Awareness Without Evaluating Everything

The following is the 13th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center

“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.

“When you say of someone, ‘He’s a communist,’ understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on him. ‘She’s a capitalist.’ Understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on her, and if the label carries undertones of approval or disapproval, so much the worse! How are you going to understand what you disapprove of, or what you approve of, for that matter? All of this sounds like a new world, doesn’t it? No judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is. Because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand. A dog trainer attempts to understand a dog so that he can train the dog to perform certain tricks. A scientist observes the behavior of ants with no further end in view than to study ants, to learn as much as possible about them. He has no other aim. He’s not attempting to train them or get anything out of them. He’s interested in ants, he wants to learn as much as possible about them. That’s his attitude. The day you attain a posture like that, you will experience a miracle. You will change—effortlessly, correctly. Change will happen, you will not have to bring it about. As the life of awareness settles on your darkness, whatever is evil will disappear. Whatever is good will be fostered. You will have to experience that for yourself.

“But this calls for a disciplined mind. And when I say disciplined, I’m not talking about effort. I’m talking about something else. Have you ever studied an athlete. His or her whole life is sports, but what a disciplined life he or she leads. And look at a river as it moves toward the sea. It creates its own banks that contain it. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness. Oh, it’s so delightful! It’s the most delightful thing in the world; the most important, the most delightful. There’s nothing so important in the world as awakening. Nothing! And, of course, it is also discipline in its own way.

“There’s nothing so delightful as being aware. Would you rather live in darkness? Would you rather act and not be aware of your actions, talk and not be aware of your words? Would you rather listen to people and not be aware of what you’re hearing, or see things and not be aware of what you’re looking at? The great Socrates said, ‘The unaware life is not worth living.’ That’s a self-evident truth. Most people don’t live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts—generally somebody else’s—mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. Do you want to see how mechanical you really are? ‘My, that’s a lovely shirt you’re wearing.’ You feel good hearing that. For a shirt, for heaven’s sake! You feel proud of yourself when you hear that. People come over to my center in India and they say, ‘What a lovely place, these lovely trees’ (for which I’m not responsible at all), ‘this lovely climate.’ And already I’m feeling good, until I catch myself feeling good, and I say, ‘Hey, can you imagine anything as stupid as that?’ I’m not responsible for those trees; I wasn’t responsible for choosing the location. I didn’t order the weather; it just happened. But ‘me’ got in there, so I’m feeling good. I’m feeling good about ‘my’ culture and ‘my’ nation. How stupid can you get? I mean that. I’m told my great Indian culture has produced all these mystics. I didn’t produce them. I’m not responsible for them. Or they tell me, ‘That country of yours and its poverty—it’s disgusting.’ I feel ashamed. But I didn’t create it. What’s going on? Did you ever stop to think? People tell you, ‘I think you’re very charming,’ so I feel wonderful. I get a positive stroke (that’s why they call it I’m O.K., you’re O.K.). I’m going to write a book someday and the title will be I’m an Ass, You’re an Ass. That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you’re an ass. It’s wonderful. When people tell me, ‘You’re wrong.’ I say, ‘What can you expect of an ass?’.

“Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed. In the final liberation, I’m an ass, you’re an ass. Normally the way it goes, I press a button and you’re up; I press another button and you’re down. And you like that. How many people do you know who are unaffected by praise or blame? That isn’t human, we say. Human means that you have to be a little monkey, so everybody can twist your tail, and you do whatever you ought to be doing. But is that human? If you find me charming, it means that right now you’re in a good mood, nothing more.

“It also means that I fit your shopping list. We all carry a shopping list around, and it’s as though you’ve got to measure up to this list—tall, um, dark, um, handsome, according to my tastes. ‘I like the sound of his voice.’ You say, ‘I’m in love.’ You’re not in love, you silly ass. Any time you’re in love—I hesitate to say this—you’re being particularly asinine. Sit down and watch what’s happening to you. You’re running away from yourself. You want to escape. Somebody once said, ‘Thank God for reality, and for the means to escape from it.’ So that’s what’s going on. We are so mechanical, so controlled. We write books about being controlled and how wonderful it is to be controlled and how necessary it is that people tell you you’re O.K. Then you’ll have a good feeling about yourself. How wonderful it is to be in prison! Or as somebody said to me yesterday, to be in your cage. Do you like being in prison? Do you like being controlled? Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not good. As long as you live to fulfill other people’s expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished—in short, whether you live up to every damned expectation of theirs. Do you call that human?

