when your eye is sound,
your whole body is full of light;
but when it is not sound,
your body is full of darkness.
Luke 11:34
We think the world would be saved if only
we could generate larger quantities of goodwill and tolerance.
That's false.
What will save the world is not goodwill and tolerance
but clear thinking.
Of what use is it to be tolerant of others if you are convinced that
you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong?
That is not tolerance but condescension.
That leads not to union of hearts but to division, because
you are one up and the others one down.
A position that can only lead to a sense of superiority on your part
and resentment on your neighbor's, thereby breeding further intolerance.
True tolerance only arises from a keen awareness
of the abysmal ignorance of everyone as far as truth is concerned.
For truth is essentially mystery.
The mind can sense but cannot grasp it, much less formulate it.
Our beliefs can point to it but cannot put it into words.
In spite of this, people talk glowingly about the value of dialogue
which at worst is a camouflaged attempt to convince the other person
of the rightness of your position and at best will prevent you from becoming
a frog in the well who thinks that his well is the only world there is.
of the rightness of your position and at best will prevent you from becoming
a frog in the well who thinks that his well is the only world there is.
The first thing you must know is that it does not call for any great learning.
It is so simple as to be within the reach of a ten-year-old child.
What's needed is not learning but unlearning,
not talent but courage.
not talent but courage.
You'll understand this if you think of a little child
in the arms of an old, disfigured housemaid.
The child is too young to have picked up the prejudices of its elders.
So when it snuggles in that woman's arms, it is responding
not to labels in its head; labels like white woman, black woman, ugly,
pretty, old, young, mother, servant maid, it is responding
not to labels such as these but to reality.
That woman meets the child's need for love and
that is the reality the child responds to, not the woman's name
and figure and religion and race and sect.
that is the reality the child responds to, not the woman's name
and figure and religion and race and sect.
Those are totally and absolutely irrelevant.
The child has as yet no beliefs and no prejudices.
This is the environment within which clear thinking can occur.
And to achieve it one must drop everything one has learned
and achieve the mind of the child that is innocent of past experiences and programming which so cloud our way of looking at reality.
What clear thinking calls for is not intelligence--
that is easily come by--
but the courage that has successfully coped with fear and with desire,
for the moment you desire something or fear something,
your heart will consciously or unconsciously get in the way of your thinking.
This is a consideration for spiritual giants
who have come to realize that in order to find truth,
who have come to realize that in order to find truth,
they need, not doctrinal formulations,
but a heart that divests itself of its programming and its self-interest
each time that thinking is in progress;
a heart that has nothing to protect
and owes nothing to ambition
and therefore leaves the mind to roam
unfettered, fearless and free,
in search of truth;
a heart that is ever ready to accept new evidence
and to change its views.
Such a heart then becomes a lamp that enlightens
the darkness of the whole body of humanity.
If all human beings were fitted with such hearts
people would no longer think of themselves
as communists
or capitalists,
as communists
or capitalists,
as Christians
or Muslims
or Buddhists.
The very clarity of their thinking would show them
that all thinking, all concepts, all beliefs are lamps full of darkness,
signs of their ignorance.
that all thinking, all concepts, all beliefs are lamps full of darkness,
signs of their ignorance.
And in that realization
the walls of their separate wells would collapse
and they would be invaded by
the ocean that unites all people in the truth.
From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello
From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello
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