Event though it was the Master’s day of Silence,
a traveler begged for a word of wisdom that
would guide him through life’s journey.
The Master, nodded affably, took a sheet of
paper and wrote a single word on it: “Awarenes.”
The visitor was perplexed. “That’s too brief
Would you please expand on it a bit?”
The Master took the paper back and wrote:
“Awareness, awareness, awareness.”
“But what does these words mean?” said the
stranger helplessly.
The Master reached out for the paper and
wrote: “Awareness, awareness, awareness
means AWARENESS.”
-One Minute Wisdom – Anthony De Mello
This has been pleasantly been haunting me lately, and I’ve enjoyed its company, I guess because of how true this is for the soul. I can’t seem to get away from it (nor do i strive to) but I feel as if something needs to be expounded about it.
As I had said that something had to be written in respect to attachment, well Awareness has a lot to do with the ability to hurt another human. That hurting is indeed unnecessary (at least in the respect to violence) but there is a sense of wrong doing that all humans seem to have. So what brings about that violence? Its a hard questions to answer, and a lot of people seem to come up with the same conclusion of, “well outside circumstances, society, other people.” Maybe so but if you know that, that is completely and solemnly the source then why do you not do anything about it? Here is why: You are the source of the conflict, inside, it is not external
People don’t want to take responsibility for the way they see their world, but its not until you take responsibility for your own personal bias, that distortion of this beautiful Reality that you will not see things as they are. You will continue to impose your ideas on others, including nature, and anything else that we can give a label. This dumbs down Reality, so what you see is not Reality but reality (notice the capitalization). They are not the same thing, what you see and what I see are completely different. You see something as good or bad because you’ve decided your truth is the ultimate truth whereas I know that my reality is not ultimate truth, if it were, there would be no conflict, and I would not suffer. The reason why people suffer is because they are Asleep. They are not aware of their programming, what was fed to them when they were born, habits that are taught to them to be good or bad, and so they follow it without question. Do you see this in yourself? Maybe you feel defensive, why? who feels defensive, is it even really you, or is it your father/mother who feel defensive that lives within you. This is not you but to see it clearly you’ll understand that you go beyond that.
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