“This is what you’ll discover when you observe yourself! You’ll be horrified! The fact of the matter is that you’re neither O.K. nor not O.K. You may fit the current mood or trend or fashion! Does that mean you’ve become O.K.? Does your O.K.-ness depend on that? Does it depend on what people think of you? Jesus Christ must have been pretty ‘not O.K.’ by those standards. You’re not O.K. and you’re not not O.K., you’re you. I hope that is going to be the big discovery, at least for some of you. If three or four of you make this discovery during these days we spend together, my, what a wonderful thing! Extraordinary! Cut out all the O.K. stuff and the not-O.K. stuff; cut out all the judgments and simply observe, watch. You’ll make great discoveries. These discoveries will change you. You won’t have to make the slightest effort, believe me.

“This reminds me of this fellow in London after the war. He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it’s a big, heavy object. The bus conductor comes up to him and says, ‘What do you have on your lap there?’ And the man says, ‘This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I’m taking it to the police station.’ The conductor says, ‘You don’t want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.’

“Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the bomb from your lap to under your seat. They don’t really solve your problems. They exchange your problems for other problems. Has that ever struck you? You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one. It’s always going to be that way until we solve the problem called ‘you.’”

Awareness Without Evaluating Everything

The following is the 13th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center

“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.

“When you say of someone, ‘He’s a communist,’ understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on him. ‘She’s a capitalist.’ Understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on her, and if the label carries undertones of approval or disapproval, so much the worse! How are you going to understand what you disapprove of, or what you approve of, for that matter? All of this sounds like a new world, doesn’t it? No judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is. Because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand. A dog trainer attempts to understand a dog so that he can train the dog to perform certain tricks. A scientist observes the behavior of ants with no further end in view than to study ants, to learn as much as possible about them. He has no other aim. He’s not attempting to train them or get anything out of them. He’s interested in ants, he wants to learn as much as possible about them. That’s his attitude. The day you attain a posture like that, you will experience a miracle. You will change—effortlessly, correctly. Change will happen, you will not have to bring it about. As the life of awareness settles on your darkness, whatever is evil will disappear. Whatever is good will be fostered. You will have to experience that for yourself.

“But this calls for a disciplined mind. And when I say disciplined, I’m not talking about effort. I’m talking about something else. Have you ever studied an athlete. His or her whole life is sports, but what a disciplined life he or she leads. And look at a river as it moves toward the sea. It creates its own banks that contain it. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness. Oh, it’s so delightful! It’s the most delightful thing in the world; the most important, the most delightful. There’s nothing so important in the world as awakening. Nothing! And, of course, it is also discipline in its own way.

“There’s nothing so delightful as being aware. Would you rather live in darkness? Would you rather act and not be aware of your actions, talk and not be aware of your words? Would you rather listen to people and not be aware of what you’re hearing, or see things and not be aware of what you’re looking at? The great Socrates said, ‘The unaware life is not worth living.’ That’s a self-evident truth. Most people don’t live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts—generally somebody else’s—mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. Do you want to see how mechanical you really are? ‘My, that’s a lovely shirt you’re wearing.’ You feel good hearing that. For a shirt, for heaven’s sake! You feel proud of yourself when you hear that. People come over to my center in India and they say, ‘What a lovely place, these lovely trees’ (for which I’m not responsible at all), ‘this lovely climate.’ And already I’m feeling good, until I catch myself feeling good, and I say, ‘Hey, can you imagine anything as stupid as that?’ I’m not responsible for those trees; I wasn’t responsible for choosing the location. I didn’t order the weather; it just happened. But ‘me’ got in there, so I’m feeling good. I’m feeling good about ‘my’ culture and ‘my’ nation. How stupid can you get? I mean that. I’m told my great Indian culture has produced all these mystics. I didn’t produce them. I’m not responsible for them. Or they tell me, ‘That country of yours and its poverty—it’s disgusting.’ I feel ashamed. But I didn’t create it. What’s going on? Did you ever stop to think? People tell you, ‘I think you’re very charming,’ so I feel wonderful. I get a positive stroke (that’s why they call it I’m O.K., you’re O.K.). I’m going to write a book someday and the title will be I’m an Ass, You’re an Ass. That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you’re an ass. It’s wonderful. When people tell me, ‘You’re wrong.’ I say, ‘What can you expect of an ass?’.

“Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed. In the final liberation, I’m an ass, you’re an ass. Normally the way it goes, I press a button and you’re up; I press another button and you’re down. And you like that. How many people do you know who are unaffected by praise or blame? That isn’t human, we say. Human means that you have to be a little monkey, so everybody can twist your tail, and you do whatever you ought to be doing. But is that human? If you find me charming, it means that right now you’re in a good mood, nothing more.

“It also means that I fit your shopping list. We all carry a shopping list around, and it’s as though you’ve got to measure up to this list—tall, um, dark, um, handsome, according to my tastes. ‘I like the sound of his voice.’ You say, ‘I’m in love.’ You’re not in love, you silly ass. Any time you’re in love—I hesitate to say this—you’re being particularly asinine. Sit down and watch what’s happening to you. You’re running away from yourself. You want to escape. Somebody once said, ‘Thank God for reality, and for the means to escape from it.’ So that’s what’s going on. We are so mechanical, so controlled. We write books about being controlled and how wonderful it is to be controlled and how necessary it is that people tell you you’re O.K. Then you’ll have a good feeling about yourself. How wonderful it is to be in prison! Or as somebody said to me yesterday, to be in your cage. Do you like being in prison? Do you like being controlled? Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not good. As long as you live to fulfill other people’s expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished—in short, whether you live up to every damned expectation of theirs. Do you call that human?

“This is what you’ll discover when you observe yourself! You’ll be horrified! The fact of the matter is that you’re neither O.K. nor not O.K. You may fit the current mood or trend or fashion! Does that mean you’ve become O.K.? Does your O.K.-ness depend on that? Does it depend on what people think of you? Jesus Christ must have been pretty ‘not O.K.’ by those standards. You’re not O.K. and you’re not not O.K., you’re you. I hope that is going to be the big discovery, at least for some of you. If three or four of you make this discovery during these days we spend together, my, what a wonderful thing! Extraordinary! Cut out all the O.K. stuff and the not-O.K. stuff; cut out all the judgments and simply observe, watch. You’ll make great discoveries. These discoveries will change you. You won’t have to make the slightest effort, believe me.

“This reminds me of this fellow in London after the war. He’s sitting with a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it’s a big, heavy object. The bus conductor comes up to him and says, ‘What do you have on your lap there?’ And the man says, ‘This is an unexploded bomb. We dug it out of the garden and I’m taking it to the police station.’ The conductor says, ‘You don’t want to carry that on your lap. Put it under the seat.’

“Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the bomb from your lap to under your seat. They don’t really solve your problems. They exchange your problems for other problems. Has that ever struck you? You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one. It’s always going to be that way until we solve the problem called ‘you.’”

Insight and Understanding

The following is the 48th chapter in, “AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the DeMello Stroud Spirituality Center.

“But what does self-change entail? I’ve said it in so many words, over and over, but now I’m going to break it down into little segments. First, insight. Not effort, not cultivating habits, not having an ideal. Ideals do a lot of damage. The whole time you’re focusing on what should be instead of focusing on what is. And so you’re imposing what should be on a present reality, never having understood what present reality is. Let me give you an example of insight from my own experience in counseling. A priest comes to me and says he’s lazy; he wants to be more industrious, more active, but he is lazy. I ask him what ‘lazy’ means. In the old days I would have said to him, ‘Let’s see, why don’t you make a list of things you want to do every day, and then every night you check them off, and it will give you a good feeling; build up habit that way.’ Or I might say to him, ‘Who is your ideal, your patron saint?’ And if he says St. Francis Xavier, I would tell him, ‘See how much Xavier worked. You must meditate on him and that will get you moving.’ That’s one way of going about it, but, I’m sorry to say, it’s superficial. Making him use his willpower, effort, doesn’t last very long. His behavior may change, but he does not. So I now move in the other direction. I say to him, ‘Lazy, what’s that? There are a million types of laziness. Let’s hear what your type of laziness is. Describe what you mean by lazy?’ He says, ‘Well, I never get anything done. I don’t feel like doing anything.’ I ask, ‘You mean right from the moment you get up in the morning?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers. ‘I wake up in the morning and there’s nothing worth getting up for.’ ‘You’re depressed, then?’ I ask. ‘You could call it that,’ he says. ‘I have sort of withdrawn.’ ‘Have you always been like this?’ I ask. ‘Well, not always. When I was younger, I was more active. When I was in the seminary, I was full of life.’ ‘So when did this begin?’ ‘Oh, about three or four years ago.’ I ask him if anything happened then. He thinks a while. I say, ‘If you have to think so much, nothing very special could have happened four years ago. How about the year before that?’ He says, ‘Well, I was ordained that year.’ ‘Anything happen in your ordination year?’ I ask. ‘There was one little thing, the final examination in theology; I failed it. It was a bit of a disappointment, but I’ve gotten over it. The bishop was planning to send me to Rome, to eventually teach in the seminary. I rather liked the idea, but since I failed the examination, he changed his mind and sent me to this parish. Actually, there was some injustice because . . .’ Now he’s getting worked up; there’s anger there that he hasn’t gotten over. He’s got to work through that disappointment. It’s useless to preach him a sermon. It’s useless to give him an idea. We’ve got to get him to face his anger and disappointment and to get some insight into all of that. When he’s able to work through that, he’s back into life again. If I gave him an exhortation and told him how hard his married brothers and sisters work, that would merely make him feel guilty. He doesn’t have the self-insight which is going to heal him. So that’s the first thing.

“There’s another great task, understanding. Did you really think this was going to make you happy? You just assumed it was going to make you happy. Why did you want to teach in the seminary? Because you wanted to be happy. You thought that being a professor, having a certain status and prestige, would make you happy. Would it? Understanding is called for there.

“In making the distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me,’ it’s a great help to disidentify what is going on. Let me give you an example of this kind of thing. A young Jesuit priest comes to see me; he’s a lovely, extraordinary, gifted, talented, charming, lovable man— everything. But he had a strange kind of a kink. With employees he was a terror. He was even known to assault them. It nearly became a matter for the police. Whenever he was put in charge of the grounds, the school, or whatever, this problem would keep coming up. He made a thirty-day retreat in what we Jesuits call a Tertianship, where he meditated day after day on the patience and love of Jesus for those who were underprivileged, etc. But I knew it wasn’t going to have an effect. Anyway, he went home and was better for about three or four months. (Somebody said about most retreats that we begin them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and we end as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.) After that, he was right back to square one. So he came to see me. I was very busy at the time. Though he had come from another city in India, I couldn’t see him. So I said, ‘I’m going for my evening walk; if you want to come with me on the walk, that’s fine, but I don’t have any other time.’ So we went for a walk. I’d known him before, and as we were walking, I had a strange feeling. When I get one of these strange feelings, I generally check it out with the person in question. So I said, ‘I have a strange feeling that you’re hiding something from me. Are you?’ He became indignant. He said, ‘What do you mean, hiding? Do you think I’d undertake this long journey and come to ask for your tune in order to hide something?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s a funny feeling I had, that’s all; I thought I should check with you.’ We walked on. We have a lake not far from where I live. I remember the scene distinctly. He said, ‘Could we sit down somewhere?’ I said, ‘O.K.’ We sat on a low wall that skirts the lake. He said, ‘You’re right. I am hiding something from you.’ And with that he burst into tears. He said, ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never said to anybody since I became a Jesuit. My father died when I was very young, and my mother became a servant. Her job was to clean lavatories and toilets and bathrooms, and sometimes she’d work for sixteen hours a day to get the wherewithal to support us. I’m so ashamed of that that I’ve hidden it from everybody and I continue taking revenge, irrationally, on her and the whole servant class.’ The feeling got transferred. No one could make sense of why this charming man was doing this, but the moment he saw that, there was never any trouble again, never. He was all right.”

Insight and Understanding

The following is the 47th chapter in AWARENESS: A de Mellow Spirituality Conference in His Own Words

by Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. edited by J. Francis Stroud, S.J., Copyright © 1990 by the Center for Spiritual Exchange

