the real one, he trembled in every limb. And the lion said to him, \u201cWhat are you doing among these sheep?\u201d And the sheep-lion said, \u201cI am a sheep.\u201d And the lion said, \u201cOh no you\u2019re not. You\u2019re coming with me.\u201d So he took the sheep-lion to a pool and said, \u201cLook!\u201d And when the sheep-lion looked at his reflection in the water, he let out a mighty roar, and in that moment he was transformed. He was never the same again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         If you\u2019re lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace (use any theological expression you want), you might suddenly understand who \u201cI\u201d is, and you\u2019ll never be the same again, never. Nothing will ever be able to touch you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         You will fear no one and you will fear nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         You fear no one because you\u2019re perfectly content to be nobody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         There\u2019s a lovely saying of Tranxu, a great Chinese sage that I took the trouble to learn by heart. It goes: \u201cWhen the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all his skills; when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already nervous; when he shoots for a gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targetws, and is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares! He thinks more of winning than shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.\u201d Isn\u2019t that an image of what most people are? When you\u2019re living for nothing, you\u2019ve got all your skills, you\u2019ve got all your energy, you\u2019re relaxed, you don\u2019t care, it doesn\u2019t matter whether you win or lose.                                             Margin note: Carolyn @ work comment<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Someone once said, \u201cThe three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Is it possible for the rose to say, \u201cI will give my fragrance to the good people who smell me, but I will withhold it from the bad\u201d? Or is it possible for the lamp to say, \u201cI will give my light to the good people in this room, but I will withhold it from the evil people\u201d? Or can a tree say, \u201cI\u2019ll give my shade to the good people who rest under me, but I will withhold it from the bad\u201d? These are images of what love is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         There’s only one reason why you\u2019re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it\u2019s because you\u2019re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have. Otherwise you would be experiencing bliss. You\u2019re focusing on what you don\u2019t have. But, right now, you have everything you need to be in bliss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obstacles to Happiness<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         To acquire happiness you don\u2019t have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don\u2019t you experience<\/em> it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four Steps to Wisdom<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The fourth step: How do you change things? How do you change yourselves? There are many things you must understand here, or rather, just one thing that can be expressed in many ways. Imagine a patient who goes to a doctor and tells him what he is suffering from. The doctor says, \u201cVery well, I\u2019ve understood your symptoms. Do you know what I will do? I will prescribe a medicine for your neighbor!\u201d The patient replies, \u201cThank you very much, Doctor, that makes me feel much better.\u201d Isn\u2019t that absurd? But that\u2019s what we all do. The person who is asleep always thinks he\u2019ll feel better if somebody else changes. You\u2019re suffering because you are asleep, but you\u2019re thinking, \u201cHow wonderful life would be if my neighbor change, my wife changed, my boss changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         We always want someone else to change so that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You\u2019re just as vulnerable as before; you\u2019re just as idiotic as before; you\u2019re just as asleep as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You keep insisting, \u201cI feel good because the world is right.\u201d Wrong!<\/em> The world is right because I feel good. That\u2019s what all the mystics are saying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sleepwalking<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         \u201cWell, how different everything looks.\u201d We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. That is why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different reactions. We see things and people not as they are, but as we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change as Greed<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Think of somebody you are living with or working with whom you do not like, who causes negative feelings to arise in you. Let\u2019s help you to understand what\u2019s going on. The first thing you need to understand is that the negative feeling is inside you. You are responsible for the negative feelings to arise in you. You are responsible for the negative feeling, not the other person. Someone else in your place would be perfectly calm and at ease in the presence of this person; they wouldn\u2019t be affected. You<\/em> are. Now, understand another thing, that you\u2019re making a demand. You have an expectation of this person. Can you get in touch with that? Then say to this person, \u201cI have no right to make any demands on you.