Alexandersmap

    Tag: Anthony De Mello

    • Thanksgiving: Our Day of Days

      “You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.” — Anthony de Mello

      Last night, amidst the clamor and turmoil of Thanksgiving preparations, I took the pup for her evening walk. It’s been bitingly cold this week, but a warm front had moved in, making the evening mild enough that I took off my wool hat to cool off. On our return down the street, the pup noticed something I’d seen on our walk up the street and started growling—the neighbors had placed their collection of plastic reindeer out on the lawn, ready to flip a switch and begin the Christmas season.

      The growl was for the appearance of stoic creatures standing the high ground. The pup doesn’t like changes on the street, and her protective concern was reflected in turning back and growling again and again as we completed our walk back to the house. I may accept the efficiency of the act while noting that my favorite holiday of the American year is forever pushed aside in the rush for Christmas. With respect to retailers everywhere, don’t you dare discount Thanksgiving. Nobody puts Baby in the corner.

      The thing is, we don’t all have families to gather with. Or with whom we wish to gather with. We are the average of the people we surround ourselves with, and for some that average isn’t all that worthy of gratitude. They would just as soon skip over it and focus on the lights and music and gifts of that season that follows Thanksgiving. I would suggest that forever looking ahead for some salvation in the future makes for an unfulfilling present. What makes today worthy of lingering with? That’s where gratitude will be.

      If Thanksgiving were mythically created to celebrate the abundant harvest, or pulled together Native Americans with the settlers who would eventually displace them at one table, then it would be just another conditional holiday dependent on buying in to the story. What makes Thanksgiving special is the tradition of putting aside work and political beliefs and the desperate search for meaning in an indifferent world and gathering in appreciation of that which binds us. For we are here once again this sacred day, together, despite all that would pull us apart. So many have left us already. So few are the days when we may gather as one. Be grateful for this day of days when we may acknowledge that which brings us together. Happy Thanksgiving.

    • The We In Me

      “Who’s living in you? It’s pretty horrifying when you come to know that. You think you are free, but there probably isn’t a gesture, a thought, an emotion, an attitude, a belief in you that isn’t coming from someone else. Isn’t that horrible? And you don’t know it. Talk about a mechanical life that was stamped into you. You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? It’s going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call “I” is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.” — Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      The we in me is a collection of characters from all parts of my past, whispering their opinions, goading me on, knocking me down. We’ll never get past them until we’re aware that they’re there. These characters live in the past—part of who we were, but also part of who we are. They don’t have to have a say in who we become.

      Some days this chorus of conditioning tells me to stop writing and do something else with the time. To stop being such a drag and have a drink. To grow outraged at the state of the world and watch some video mocking the other side. To be angry and distracted and spun up. Because misery loves company, and the worst character traits within us hate to be unheard.

      Habits help quiet the chorus within. When I’m swinging a kettle bell around or trying to maintain a split on a long row I don’t have the time to linger with doubt. I’m too busy taking action and voting for the type of person I wish to become, as James Clear put it. Habits create distance between what we were then and who we are becoming right now. We want to close some gaps while increasing other gaps. We want to be the person who does what they tell themselves that they’re going to do.

      Who do we trust the most in our lives? It’s the people who follow through on the promises they make. To build what Charlie Munger called “a seamless web of deserved trust“—those people we know to be reliable and dependable. Shouldn’t we feel this about ourselves first and foremost? If we want a network of strong and trusted allies, we must be one ourselves.

      When we fill our lives with increasingly stronger voices, we find that the weaker voices from our past get lost in the background, where they belong. This naturally builds upon itself, for as we grow stronger we attract more like-minded characters of strength and determination. We are the sum of all that has happened in our lives, all those voices from our past play their part. It’s up to us whether that is a bit part of a defining role in who we become.

    • Gaps Closed

      “How can you love someone whom you do not even see?”
      ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes having something to say doesn’t mean we ought to say it. Sometimes keeping those thoughts to ourselves is the best contribution we can make in the moment. A great filter has saved me countless times. A poor filter has derailed me more often than I care to admit (imagine what an unfiltered mind would do if it were running the world? …uh, never mind).

