no stone will be left, part 1

Recently I've been thoroughly enmeshed in the audio and writings of a man named Anthony de Mello. I heard about his work on one of the blogs that I follow. He was a Jesuit priest from India who died in 1987. His work was based in India and later in life he discovered some keys to living life that he wrote about. I’m posting, over the next several days, a writing where he gives ideas on how change occurs in our lives if we cooperate and understand the dynamics of our basic makeup. This comes from his book entitled The Way To Love.

"When his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple, he answered them “you see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down.” Matthew 24:1-2

"Think of a flabby person covered with layers of fat. That is what your mind can become -- flabby, covered with layers of fat till it becomes too dull and lazy to think, to observe, to explore, to discover. It loses its alertness, its aliveness, its flexibility and goes to sleep. Look around you and you will see almost everyone with minds like that: dull, asleep, protected by layers of fat, not wanting to be disturbed or questioned into wakefulness.

"What are these layers? They are every belief that you hold, every conclusion you have reached about persons and things, every habit and every attachment. In your formative years you should have been helped to scrape off these layers and liberate your mind. Instead your society, your culture, which put these layers on your mind in the first place, has educated you to not even notice them, to go to sleep and let other people -- the experts: your politicians, your cultural and religious leaders -- do your thinking for you. So you are weighed down with the load of unexamined, unquestioned authority and tradition."

Continue to part 2