“We don’t want to look, because if we do, we may change. We don’t want to look. If you look, you lose control of the life that you are so precariously holding together. And so in order to wake up, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or youthfulness, or even great intelligence. 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. How much are you ready to take? How much of everything you’ve held dear are you ready to have shattered, without running away? How ready are you to think of something unfamiliar?” ~ Anthony de Mello
Book recommendations from friends I admire are some of the greatest gifts this world affords. For the most part they work out beautifully, because my friends have great taste (with the possible exception of the occasional item of clothing or a perm here and there). Word-wise, my friends can usually tell what sort of story I’ll enjoy. Such was the happy circumstance when Mary pointed me in the direction of Anthony de Mello and his book ‘Awareness’ which is really a written form of the lectures he gave over the years. Its message dovetails perfectly with all that’s been going on in my little life, as well as how my life fits into the larger world at work.
A significant melding of Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, ‘Awareness’ takes the most primal and basic tenets of all religions and excises the problematic notions of separation and literal readings, as well as the coded and human-warped ways of worship, returning to the essence and core of what love is and who God might be. More specifically, it offers a way to freedom from the binds of illusion and labels and our own unhappiness.
The tools on offer here are simple enough, but figuring out how to use them, and to implement that use in our lives, is the difficult part. Not all of us are looking to change. We hold onto illusions because they’re pretty and comfortable and ingrained into our beings from the moment we can begin to mentally formulate the world around us. Such things are woven into our make-up, and that’s not easy to change. But there are ways to do so, and it begins with being aware – truly aware – and taking stock of ourselves in as honest and blunt a way as possible. If you’re not ready to truly examine your life and all your own failings, then you may not get very far, but the knowledge and instructions are there if and when you’re ready. I’m doing my best to continue on this journey, and it’s definitely improved my life.
There is so much good stuff in the book that I’ll excerpt a few passages at a time and turn this into a mini-series. We’ve got the time, I’ve got the notion, and there’s no need for any further commotion.
“When your illusions drop, you’re in touch with reality at last, and believe me, you will never again be lonely, never again. Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality. Oh, I have so much to say about that. Contact with reality, dropping one’s illusions, making contact with the real. Whatever it is, it has no name. We can only know it by dropping what is unreal. You can only know what aloneness is when you drop your clinging, when you drop your dependency. But the first step toward that is that you see it as desirable. If you don’t see it as desirable, how will you get anywhere near it?
Think of the loneliness that is yours. Would human company ever take it away? It will only serve as a distraction. There’s an emptiness inside, isn’t there? And when the emptiness surfaces, what do you do? You run away, turn on the television, turn on the radio, read a book, search for human company, seek entertainment, seek distraction. Everybody does that. It’s big business nowadays, an organized industry to distract us and entertain us.” ~ Anthony de Mello