      Writing this blog will not change the world. It’s currently clunky to navigate, impossible to categorize, has horrible SEO, and, if we’re being honest, is a bit repetitive. But it quietly navigates time at its own pace, like its writer, being what it is. And it will be what it will be. With so many choices of which information to digest, you the reader may choose to read or ignore it. Playing with the law of small numbers, we learn to keep score in our own way with the success of any given post. My way is measured in gaps closed.

      This odd little writing habit keeps on going, even when I decide it ought to take a break for a while. Does its quirkiness and place in this world make it a waste of time? Who’s time is being wasted in writing it? Each post is a revelation at best or a meditation on the moment at worst, but they’re each a declaration of who we were when we clicked publish. Writing doesn’t keep us from something else, it’s a path towards a greater self. The more we look the more we learn to see.

    • Stop Taking It for Granted

      “A man took his new hunting dog out on a trial hunt. Presently he shot a duck that fell into the lake. The dog walked over the water, picked the duck up and brought it to his master.
      The man was flabbergasted! He shot another duck. Once again, while he rubbed his eyes in disbelief, the dog walked over the water and retrieved the duck.
      Hardly daring to believe what he had seen, he called his neighbor for a shoot the following day. Once again, each time he or his neighbor hit a bird the dog would walk over the water and bring the bird in. The man said nothing. Neither did his neighbor.
      Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he blurted out, “Did you notice anything strange about that dog?”
      The neighbor rubbed his chin pensively. “Yes,” he finally said. “Come to think of it, I did! The son of a gun can’t swim!”
      It isn’t as if life is not full of miracles. It’s more than that: it is miraculous, and anyone who stops taking it for granted will see it at once.” ― Anthony de Mello, The Prayer Of The Frog, Vol. 1

      We may choose to see what we want to see in this lifetime. The world at the moment offers many things from which we may react. But the reaction itself changes the way we see everything else in our lives. Thus, we move through our lives seeing everything through the lens of our beliefs and our reaction to things that challenge or support these beliefs.

      I can know that I’ve been held captive by my own beliefs, and also see what I believe holds others in theirs. But there’s the trap. One belief influences the other, and we move through life blind and captive behind our lenses.

      This way of seeing the world holds us captive until we release ourselves from this state. But it feels easier to just stay sheltered in our beliefs. When we stop trying to validate all we believe we may finally see just how miraculous this whole state of being alive truly is.

      At least that’s what I believe.

    • For Now

      “Eternal means timeless—no time. The human mind cannot understand that. The human mind can understand time and can deny time. What is timeless is beyond our comprehension. Yet the mystics tell us that eternity is right now. How’s that for good news? It is right now.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I’ve wrestled with time all of my adult life. I must be on time for the things I’ve scheduled, and on time for me is always early. I’m married to someone with a different idea of time, and the two of us have managed to peacefully coexist for a few decades despite the chasm this represents in my mind. Time matters a great deal in our world, but not in the universe. We can read that statement and know the truth of it while also dismissing it as irrelevant in our daily lives. Both can be true even as we operate in the absolutes of our beliefs.

      January felt like a longer month than its allotted thirty-one days. Blame it on winter and outrage if you’d like, but often it comes down to how present we are with the moment we occupy. When we feel swept up in events, time feels fleeting. We may feel we’re wasting it, or that it’s slipping through our hands. How much of this young year felt beyond our capacity to influence it?

      We know we have no time to waste time. We aren’t eternal ourselves, we merely exist, for now, in eternity. Having an expiration date means we must learn to appreciate the shelf life we’re given. To honor the eternity of this now by doing something with it. Time is ours now. Someday shockingly soon it will be someone else’s time. Eternity marches on indifferently just the same. So we must to do what calls for us—one now at a time.

    • Start Again

      The birds they sang
      At the break of day
      Start again
      I heard them say
      Don’t dwell on what has passed away
      Or what is yet to be
      Ah, the wars they will be fought again
      The holy dove, she will be caught again
      Bought and sold, and bought again
      The dove is never free
      Ring the bells that still can ring
      Forget your perfect offering
      There is a crack, a crack in everything
      That’s how the light gets in
      — Leonard Cohen, Anthem

      For all the madness and imperfection in the world, this is our time in it. We may still let the light in and find our way again. This theme has snuck into my awareness a few times in the last few days, in social media posts, in video clips from commencement speeches, and engraved on a bench overlooking Rockland harbor in Maine. It seems everyone is reaching for something, and whispering to those who follow how to find their way. When we open ourselves to the universe, it will tell us all we need to hear.

