How we change

The central thesis of Awareness by Anthony de Mello leads to a growing awareness of our awakened spirit. There is no route map nor any indicator of success - we know when we get there. As we identify less with the "I" we become more at ease with others and with situations we used to find difficult. We become increasingly aware of the fact that most of the problems in our lives stemmed from what we thought of as "other"; we also miss the fact that people who are mean to us or who seem not to like us are actually dealing with their image of us.


Unless and until people are awake, they are simply accepting or rejecting an image of the other. Which brings us to the "me" doing the thinking - and it's capable of doing some pretty poor thinking most of the time. But when I watch me, I can see the projections and the censorship - and then "you" don't seem too bad.


And slowly I get to realize that the external "otherness" doesn't have power over me. And there is a growing sense of "Oneness." This feeling was reinforced by a reading from Julian of Norwich which points to finding a position of detachment.

"We need to realize the insignificance of creation and see it for the emptiness it is ... "

And at a seminar yesterday with Tony Parsons I listened to an extreme position on this - from an exponent of non-duality whose message could be summed up as "Basically, this is all there is. Everything yet nothing. Nothing yet everything." Wherever you are now, whatever place you are in ... that is all there is.