Learning about Love in Africa (not what you might expect)

I just finished “Awareness” by Anthony deMello. Challenging book. Great book. How do I talk about it? In talking about it I am just passing thoughts along, and not passing along his message. Or can I? I don’t know. I’ll just talk about it. It’s a challenging book because it is a ruthlessly compassionate reminder that to be free, you have to drop EVERYTHING. No exceptions. I seem to have compromised my freedom by getting caught in unawareness that instead of dropping concepts, I was swapping them. Maybe I was swapping little concepts for bigger ones, but a bigger box is still built of walls. It’s a challenge because it talks about that time Christ said you have to hate your father, hate your mother, hate your brother, to truly love God. And that time some zen master said If you see your father, kill him. If you see your brother, kill him. If you see the Buddha, kill him. Only then will you be free. This stuff used to really bother me. What is this all about? Is it not right to love your family? To love Jesus, love the Buddha, LOVE people?  Well, yeah, of course it’s all right. But it’s tricky. Just like any other concept, love can become an idol. And any defined thing is restrictive to the truth. deMello advocates an exercise where you visualize someone you love, someone you think you can’t live without, surely can’t be happy without, and to say to that person “I don’t need you. My happiness is not in you. You cannot make me happy.” And in doing so, you are free to actually enjoy that person. To renounce clinging. This is majorly challenging to me, as I’m sure to most people. How could I live without the support of my parents? How could I live without the love of God? But the fact is these questions reveal the presence of expectations! The real question I have is, how could I live without the Approval of my parents. How could I live without the love of God looking exactly like this, or like this, as my little needs are in any given moment. And that “need” kills my freedom. And it’s false! It’s a lie!  deMello also reminds that Eternal Life is NOW. It can’t be eternal if it’s not. … It’s like, I know that true joy, true happiness, true peace, whatever word it is, even those are restrictive and misleading, lies only in complete surrender to God, and still I buy into these little thoughts of what I think I need specifically to make myself feel whole. What I need in order to rest into the Eternal NOW. It may sound like I’m being hard on myself, but I promise I don’t feel that way. I’m not having any negative judgment of myself in saying these things. In fact, I feel GREAT saying them. For whatever reason, whatever past associations I formed, I have formed a groove around what Love is. And if God is love, that means I’ve decided what God is. And That leads to suffering in moments when I think it’s real, but MAN, the FREEDOM when I see through it!! deMello mentions that he did his “I don’t need you” exercise with GOD. WOAH, right?? But I mean, in doing this exercise, you’re addressing a concept. I tried it with love. And seriously, I’ve considered myself a hopeless romantic for I don’t know how many years. Sure, an exceptionally enlightened one, but … okay, I hope you’re laughing with me-at me for that one. I know.  Okay, so that’s a lot of mental activity surrounding what I read about awareness. 

Here’s a fun moment I had with it. I was journaling last night about my experiences with just watching. And I wrote the sentence: Awareness is hard… blissful… some other descriptive words, and then immediately noticed awareness, realizing it was absolutely none of these things. These were the things I was observing. The things I was aware of. Awareness itself had not changed in the slightest. Is completely uncharacterizable. It’s not even alert! You can have an alert experience of awareness, but it is not that.

Hmmm… So, some background? I was having a hard time finding peace, and thinking a lot of things were wrong with that, wrong because of that. Thinking a lot of “I need” kind of thoughts. I turned to my parents. My dad advised taking two days at site to be in retreat. To ascend as much as possible. To re-form the basis of connection with peace/silence/awareness in this context. So I did. And thank God for that. I remembered that I have the choice, when silence or peace presents itself to dive into it and rest there. Drop an attitude. Stay with it for as long as it stays. To nurture that awareness. Bjork said “I can decide what I give, but it’s not up to me what I get given.” Gandolf said basically the same thing. Yes, these are two great spiritual guides. Bjork and Gandolf.

So, as I’ve heard a million times, if you want to change the world, start with yourself. And as deMello and my dad say (among others, of course), if you want to change yourself, you just have to watch and stop trying to change anything. I got in a fight with a good friend here a couple days ago. Got Maaaajorly unconscious for that one (::shrug::) and the next day I was pretty down, registering problems with other people in village as real things (even when they had nothing to do with me), this or course on top of moments of feeling wretched about “myself” for the way I handled the argument. I didn’t know how to resolve it, especially in this cultural context. I was sitting, eating beans with my family, thinking “try to just watch. Try to just watch” (isn’t this hilarious?) when I was graced with a deep wave of stillness. And again, by grace, I was able to choose to give myself to that stillness. I said an attitude, stopped everything I was doing and sat with it. When I looked up I noticed a beautiful sky line. Gorgeous bird songs. The community of family and friends sharing a meal. Peace only. Jamm rekk. Only minutes later I had the chance to talk to the person I had fought with. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say there was only love and peace there in that moment. Throughout the day, I noticed things being perfect and only then realized that earlier in the day I had been projecting an imperfection on them.  What a gift. So, … mmm… wild. I was so sure I needed people! My brain is still saying “hold on, are you sure you don’t?” And ya know, I could probably argue both sides of that. I think it’s another paradox, where the meaning gets twisted by the word “need.” AND by the idea that people are these separate isolated entities that can either “do it” by themselves or not. One thing I really liked this deMello book is this line: “You aren’t even a dancer! You’re being danced.” There is no individual dancing. There is only the dance. So yes, sometimes part of that dance is people supporting each other. And sometimes part of that is being perfectly okay alone. Thinking you need something that is currently NOT a part of the dance is just a denial of the truth.

To give a fair representation of my experience I could share how I sounded when I journaled at the depths of my freaking out before my “retreat”. But… I don’t even want to read that again. Why would I share darkness instead of light?  Oh I can be so cheesy J

For a more practical update, my work is coming along. I’m developing my action plan, and let me tell you, it’s going to be a busy two years. Now if only it would cool off a little bit, I’d go plant some trees…

P.S. feel free to call me out in comments if there’s something in here that seems clear to you and seems unclear to me. Reflect me! Be my mirror! If you feel some truth, share it.