PNTV: Awareness by Anthony de Mello (#75)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got Anthony de Mello's Awareness. Great book on a great subject. Anthony De Mello was a Jesuit priest of the 20th century. Integrated a lot of ideas, east and West. This book, Awareness is all about making a decision of how we're going to live our lives. Most people live their lives as kind of a conditioned, habitual, responsive way where we're just doing what we've been conditioned to do. We habitually stimulus, response, stimulus, response. Whereas we need to choose to live with more awareness, a higher level of consciousness where we can step in between the normal habitual and conditioned stimulus response and choose a more constructive response. That's what the book is all about. We've got the six page PDF to help us rock it and let's see how many big ideas we can get through in these 10 minutes. First big idea, Anthony Nomello asks us, why is it that we don't see beauty everywhere in the world? And he says, well, you're only going to see out there what you see in here. Your consciousness is going to determine what you see in the world. And if you don't have a lot of love for yourself, you don't see a lot of beauty and have appreciation for who you are and how you're showing up, you're not going to see a lot of that in the world outside. We talk about this with shadow projection. We talk about it with a lot of different things. Another idea I love on this theme is Byron Katie's idea that you can have lint on a projector's lens. If you have lint on a projector's lens, when the light goes through that lens and it's projected on a movie screen, you're going to see something on the screen. But the problem is not on the screen. The problem was the lint on the lens, but too often our lens, which is our perception of how we see the world. If we have a little lint on it, a little dirt on it, and then we see things outside of ourselves that aren't beautiful, aren't attractive, and we want to change those things outside of ourselves rather than clean our own consciousness, clean our own filters of perception so that we can see the world in a different light. Really, really powerful idea. What does Wayne Dyer say? Wayne Dyer says, change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. But too often we want the things outside of us to change for us to be happy. It doesn't work that way. And he has a great idea here. He says thinking that you need other people to change for you to be happy is kind of like going to the doctor and the doctor figures out what's going on. And he says, okay, what we're going to do here is we're going to prescribe some medication for your spouse and for your neighbor and for your colleague, and that should take care of your health issue. If we prescribe medication for these other people, that's insane. Doesn't make any sense. And it's insane for two reasons. One, prescribing medication isn't really a good idea. We should probably focus on building our immune system. But that's a whole other conversation. The real reason in this context of why it's insane is trying to solve someone else and make them change for us to be happy just doesn't make any sense. Right. Obviously. So remember that the next time you're saying, if so and so would just change, then I'd be happy. Not how it works. As we talk about again and again and again throughout these notes, we've got to be the change we want to see. We've got to clean the lint off of our own consciousness, off of our own perception. Right. Really powerful idea. So think about that the next time you're thinking that someone else needs to change. I love that idea. So moving on. The next big idea is true selfishness. He says it is not selfish to strive to live a life of your own creation, to live a life in accord with your own values. That is not selfish. In fact, that's part of waking up, moving beyond what we've been told we should do and creating an authentic life. It's part of awareness. It's part of growing up and waking up. Right. What's selfish is telling someone else they need to live their lives according to your values, or someone telling you you need to live your life according to their values. That's selfish. So we don't want to do that. We don't want to get in the habit of saying, you have to do this and this and this. We also don't want to be intimidated by people who tell us we have to do certain things. We need to discover what our own truth is. That's an incredibly creative, powerful act that takes an incredible amount of courage. As we just talked about in the Fountainhead, the last episode, she says it takes the most extraordinary amount of courage Ayn Rand does to live an authentic life. Everyone says it's easy. You need to restrain yourself. No, it's one of the Hardest things in the world. To actually learn to trust yourself and to live in accord with that and to have integrity to your own values. Another big idea here. Excuse me, driving with your brakes on. Here's this awesome idea. He says, look, if you can just get rid of your fear and your anxiety and your tension, it would be like letting go of the brakes, right? It's imagine driving. Imagine driving down the freeway and you got your brakes on, right? And you're just totally afraid, you're totally paranoid and you're driving at. Trying to drive at 50 miles an hour with your foot pressed down on the brake. Doesn't make any sense. But that's what life is like as we have all these cravings and attachments and fears and anxieties. He says, relax. Quit trying to impress anyone. Quit trying to get anywhere that people are suddenly going to appreciate you more and be attached to all these different ideas and expectations. Just let go and be yourself. It'd be like driving without the brakes on. Really cool idea. His quote here is just awesome. He talks about the fact that when you're not feeling too good, don't say, I'm depressed, right? He's like, you're not depressed. The essential part of you, the true essence of you is not depressed. Your true essence is radiantly alive. Sitting back behind any of the emotions you feel, positive or negative, right? It is not depressed. You are not depressed. He says, if you got to say anything, don't say, I am depressed. Say it is depressed. It is depressed. Imagine that. So awareness is to see that you're bigger than any particular emotion you're feeling at any given moment. It's going to pass. This joy is going to pass. Or euphoria. This depression is going to pass. It's kind of like Dan Millman says, emotions are like weather patterns. They're like clouds passing in the sky. This too shall pass. So when you feel depressed, do not say I am depressed. He says, it's okay if you need to to say it is depressed. Kind of imagine coming out here and saying, well, okay, it's depressed right now. That will pass. But don't over identify with our feelings. I love that. Another really cool big idea. He says, we need to experience death in order to really be alive. And he says, imagine this. Jump into your coffin. Fast forward to the end of your life. You're in a coffin. You're being buried. You're dead. Imagine that scenario might sound gloomy, but it is what it is. We're all going to get to that point at some point or another, whether it's a coffin or a cremation basket or urn, or whatever it is that you choose. But we're going to arrive at that point. And anytime you're feeling stressed and it is depressed or overwhelmed or anxious or whatever, put yourself in your coffin and imagine being dead. Then come back to your current problem and see, is it really that big of a deal? Is it really worth you getting all up in your stuff about it? And it probably won't be. A lot of great teachers talk about this. I mentioned in the notes some other awesome quotes on it. He talks about suffering and that suffering is really just an opportunity for us to get clear that we aren't quite there yet. We haven't quite figured out how to live from a state of awareness. What suffering is, as all the great teachers say, is arguing with what is. We're fighting reality. We're not accepting what. What's going on in our lives. We're suffering as a result. Really big idea. We want to pay attention to that. We can look at it as literally the universe kind of giving us a benevolent little slap in the butt of, you know what. Nope, not quite there. And then we can investigate it and see what's going on. We can use any of the number of practices that we've developed, we're developing with these notes and with these episodes. Byron, Katie's work, Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, which we're actually going to do next. All these are amazing tools for us to actually put into play what can help us move on. So the final idea we have here, he says, when we truly get to actually, I'll read you what he says. He says a nice definition of an awakened person is a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within. How cool is that? Henry David Thoreau says something similar. He says if a man does not keep pace with his companion, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. There's something incredibly powerful about learning to trust ourselves, follow our bliss, truly go out and just create our most authentically awesome life, independent of what other people are telling us we need to do, and just really discovering what it is that most makes us feel radiantly alive and going out and trusting that rhythm. As Joseph Campbell says, our bliss, our joy, is God bubbling up within us, the divine bubbling up. So we need to learn to trust that, live with awareness, and have an awesome day. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed. Talk to you soon. See you.