Be Awake

(I'm telling you...these "little lessons" just get harder and harder. Here goes!)

Blessed are those servants whom the master 

finds awake when he comes.

Luke 12:37

Everywhere in the world people are in search of love, 

for everyone is convinced that love alone can save the world, love alone 

can make life meaningful and worth living.

But how very few understand what love really is, 

and how it arises in the human heart.

It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, 

with benevolence or nonviolence or service. 

But these things in themselves are not love.

Love springs from awareness.

It is only inasmuch as you see someone as he or she really is 

here and now 

and not as they are 

in your memory 

or your desire 

or in your imagination 

or projection 

that you can truly love them, 

otherwise it is not the person that you love 

but the idea that you have formed of this person, 

or this person as the object of your desire 

not as he or she is in themselves.

When you set out to serve someone 

whom you have not taken the trouble to see, 

are you meeting that person's need or your own?

(YIKES!)

So the first ingredient of love is to really see the other.

The second ingredient is equally important--

to see yourself, 

to ruthlessly flash the light of awareness on your motives, 

your emotions, your needs, your dishonesty, your self-seeking, 

your tendency to control and manipulate.

This means calling things by their name, 

no matter how painful the discovery and the consequences.

(YIKES! YIKES!!)

Once you begin to see, 

your sensitivity will drive you to the awareness, 

not just of the things that you choose to see 

but of everything else as well.

Your poor ego will try desperately to blunt that sensitivity 

because its defenses are being stripped away 

and it is left with no protection and nothing to cling to.

(YIKES x 3!!!)

If you ever allow yourself to see, it will be the death of you.

And that is why love is so terrifying, 

for to love is 

to see 

and to see is 

to die.

But it is also the most delightful 

exhilarating experience 

in the whole world.

For in the death of the ego is freedom, peace serenity, joy.

(The Kingdom of Heaven; Heaven on Earth)

(HOMEWORK:)

#1 If it is love that you truly desire 

then set out at once on the task of seeing, 

take it seriously and look at someone you dislike and 

really see your prejudice.

(He/She/I have been caught up in our illusions of ourselves,

and we think we must defend them!

It takes one to know one; so no wonder I see and resist it.

In this, we are alike...ego rules!)

#2 Look at someone you cling to or something you cling to 

and really see the suffering, the futility, the unfreedom of clinging 

and look long and lovingly at human faces and human behavior.

(Clinging to people and things the way they were,

the way I thought I needed them 

to be for me...)

#3 Take some time out to gaze in wonder at Nature, 

 the flight of a bird, 

 a flower in bloom,

the dry leaf crumbling to dust, 

the flow of a river, 

 the rising of the moon,

a silhouette of a mountain against the sky.

And as you do, the hard, protective shell around your heart 

will soften and melt and your heart  will come alive 

in sensitivity and responsiveness.

The darkness in your eyes will be dispelled 

and your vision will become clear and penetrating, 

and you will know at last 

what love is.
From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello