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“Think of my life like this:
Is it possible that all the horrors I’ve experienced have been staged for me, that I may become a playwright and depict all states of the soul and all situations. I was a playwright at age twenty. But has my life passed peacefully and tranquilly, I would have had nothing to portray” – Anon
Continue reading “Is it possible all the horrors … have been staged?”
When I first started listening to Anthony de Mello I noticed a small note on YouTube where the person who had uploaded the audio books had written “like Eckhart Tolle”.
I had never heard of the man but only light digging was required. He is called by some the number one Spiritual Teacher of our times but despite that I had managed to get through a good forty+ years of my life without hearing his name.
I’ve come to realise that this simple Zen quote from Adyashanti is fundamental to enlightenment.
It can easily be re-written as “Do not seek happiness, only cease to cherish opinions” because it is, by and large our opinions that stop us being happy.
Continue reading “Do not seek the truth; only cease to cherish opinions … explored”
I’m not religious and I don’t believe in any of the Gods suggested by mainstream religions. However I cannot put my thoughts any better than the Catholic priest Anthony de Mello did.
After his death, incidentally, the Catholic Church disavowed de Mello the moment they took the trouble to read his works!
So often you might here someone ask a mystic what to do about a situation in life and receiving the reply “Who is the person asking?” which sounds like a sort of cloudy fob off.
But it is at the core of enlightenment because most people know about themselves but they don’t know who they are.
Continue reading “Knowing who you are versus knowing about yourself”
This is partly from Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth (page 114) but with some slight changes to make it clearer.
So to start off do you think any of the following three things about events of people: Continue reading “How to unblock happiness without becoming apathetic”
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – William Shakespear
If you take a moment to think back through your life you may notice how things, events or people you once considered ‘bad’ you now believe are ‘good’ and vice versa.
I’m pretty sure this story comes from De Mello but can’t quite put my finger on the source right now.
There was a man who bought a lottery ticket and won a sports car. As the vehicle sparkled in the driveway friends and family commented on how lucky is was to have won it and what a fortunate man he was.
‘Maybe’ he replied.
For years I regretted the job I choose after college, always pondering how I would have been much better off if I had made a different decision.
Now, however, I realise I’ve wasted a huge amount of energy on a pointless activity – how could I regret something I never experienced?
“I have been years seeking the ideal place and I have come to the conclusion that the only way to find it is to be it.” – Alan Watts
So many of us go through life thinking things would be better if we were somewhere else – perhaps geographically, perhaps in terms of a job or relationship.
The truth is if we ever get to that place we may be content for a while but soon enough we’ll begin to wonder if there is somewhere even better and unhappiness seeps in as we continue to search.
Accepting the present can release us from that. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work to change it, that we should be lethargic, just we should avoid thinking change solve everything.