The Way to Love

Catching up on my Anthony DeMello blurbs for the blog:

10-29-2012

One Teacher

"But you are not to be called rabbi, 

for you have one teacher, and you are all brethren."

Matthew 20:8

Imagine a group of tourists in a bus. The shades of the bus are down 

and they don't see or hear or touch or smell a single thing 

from the strange exotic country that they are passing through, 

while all the while their guide chatters away, giving them what 

he thinks is a vivid description of the smells, sounds 

and sights of the world outside.

The only things they will experience are the images 

that his words create in their heads. 

And let's suppose the bus stops and he sends them forth 

with formulas about what they can expect to see and experience. 

Their experience will be contaminated, conditioned, distorted by those 
formulas and they will perceive, not the Reality itself but Reality 

as filtered through the guide's formulas.

They will look at Reality selectively or they will project 

their own formulas onto it, so it is not Reality they will see 

but a confirmation of their formulas.

Is there any way you can know that what you are in touch with is Reality? 

Here is one sign: 

What you perceive does not fit into any formula whether 
given by another or created by yourself. 

It simply cannot be put into words.

10-30-2012

Become Like Children

"Truly, I say to you, unless you  turn and become like children, 

you will  never enter the kingdom of heaven." 

Matthew 18:3

Think of this:

The reason why the child is able to preserve its innocence and live 

like the rest of creation in the bliss of the kingdom is that 

it has not been sucked into what we call the world--

that region of darkness inhabited by grown-ups whose lives 

are spent not in living but in courting applause and admiration; 

not in blissfully being themselves but in neurotically 
comparing and competing, 
striving for those empty things called success and fame 

even if they can be attained only at the expense of defeating, 

humiliating, and destroying their neighbors.

If you allow yourself to really feel the pains of this hell on earth, 

the utter emptiness it brings, you might experience within you a revolt, 
a disgust so powerful that it will shatter the chains of dependence and deceit 

that have been forged around your soul and you will break loose into the 

kingdom of innocence where mystics and children dwell.

11-9-2012

Love One Another

"This is my commandment, 

that you love one another as I have loved you."

John 15:12

How does one attain this quality of love?

Anything you do will only make it forced, cultivated and therefore phony, 

for love cannot be forced. There is nothing you can do. 

But there is something you can drop. 

Observe the marvelous change that comes over you 

the moment you stop seeing people as good and bad as saints and sinners 

and begin to see them as unaware and ignorant. 

You must drop your false belief that people can sin in awareness. 

No one can sin in the light of awareness. 

Sin occurs, not, as we mistakenly think, in malice, but in ignorance.

"Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." 

To see this is to acquire the indiscriminate quality one so admires 

in the rose, the lamp and the tree.

Think how the rose, the tree, and lamp leave you compeltely free. 

The tree will make no effort to drag you into its shade 

if you are in danger of a sunstroke. 

The lamp will not force its light on you lest you stumble in the dark. 

Think for a while of all the coercion and control 

that you submit to on the part of others when you so anxiously 

live up to their expectations in order to buy their love and approval 

or because you fear you will lose them. 

Each time you submit to this control and this coercion 

you destroy the capatity to love which is your very nature, 

for you cannot but do to others what you allow others to do to you. 

Contemplate, then, all the control and coercion in your life 

and hopefully this contemplation alone will cause them to drop. 

The moment they drop, freedom will arise. 

And freedom 

is just another word 

for love.

11-13-2012

No Looking Back

"No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back 

is fit for the kingdom of God." 

Luke 9:62

God's kingdom is love.

What does it mean to love?

It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, 

to feel for everything and everyone

to the exclusion of nothing and no one.

For exclusion can only be achieved through a hardening of oneself,

through closing one's doors.

Finally take a look at this society we live in--

rotten to the core, infected as it is with attachments.

For if anyone is attached to power, money, property, to fame and success;

if anyone seeks these things as if their happiness depended on them,

they will be considered productive members of society, 
dynamic and hardworking.

In other words, if they pursue these things with a driving ambition 
that destroys the symphony of their life and makes them hard and cold and insensitive to others and to themselves, society will look upon them as 
dependable citizens, and their relatives and friends will be proud 
of the status that they have achieved. 

How many so called respectable people do you know 
who have retained the gentle sensitivity of love 
that only unattachment can offer?

If you contemplate this long enough, you will experience 
a disgust so deep that you will instinctively fling every attachment 
away as you would a serpent that has settled on you.

You will revolt and break loose from this putrid culture that is based 

on acquisitiveness and attachment, on anxiety and greed 

and on the hardness and insensitivity of nonlove.