Awareness

by Anthony de Mello

each language cuts reality up differently.

Reality is a whole and we cut it up to make concepts and we use words to indicate different parts.

Words cannot give you reality. They only point,

To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.

The Cloud of Unknowing

There is no word for reality. Because as soon as I put a word to it, we’re back into concepts again.

“The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable.”

Which is precisely why theology is not a legitimate subject at all.

awareness of reality around you. Awareness means to watch, to observe what is going on within you and around you.

look; observe; spend hours observing. Watching what? Anything.

return to the state of the child but without being a child.

“God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance of wonder renewed daily, the source of which is beyond all reason.”

“God” is only a word, a concept.

Thomas says, “This is what is ultimate in the human knowledge of God—to know that we do not know God.”

Doesn't this lay bare the entire idea of religion?

Sometimes the best thing that can happen to us is to be awakened to reality, for calamity to strike, for then we come to faith,

he never had any doubts before about people surviving death, but when his wife died, he was no longer certain. Why? Because it was so important to him that she be living.

how many minutes are in the color yellow. Everybody could be taking the question very seriously, discussing it, fighting about it. One person suggests there are twenty-five carrots in the color yellow, the other person says, “No, seventeen potatoes,” and they’re suddenly fighting.

thousands of words in our vocabulary that do not correspond to reality at all.

“inculturation.” What is this thing called “culture”? I’m not very happy with the word. Does it mean you’d like to do something because you were conditioned to do it? That you’d like to feel something because you were conditioned to feel it? Isn’t that being mechanical?

No great merit in it if it’s mechanical. The beauty of an action comes not from its having become a habit but from its sensitivity, consciousness, clarity of perception, and accuracy of response.

not compelled by any conditioning or programming from my past experiences or from my culture.

Don’t carry over experiences from the past.

don’t carry over good experiences from the past

eternal life is now, in the timeless now.

we are filtering things out constantly. Who’s doing the filtering? Our conditioning? Our culture? Our programming? The way we were taught to see things and to experience them? Even our language can be a filter.

there’s another demon, too, who’s doing the filtering. It’s called attachment, desire, craving.

We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause—for what they called success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality.

When we were young, we were programmed to unhappiness. They taught us that in order to be happy you need money, success, a beautiful or handsome partner in life, a good job, friendship, spirituality, God—you name it. Unless you get these things, you’re not going to be happy,

I have met people dying of cancer who were happy.

Listen to this pathetic story—your story, my story, everybody’s story: “Until I get this object (money, friendship, anything) I’m not going to be happy;

The truth about a thrill is that I get tired of it after a while.

We weren’t given any other model.

The world, power, prestige, winning, success, honor, etc., are nonexistent things.

There’s only one way out and that is to get deprogrammed! How do you do that? You become aware of the programming.

striving to rearrange the world so that we can keep these attachments,

I fear that a friend may stop loving me; he or she may turn to somebody else. I have to keep making myself attractive because I have to get this other person.

if you are angry, Mother, there’s something wrong with you

cope with your anger.

“You’re having a tantrum. Too bad. I don’t feel the slightest desire to rescue you anymore, and I refuse to feel guilty.”

when you know something is bad.

“The time will come when they will persecute you and they think they are doing a service to God.”

caught up in information and knowledge.

“Every time someone sins, they’re sinning under th...

Did it ever occur to you that you could be happy in tension?

If one is tense, one simply observes one’s tension.

The harder you try to change yourself, the worse it gets.

Get the feel of that jangling telephone; get the feel of jarred nerves; get the sensation of th...