Pluck Out the Eye (Yuck!)

More from The Way to Love;
these lessons get deeper and darker, but there is
definitely LIGHT at the end of this tunnel!

"And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. 

It is better to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell.

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; 

it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye 

than with two eyes to be thrown into hell."

 This is one of those scriptures I prefer to skip over.

It just doesn't seem to work for me.

All that cutting, maiming, and plucking is hard to swallow.

So, let's see if DeMello can "nicen" it up a bit:

It is not possible, not even conceivable, that you would ever awaken 

to the world of love unless you pluck out, chop off, those parts 

of your psychological being that are called 

Attachments...

(ICK! Even DeMello is pretty savage here. 

I was hoping for a kinder, gentler explanation.)

produced by the lusting eye that excites craving within the heart 

and by the grasping hand that reaches out to hold, possess 

and make one's own, and refuses to let go.

(Sounds like pretty powerful stuff!)

It is this eye that must be gouged out, 

this hand that must be cut off if love is to be born.

(It's the lusting eye and grasping hand that lead us away from love.)

With those mutilated stumps for hands you can grasp nothing anymore. 

With those empty sockets for eyes you suddenly become sensitive to realities 

whose existence you have never suspected.

(We admit that we are now powerless 

and begin to release our grip...
what grip?...what hand?
and see what's real.) 

(When you deal with blind people it dawns on you 

that they are attuned to realities that you have no idea of.)

Now at last you can love, till now all you had was a certain good-heartedness 

and benevolence, a sympathy and concern for others, 

which you mistakenly took for love but has as little in common with love, 

as a flickering candle flame has with the light of the sun.

(Oh, but it was so easy and socially acceptable.)

What is love?

It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without, 

together with a wholehearted response to that reality. 

(Hmmm...)

Sometimes you will embrace that reality, 

sometimes you will attack it, 

sometimes you will ignore it, 

and at others you will give it your fullest attention, 

but always you will respond not from need but from sensitivity.

(I will respond, in the moment, to whatever appears. 

There is no prescribed, prepared response, 

when it is coming out of sensitivity...out of love.)

And what is an attachment?

A need, a clinging that blunts your sensitivity, 

a drug that clouds your perception.

(People, things, identity, beliefs, expectations, control...)

There is no such thing as defective love, or deficient love, or partial love.

Love like sensitivity either is in all its fullness or it simply is not.

You either have it whole or you have it not.

It is only the violent who carry off the kingdom.

(WHAT! Not that again! )

Why the violence?

Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, 

it would only lead you to attraction, 

from attraction to pleasure, 

then to attachment, to satisfaction, 

which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. 

(The vicious...violent...cycle! 

Perhaps that is why it requires a violent response.)

Then comes a plateau. 

Then once again the weary cycle: 

attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. 

All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, 

the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster.

(Mr. Toad's Wild Ride!)

When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, 

a time finally comes when you have had enough 

and want to call a halt to the whole process. 

(Excess, exhaustion, nausea...)

And if you are lucky enough not to run into something 

or someone else that catches your eye, 

you will have at least attained a fragile peace.

(Time-out)

That is the most that life can give you; 

and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die 

without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love.

(Is that all there is?)

HOWEVER,

If you wish to break out of the cycle and into the world of love, 

you must strike while the attachment is alive and raw, 

not when you have outgrown it.

(While it still has a grip on you.)

And you must strike not with the sword of renunciation, 

for that kind of mutilation only hardens, 

but with the sword of awareness.

What must you be aware of?

1You must see the suffering that this drug is causing you, 

the ups and downs, 

the thrills, 

the anxieties and disappointments, 

the boredom to which it must inevitably lead.

(The good, the bad, and the ugly.)

2You must realize what this drug is cheating you out of, namely 

the freedom to love and to enjoy every minute and everything in life.

(Eternal Life...right NOW!)

3You must understand how, because of your addiction and your programming, 

you have invested the object of your attachment with 

a beauty and a value it simply does not have:

(YOU HAVE BEEN DUPED!)

What you are so enamored of is in your head,

not in you beloved person or thing.

(WHAT? I've been a fool!)

See this and sword of awareness breaks the spell.

(Ding-dong the witch is dead.) 

Don't be harsh or impatient, or hating of yourself. 

But rather hold on to the compassion and the matter-of-factness 

with which the surgeon plies his knife. 

(Now, now...easy does it...you just didn't KNOW...and now you do.)

Then you may find yourself in the marvelous condition of loving 

the object of your attachments and enjoying it even more than before, 

but simultaneously enjoying every other thing 
and every other person just as much.

(Having cake and eating it too! 

The Abundant Life)

That is the litmus test for finding out if what you have is love.

Far from becoming indifferent, you now enjoy everything and everyone 

just as much as you did the object of your attachment.

Only now there are no more thrills 

(wait...wait)

and therefore no more suffering and suspense, 

(Oh, okay...I get it.) 

because you have made the great discovery that 

what you are enjoying on the occasion of each thing and person 

is something within yourself.

(And it's portable!)

GOOD NEWS