\u201d In saying that, you will drop your expectation. \u201cI Have no right to make any demands on you. Oh, I\u2019ll protect myself from the consequences of your actions or your moods or whatever, but you can go right ahead and be what you choose to be. I have no right to make any demands on you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hugging Memories<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         If you want to see how true this is, listen: A religious sister from India goes out to make a retreat. Everybody in the community is saying, \u201cOh, we know, that\u2019s part of her charism; she\u2019s always attending workshops and going to retreats; nothing will ever change her.\u201d Now, it so happens that the sister does change tat this particular workshop, or therapy group, or whatever it is. She changes; everyone notices the difference. Everyone says, \u201cMy, you\u2019ve really come to some insights, haven\u2019t you?\u201d She has, and they can see the difference in her behavior, in her body, in her face. You always do when there\u2019s an inner change. It always registers in your face, in your eyes, in your body. Well, the sister goes back to her community, and since the community has a prejudiced, fixed idea about her, they\u2019re going to continue to look at her through the eyes of that prejudice. They\u2019re the only ones who don\u2019t see any change in her. They say, \u201cOh well, she seems a little mor4e spirited, but just wait, she\u2019ll be depressed again.\u201d And within a few weeks she is<\/em> depressed again; she\u2019s reacting to their reaction. And they all say, \u201cSee, we told you so; she hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d But the tragedy is that she had, only they didn\u2019t see it. Perception has devastating consequences in the matter of love and human relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting Concrete<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         \u201cThe day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.\u201d How true! The first time the child sees that fluffy, alive, moving object, and you say to him, \u201cSparrow,\u201d then tomorrow when the child sees another fluffy, moving object similar to it he says, \u201cOh, sparrows. I\u2019ve seen sparrows. I\u2019m bored<\/em> by sparrows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Let\u2019s suppose, for example, there is an enormous wind outside and I want people in my country to get an idea of what an American gale or hurricane is like. So I capture it in a cigar box and I go back home and say, \u201cLook at this.\u201d Naturally, it isn\u2019t a gale anymore, is it? Once it\u2019s captured. <\/em>Or if I want you to get the feel of what the flow of a river is like and I bring it to you in a bucket. The moment I put it into a bucket it stopped flowing. THe moment you put things into a concept, they stop flowing; they become static, dead. A frozen wave is not a wave. A wave is essentially movement, action; when you freeze it, it is not a wave. Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         If you want to see how true this is, listen: A religious sister from India goes out to make a retreat. Everybody in the community is saying, \u201cOh, we know, that\u2019s part of her charism; she\u2019s always attending workshops and going to retreats; nothing will ever change her.\u201d Now, it so happens that the sister does change tat this particular workshop, or therapy group, or whatever it is. She changes; everyone notices the difference. Everyone says, \u201cMy, you\u2019ve really come to some insights, haven\u2019t you?\u201d She has, and they can see the difference in her behavior, in her body, in her face. You always do when there\u2019s an inner change. It always registers in your face, in your eyes, in your body. Well, the sister goes back to her community, and since the community has a prejudiced, fixed idea about her, they\u2019re going to continue to look at her through the eyes of that prejudice. They\u2019re the only ones who don\u2019t see any change in her. They say, \u201cOh well, she seems a little mor4e spirited, but just wait, she\u2019ll be depressed again.\u201d And within a few weeks she is<\/em> depressed again; she\u2019s reacting to their reaction. And they all say, \u201cSee, we told you so; she hasn\u2019t changed.\u201d But the tragedy is that she had, only they didn\u2019t see it. Perception has devastating consequences in the matter of love and human relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Filtered Reality<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there\u2019s another demon, too, who\u2019s doing the filtering. It\u2019s called attachment, desire, cdraving. The root of all sorrow is craving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are people doing all through their lives? They\u2019re busy fighting; fight, fight, fight. That\u2019s what they call survival. When the average American says they are making a living, it isn\u2019t a living they\u2019re making, oh no! They have much more than they need to live. Come to my country and you\u2019ll see that. You don\u2019t need all those cars to live. You don\u2019t need a television set to live. You don\u2019t need makeup to live.  You don\u2019t need all those clothes to live. But try to convince the average American of this. They\u2019ve been brainwashed; they\u2019ve been programmed. So they work and strive to get the desired object that will make them happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Detachment<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         <\/u><\/strong>I\u2019m quite amused, sometimes, to see even seemingly objective people like therapists and spiritual directors say of someone, \u201cHe\u2019s a great guy, great guy, I really like him.