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One of these great saints, Ramana Maharshi, used to ask, “Who am I?” We see now that this is a very deep question. Ask it ceaselessly, constantly. Ask it and you will notice that you are the answer. There is no intellectual answer—you are the answer. Be the answer, and everything will change.
Michael A. Singer • The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself
Wall upon wall surrounds your prison cell so that it seems almost impossible that you will ever break out and make contact with the richness of life and love and freedom that lies beyond your prison fortress. And yet the task, far from being impossible, is actually easy and delightful. What can you do to break out? Four things:
Anthony SJ de Mello • The Way to Love: Meditations for Life
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Anthony SJ de Mello • The Way to Love: Meditations for Life
It was your parents, your society, your culture, your religion, and your past experiences that fed the operating instructions into your computer. These things depend on the criteria society establishes; they depend on your social conditioning that was stamped into you. You’ve been programmed with this. You’ve been conditioned this way. This is what
... See moreAnthony de Mello • A Year with Anthony De Mello: Waking Up Week by Week
Has it ever occurred to you that what you call your happiness is really your chain? For example, are you calling somebody your happiness? As in, “You are my joy.” It could be your marriage, your business, your degree, whatever. In whom do you find your happiness? Whatever the answer is, that’s your prison. Oh, this is hard language. But reflect on
... See moreAnthony De Mello • Rediscovering Life: Awaken to Reality
As we become less identified with any single aspect of the separate self against another, we’re freer to know which among them all is most appropriate for a given situation. It’s as if we can be anyone to anyone. Resting behind all roles, we can also be, as it were, no one to no one—that is, we can create a space where whoever we’re with has the be
... See moreRam Dass • How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service
You’ve got the clouds and you’ve got the sky. Many of the Oriental masters will say that enlightenment, before they saw, meant they would identify themselves with the clouds. After enlightenment, they would identify themselves with the sky.
Anthony De Mello • Rediscovering Life: Awaken to Reality
I think Merton is right about one of the main causes of our slipping into ideology, conspiracism, and other oversimplified visions of the world. The quote is taken from the introduction to a Thich Nhat Hanh book about Vietnam published in 1967, which was a polarized time with two visions of the world and America, split over both a real war in Vietnam and a domestic culture war. But Merton was also a big Jesus guy, whose “narrow road” teaching should temper our expectations of how many will join us in prioritizing compassion and nuance. In trying times of great complexity, those looking closely and carefully at both the public situation and at our own hearts should not be shocked to find ourselves fairly lonely. I hope the public spaces I help create can be a kind of virtual community center for those with similar values and goals, to tend to our wounds and encourage one another to keep going. I know the “narrow path” of Jesus’ teaching is often interpreted salvifically, as in “some are saved but most are not.” I don’t find that reading very plausible, and with every year as an American — and every year of additional psychological training and experience — I am more drawn to a this-worldly reading of that concept. Given the trajectory especially of the Right these days, plus often-unthinking liberal backlashes, where else is such activity headed but toward “destruction”? That doesn’t necessarily mean civil war, or anything like the Vietnam War, but it’s not good, and I won’t go down that wide path when I know there’s a better, more accurate, and more compassionate option.
instagram.comEvery time we relax into the feared or denied part of ourselves we go through a kind of “death”—of our idealized self-image, or who we thought we were—which leads us to a new, deeper level of inner life. Each such “death” prepares us for the great death, the death of the ego’s separation from God, where we come to the center of our own being, the p
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