      We know the world is imperfect just as we know that we too are imperfect. We ought to stop counting our flaws and focus on the things we’re doing right. Work on the good things, let the rest fall away like bad relationships. And aren’t the imperfections we focus on nothing but a bad relationship that we can’t break away from? Let it go already. Start again with the clean slate of a fresh outlook.

      Imperfections are beliefs about the things we don’t have in our lives. None of us are born whole, we each have something within us that is imperfect. My own list is uncomfortably long—but so what? Focusing on what we don’t have in our lives is the surest path to misery. Discomfort is good when we apply it to changes we can influence, but undermines us when applied to focusing on who we’ll never be. That person doesn’t exist and probably shouldn’t—they’re just a character in the story we tell ourselves about our place in this world.

      “When you cut water, the water doesn’t get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks. You’ve got solid attitudes inside you; you’ve got solid illusions inside you; that’s what bumps against nature, that’s where you get hurt, that’s where the pain comes from.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      The trick, it seems, is to be more fluid in our perception of ourselves. Joyfulness is found in awareness and acceptance. Being aware of our imperfections and the gaps between who we are and who we wish to be is healthy and may lead to positive change. So is accepting that sometimes the gap is just there to show us who we aren’t meant to be. Ring the bells that still can ring.

    • Sensory Miracles

      “Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I had the opportunity to walk around Mykonos as a guide for a blind man. His wife was eager to shop with mine, so we set them free to go be. We went for a nice walk through the miracles of sensory experience that are the streets of Mykonos. Doing this on my own surely would have been joyful (if you can’t find joy in Mykonos you are truly lost), but my joy was amplified by awareness of things I take for granted—things like variations in terrain, people walking towards me, and the many curbs, shelves and flowering vines protruding from buildings that make Mykonos such a beautiful place to wander about.

      The first thing you notice as a guide is pace. Everything slows down as you guide another person with their hand on your shoulder and your focus expands beyond yourself to what is coming up that may trip them up or bump at them from above. Once pace is established, next comes heightened awareness, that you may describe all that surrounds you both in ways that are hopefully interesting to your blind counterpart. Flowering vines, the grout between paving stones underfoot, the white painted stucco and narrow streets providing naturally cool places to move about, and the miniature cars and trucks navigating those tight streets, often prompting a retreat to doorways and up steps.

      The thing is, I will always remember Mykonos differently for having guided him through its streets in this way for a couple of hours. Having been the one seeing a place both for the first time and in this way for the first time, I can’t help but have a stronger affinity for Mykonos through that experience than if I’d simply wandered about on my own. Perhaps my senses finally unclogged as I was taught to see for the first time. We should all be blessed with such an opportunity.

    • Killing Gods

      “You must kill your god. If you are to advance, all fixed ideas must go.” — Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      “Do you want to change the world? How about beginning with yourself? How about being transformed yourself first? But how do you achieve that? Through observation. Through understanding. With no interference or judgment on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand.” — Anthony de Mello, Awakening

      I was having a drink with an old friend this week when the conversation turned to transformative books. Anthony de Mello’s Awakening was the second book I recommended, but the one I said to read first. It’s foundational in that way, when we’re ready for it.

      Having recommended the book so strongly, I went back to it again myself while waiting out a flight delay. The quote above had been highlighted and most likely used in this blog a few years ago. Interestingly, the quote from Campbell was highlighted the same day. A sign that I’m on the right path? Perhaps. There’s no doubt that Campbell’s book stirs the soul similarly. When the student is ready, as they say.

      We must be open to everything to reach our potential in this lifetime. To move towards enlightenment (dare I say). And so it is that all fixed ideas must go. We must consume disparate thoughts and opinions and find the truth within ourselves. Make ourselves uncomfortable and birth new ideas. And maybe even write about it, that others may challenge us in our conclusions. To kill a god surely stirs others, as we ourselves have been stirred. In this way we may grow together.