\u201d I find out later that it\u2019s because he likes me that I like him. I look into myself, and I find the same thing coming up now and again: If you\u2019re attached to appreciation and praise, you\u2019re going to view people in terms of their threat to your attachment or their fostering of your attachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More Words<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Mark Twain put it very nicely when he said, \u201cIt was so cold that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death.\u201d We do freeze to death on words. It\u2019s not the cold outside that matters, but the thermometer. It\u2019s not reality that matters, but what you\u2019re saying to yourself about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hidden Agendas<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         You will never understand yourself if you seek to change yourself. The harder you try to change yourself, the worse it gets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         It sounds strange in a culture where we\u2019ve been trained to achieve goals, to get somewhere, but in fact there\u2019s nowhere to go because you\u2019re there already. The Japanese have a nice way of putting it: The day you cease to travel, you will have arrived.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Giving In<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         The more you resist something, the greater power you give to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assorted Images<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Let\u2019s talk more about effortlessness in change. I thought of a nice image for that, a sailboat. When a sailboat has a mighty wind in its sail, it glides along so effortlessly that the boatman has nothing to do but steer. He makes no effort; he doesn\u2019t push the boat. That\u2019s an image of what happens when change comes about through awareness, through understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Losing Control<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

                   I\u2019m going to quote a great man here, a man named A. S. Neill. He is the author of Summerhill<\/em>. Neill says that the sign of a sick child is that he is always hovering around his parents; he is interested in persons<\/em>. The healthy child has no interest in persons, he is interested in thing<\/em>. When a child is sure of his mother\u2019s love, he forgets his mother; he goes out to explore the world; he is curious. He looks for a frog to put in his mouth – that kind of thing. When a child is hovering around his mother, it\u2019s a bad sign; he\u2019s insecure. Maybe his mother has been trying to suck love out <\/em>of him, not give him all the freedom and assurance he wants. His mother\u2019s always been threatening in many subtle ways to abandon him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Listening to Life<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         In the 1970s, President Carter appealed to the American people to go in for austerity. I thought to myself: He shouldn\u2019t tell them to be austere, he should really tell them to enjoy things. Most of them have lost their capacity for enjoyment. I really believe that most people in affluent countries have lost that capacity. THey\u2019ve got to have more and more expensive gadgets; they can\u2019t enjoy the simple things of life. Then I walk into places where they have all the most marvelous music, and you get these records at a discount, they\u2019re all stacked up, but I never hear anybody listening to them – no time, no time, no time. They\u2019re guilty, no time to enjoy life. They\u2019re overworked, go, go, go. If you really enjoy life and the simple pleasures of the senses, you\u2019d be amazed. You\u2019d develop that extraordinary discipline of the animal. An animal will never overeat. Left in its natural habitat, it will never be overweight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         When you have enjoyed something intensely, you need very little. It\u2019s like people who are busy planning their vacation; they spend months planning it, and they get to the spot, and they\u2019re all anxious about their reservations for flying back. But they\u2019re taking pictures alright, and later they\u2019ll show you pictures in an album, of a place they never saw but only photographed. That\u2019s a symbol of modern life. I cannot warn you enough about this kind of asceticism. Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you\u2019ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged. That is extremely important for the process of change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dead Ahead<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

         I\u2019ve often said to people that the way to really live is to die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Realityby Anthony de Mello Foreword A man found an eagle\u2019s egg and put it in a nest of barnyard hen. The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.          All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,7,244,242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booknotes","category-development","category-philosophy","category-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3740,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3738\/revisions\/3740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mattwkane.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}