“But what does self-change entail? I’ve said it in so many words, over and over, but now I’m going to break it down into little segments. First, insight. Not effort, not cultivating habits, not having an ideal. Ideals do a lot of damage. The whole time you’re focusing on what should be instead of focusing on what is. And so you’re imposing what should be on a present reality, never having understood what present reality is. Let me give you an example of insight from my own experience in counseling. A priest comes to me and says he’s lazy; he wants to be more industrious, more active, but he is lazy. I ask him what ‘lazy’ means. In the old days I would have said to him, ‘Let’s see, why don’t you make a list of things you want to do every day, and then every night you check them off, and it will give you a good feeling; build up habit that way.’ Or I might say to him, ‘Who is your ideal, your patron saint?’ And if he says St. Francis Xavier, I would tell him, ‘See how much Xavier worked. You must meditate on him and that will get you moving.’ That’s one way of going about it, but, I’m sorry to say, it’s superficial. Making him use his willpower, effort, doesn’t last very long. His behavior may change, but he does not. So I now move in the other direction. I say to him, ‘Lazy, what’s that? There are a million types of laziness. Let’s hear what your type of laziness is. Describe what you mean by lazy?’ He says, ‘Well, I never get anything done. I don’t feel like doing anything.’ I ask, ‘You mean right from the moment you get up in the morning?’ ‘Yes,’ he answers. ‘I wake up in the morning and there’s nothing worth getting up for.’ ‘You’re depressed, then?’ I ask. ‘You could call it that,’ he says. ‘I have sort of withdrawn.’ ‘Have you always been like this?’ I ask. ‘Well, not always. When I was younger, I was more active. When I was in the seminary, I was full of life.’ ‘So when did this begin?’ ‘Oh, about three or four years ago.’ I ask him if anything happened then. He thinks a while. I say, ‘If you have to think so much, nothing very special could have happened four years ago. How about the year before that?’ He says, ‘Well, I was ordained that year.’ ‘Anything happen in your ordination year?’ I ask. ‘There was one little thing, the final examination in theology; I failed it. It was a bit of a disappointment, but I’ve gotten over it. The bishop was planning to send me to Rome, to eventually teach in the seminary. I rather liked the idea, but since I failed the examination, he changed his mind and sent me to this parish. Actually, there was some injustice because . . .’ Now he’s getting worked up; there’s anger there that he hasn’t gotten over. He’s got to work through that disappointment. It’s useless to preach him a sermon. It’s useless to give him an idea. We’ve got to get him to face his anger and disappointment and to get some insight into all of that. When he’s able to work through that, he’s back into life again. If I gave him an exhortation and told him how hard his married brothers and sisters work, that would merely make him feel guilty. He doesn’t have the self-insight which is going to heal him. So that’s the first thing.

There’s another great task, understanding. Did you really think this was going to make you happy? You just assumed it was going to make you happy. Why did you want to teach in the seminary? Because you wanted to be happy. You thought that being a professor, having a certain status and prestige, would make you happy. Would it? Understanding is called for there.

In making the distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me,’ it’s a great help to disidentify what is going on. Let me give you an example of this kind of thing. A young Jesuit priest comes to see me; he’s a lovely, extraordinary, gifted, talented, charming, lovable man—everything. But he had a strange kind of a kink. With employees he was a terror. He was even known to assault them. It nearly became a matter for the police. Whenever he was put in charge of the grounds, the school, or whatever, this problem would keep coming up. He made a thirty-day retreat in what we Jesuits call a Tertianship, where he meditated day after day on the patience and love of Jesus for those who were underprivileged, etc. But I knew it wasn’t going to have an effect. Anyway, he went home and was better for about three or four months. (Somebody said about most retreats that we begin them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and we end as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.) After that, he was right back to square one. So he came to see me. I was very busy at the time. Though he had come from another city in India, I couldn’t see him. So I said, ‘I’m going for my evening walk; if you want to come with me on the walk, that’s fine, but I don’t have any other time.’ So we went for a walk. I’d known him before, and as we were walking, I had a strange feeling. When I get one of these strange feelings, I generally check it out with the person in question. So I said, ‘I have a strange feeling that you’re hiding something from me. Are you?’ He became indignant. He said, ‘What do you mean, hiding? Do you think I’d undertake this long journey and come to ask for your tune in order to hide something?’ I said, ‘Well, it’s a funny feeling I had, that’s all; I thought I should check with you.’ We walked on. We have a lake not far from where I live. I remember the scene distinctly. He said, ‘Could we sit down somewhere?’ I said, ‘O.K.’ We sat on a low wall that skirts the lake. He said, ‘You’re right. I am hiding something from you.’ And with that he burst into tears. He said, ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve never said to anybody since I became a Jesuit. My father died when I was very young, and my mother became a servant. Her job was to clean lavatories and toilets and bathrooms, and sometimes she’d work for sixteen hours a day to get the wherewithal to support us. I’m so ashamed of that that I’ve hidden it from everybody and I continue taking revenge, irrationally, on her and the whole servant class.’ The feeling got transferred. No one could make sense of why this charming man was doing this, but the moment he saw that, there was never any trouble again, never. He was all right.”