    • Between the Natural and the Divine

      “It is the morning of the first day of the great peace, the peace of the heart, which comes with surrender. I never knew the meaning of peace until I arrived at Epidaurus. Like everybody I had used the word all my life, without once realizing that I was using a counterfeit. Peace is not the opposite of war any more than death is the opposite of life. The poverty of language, which is to say the poverty of man’s imagination or the poverty of his inner life, has created an ambivalence which is absolutely false. I am talking of course of the peace which passeth all understanding. There is no other kind. The peace which most of us know is merely a cessation of hostilities, a truce, an interregnum, a lull, a respite, which is negative. The peace of the heart is positive and invincible, demanding no conditions requiring no protection. It just is. If it is a victory it is a peculiar one because it is based entirely on surrender, a voluntary surrender, to be sure. There is no mystery in my mind as to the nature of the cures which were wrought at this great therapeutic center of the ancient world. Here the healer himself was healed, first and most important step in the development of the art, which is not medical but religious. Second, the patient was healed before ever he received the cure. The great physicians have always spoken of Nature as being the great healer. That is only partially true. Nature alone can do nothing. Nature can cure only when man recognizes his place in the world, which is not in Nature, as with the animal, but in the human kingdom, the link between the natural and the divine.” — Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

      I know: I’m breaking every rule of compelling writing. But this blog was never going to be The New Yorker. It’s a collection of observations and picked up pieces along the way. The writing isn’t the end game, merely an aspiration in a life full of aspirations. Yes, I began with a long quote from Miller, to be sure, but I didn’t have the heart to omit any one part of it. His thought process reminded me of Henry David Thoreau, his observations reminded me of Anthony de Mello.

      Enough justification: Let’s get to the point already. We are all links between the natural and the divine, the problem is that most of us live a life completely distracted and unaware of our essential position. When we reach awareness life makes more sense, our place in the universe is clear, and we live in the moment. This is the peace Miller talks of, a place we immediately understand when we’ve arrived there ourselves.

      “You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. That’s where the evil comes from psychologically. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. Go on, put out more effort, more and more effort. But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I write this blog not as a wise old sage, but as someone who has seen the light and struggles to linger with it. It’s not as if I don’t hear the email notifications poking at me, or feel the frustration of heavy traffic after a long week of travel, but I do put them in a place where they don’t rise to a prominent place in the moment. Peace isn’t a cessation, it’s an arrival. I know I won’t accomplish everything I want to accomplish in a lifetime, but I’m happy with where the journey is taking me. Let the lists of unvisited places be damned: I’ll do what I can in this lifetime.

      “Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barnyard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      Between the natural and the divine is where we reside. We navigate living in a world filled with the walking dead: those afraid to truly see the game for what it is. It’s always been about now. It’s always been about the quiet connection with our fellow travelers. To be where we are in the season, firmly in the moment. We overthink the present, feeling it ought be more complicated than it really is. Sometimes it’s as simple as walking away from a partially-written blog post to play fetch with a pup we haven’t seen in a few days, that we may get reacquainted with why we’re here in the first place. It’s surrendering to the moment and truly being at peace with where we are.

    • Beyond Meaning

      “Life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” — Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      How we process things in our lives determines how happy we are with the sum of it. Writing is an essential way to process it for me. Deep reading does wonders for me too. But I don’t use activity for processing. Perhaps you’ve found the secret to multitasking activity and combined it with processing, if so kudos, but for me it’s never really worked. There’s something to be said for long walks in the woods or an empty beach, but such activities help empty my restless mind, these things rarely help me process anything important.

      And so I write, and read, and singularly process what I can. And share it in this blog and other communication threads for those inclined to follow the breadcrumbs. So maybe my someday great-grandchildren can sort out who this character was in his day. And maybe you, dear reader, somewhere in this world and in your time, may find something insightful too. Or maybe it gets trapped forever in the anonymous amber of the Internet. The things we ponder in this world…

      The thing is, if life has no meaning, we waste time trying to find it. We ought to just live, and fill that lifetime with purpose and wonder and love. That’s something beyond “the meaning of life”, yet it’s meaningful to the living. That’s you and me and some imagined reader of ancient blogs “someday, when”. We are here, writing our verse, as best we can. So make it compelling. Make it fun. Make it a story worth reading about. The rest will take care of itself.