no stone will be left, part 3

If you haven't followed this sequence of posts you may want to read part 1 and part 2 before you continue reading.

I'm posting from The Way To Love by Anthony de Mello. This tells how transformation can occur. Can we really be free from our past or from our uncertain future? Can we really live today in the abundance and fullness that is promised by the New Testament writers. I'm finding so much God in just being still... in letting go of my ideas and formulas for living. The yoke is supposed to be easy, isn't it? I'm beginning to find this to be true.

"What can you do to break out? Four things: First, realize that you are surrounded by prison walls, that your mind has gone to sleep. It does not even occur to most people to see this, so they live and die as prison inmates. Most people end up being conformists; they adapt to prison life. A few become reformers; they fight for better living conditions in the prison, better lighting, better ventilation. Hardly anyone becomes a rebel, a revolutionary who breaks down the prison walls. You can only be a revolutionary when you see the prison walls in the first place.

"Second, contemplate the walls, spend hours just observing your ideas, your habits, your attachments and your fears without any judgment and condemnation. Look at them and they will crumble.

"Third, spend some time observing the things and people around you. Look, but really look, as if for the very first time, at the face of a friend, a leaf, a tree, a bird in flight, the behavior and mannerisms of the people around you. Really see them and hopefully you will see them afresh as they are in themselves without the dulling, stupefying effect of your ideas and habits.

"The fourth and most important step: Sit down quietly and observe how your mind functions. There is a steady flow of thoughts and feelings and reactions there. Watch the whole of it for long stretches of time the way you watch a river or a movie. You will soon find it so much more absorbing than any river or movie. And so much more life-giving and liberating. After all can you even be said to be alive if you are not even conscious of your own thoughts and reactions? The unaware life, it is said, is not worth living. It cannot even be called life; it is a mechanical, robot existence; a sleep, an unconsciousness, a death; and yet this is what people call human life!

"So watch, observe, question, explore and your mind will come alive and shed its fat and become keen and alert and active. Your prison walls will come tumbling down till not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and you will be blessed with the unimpeded vision of things as they are, the direct experience of Reality."

no stone will be left, part 2

Continuing on from part 1 where I've quoted Anthony de Mello in his book The Way To Love. Most of us despise others judging us, yet we don't see that we too judge either intentionally or more likely out of habit, not realizing that that's what we've done. This writing is helping me to understand how this process happens and that there is a solution to judgmentalism.

"Let us examine these layers one at a time. First, your beliefs. If you experience life as a communist or a capitalist, as a Moslem or a Jew, you are experiencing life in a prejudiced, slanted way; there is a barrier, a layer of fat between Reality and you because you no longer see and touch it directly.

"Second layer: your ideas. If you hold on to an idea about someone, then you no longer love that person but your idea of that person. You see him/her do or say something or behave in a certain kind of way and you slap a label on: She is silly or he is dull or he is cruel or she is very sweet, etc. So now you have a screen, a layer of fat between you and this person because when you next meet him/her you will experience them in terms of that idea of yours even though they have changed. Observe how you have done this with almost everyone you know.

"Third layer: habits. A habit is essential to human living. How would we ever walk or speak or drive a car unless we relied on habit? But habits must be limited to things mechanical -- not to love or to sight. Who wants to be loved from habit? Have you ever sat on a seashore spellbound by the majesty and the mystery of the ocean? A fisherman looks at the ocean daily and does not notice its grandeur. Why? The dulling effect of a layer of fat called habit. You have formed fixed ideas of all the things you see and, when encountering them, it is not them you see in all their changing freshness, but the same dull, thick, boring idea acquired through habit. And that is how you deal with people and with things, how you relate to them: no freshness, no newness, but the same dull, routine (boring) ways produced by habit. You are incapable of looking in other, more creative ways, for, having developed a habit for dealing with the world and with people, you can put your mind on automatic pilot and go to sleep."

"Fourth layer: your attachments and your fears. This layer is the easiest to see. Put a thick coating of attachment, of fear (and therefore dislike) on to anything or anyone -- in that very instant you cease to see that person or thing as it really is. Just recall some of the persons you dislike or fear or are attached to and you will see how true this is.

"Do you see now how you are in a prison created by the beliefs and traditions of your society and culture and by the ideas, prejudices, attachments and fears of your past experiences? Wall upon wall surrounds your prison cell so that it seems almost impossible that you will ever break out and make contact with the richness of life and love and freedom that lies beyond your prison fortress. And yet the task, far from being impossible, is actually easy and delightful.

"What can you do to break out?"

Continue to part 3

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

can we know God?

This is one of the reasons that I believe we don't know much about God and really are unable to know.

The photo above is the Crab Nebula taken from the Hubble telescope. The NASA explanation for this photo is as follows:

"This is the mess that is left when a star explodes. The Crab Nebula, the result of a supernova seen in 1054 AD, is filled with mysterious filaments. The filaments are not only tremendously complex, but appear to have less mass than expelled in the original supernova and a higher speed than expected from a free explosion. The above image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, is presented in three colors chosen for scientific interest. The Crab Nebula spans about 10 light-years. In the nebula's very center lies a pulsar: a neutron star as massive as the Sun but with only the size of a small town. The Crab Pulsar rotates about 30 times each second."

Such magnificence! This is the result of creation. Amazingly spectacular! How can we pretend to have an inkling of knowledge about who God is? Expecting our minds to comprehend is too much. The only part of us that connects with him is our spirit, or if you will, our consciousness. It is the part of us where awareness exists.

The wonder and awe inside of us is lost the second we attempt to mentally explain or say we know him and can identify him. All attempts at identification and naming processes simply point toward him. It is not him. He goes beyond...

O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Romans 11:33-36

amazing construct -- our brain

Here's a video that has made its way around the internet for about a year now. I find it fascinating. How we as humans are built is amazing. I think any time we can gain a better understanding of how our body works it is worthwhile. Modern scientists have advantages in their studies with the use of computers, CAT scan machines, etc. We are learning much about the brain and its function. This woman, Jill Bolte Taylor, watched herself as her own brain malfunctioned due to a stroke. At the time she was a neuroanatomist (brain specialist) working at Harvard.

get to know yourself

shedding religion

Here's an interesting post that I found over at Jim Palmer's blog. He asked people to fill in the blank... "being a shedder means __________". The idea comes from his book "Divine Nobodies" which talks about shedding religion in order to find God. I'm definitely a "shedder"... have been for about 2 years now. I have dropped many items from my religious inventory of do's and don'ts which I thought kept me in good standing with God. Sounds kind of silly when put that way. In a subtle way I think lots of people live this way.

When I began to understand that I was thinking this way, I started examining the different things on the list and watched them gradually change. It wasn't easy at first. It was unnerving at times, but the freedom that it produced in me was real and couldn't be denied. I had no concept that dropping false ideas about religion could produce such liberty and peace.

God is not looking for any kind of performance from us. We are already loved beyond our ability to understand. Our "doing" good or bad will not change His stance towards us. Whatever needs to be changed inside of us, we can't do it anyway, at least not good enough. He's the one who created the new creation at the Cross, not us. We simply abide and live our lives. He does the transforming for us.