Posted April 28, 2003
Are You Sleepwalking?
by Anthony de Mello, SJ
The scriptures are always hinting of that, but you'll never understand a
word of what the scriptures are saying until you wake up. Sleeping people
read the scriptures and crucify the Messiah on the basis of them. You've
got to wake up to make sense out of the scriptures. When you do wake up,
they make sense. So does reality. But you'll never be able to put it into
words. You'd rather do something? But even there we've got to make sure
that you're not swinging into action simply to get rid of your negative
feelings. Many people swing into action only to make things
worse. They're not coming from love, they're coming from negative
feelings. They're coming from guilt, anger, hate; from a sense of
injustice or whatever. You've got to make sure of your "being" before you
swing into action. You have to make sure of who you are before you
act. Unfortunately, when sleeping people swing into action, they simply
substitute one cruelty for another, one injustice for another. And so it
goes. Meister Eckhart says, "It is not by your actions that you will be
saved" (or awakened; call it by any word you want), "but by your being. It
is not by what you do, but by what you are that you will be judged." What
good is it to you to feed the hungry, give the thirsty to drink, or visit
prisoners in jail?
Remember that sentence from Paul: "If I give my body to be burned and all
my goods to feed the poor and have not love . . ." It's not your
actions, it's your being that counts. Then you might swing into
action. You might or might not. You can't decide that until you're
awake. Unfortunately, all the emphasis is concentrated on changing the
world and very little emphasis is given to waking up. When you wake up,
you will know what to do or what not to do. Some mystics are very strange,
you know. Like Jesus, who said something like "I wasn't sent to those
people; I limit myself to what I am supposed to do right now. Later,
maybe." Some mystics go silent. Mysteriously, some of them sing
songs. Some of them are into service. We're never sure. They're a law
unto themselves; they know exactly what is to be done. "Plunge into the
heat of battle and keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord," as I
said to you earlier.
Imagine that you're unwell and in a foul mood, and they're taking you
through some lovely countryside. The landscape is beautiful but you're not
in the mood to see anything. A few days later you pass the same place and
you say, "Good heavens, where was I that I didn't notice all of
this?" Everything becomes beautiful when you change. Or you look at the
trees and the mountains through windows that are wet with rain from a
storm, and everything looks blurred and shapeless. You want to go right
out there and change those trees, change those mountains. Wait a minute,
let's examine your window. When the storm ceases and the rain stops, and
you look out the window, you say, "Well, how different everything
looks." We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. That is
why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different
reactions. We see things and people not as they are, but as we are.
Remember that sentence from scripture about everything turning into good
for those who love God? When you finally awake, you don't try to make good
things happen; they just happen. You understand suddenly that everything
that happens to you is good. Think of some people you're living with whom
you want to change. You find them moody, inconsiderate, unreliable,
treacherous, or whatever. But when you are different, they'll be
different. That's an infallible and miraculous cure. The day you are
different, they will become different. And you will see them differently,
too. Someone who seemed terrifying will now seem frightened. Someone who
seemed rude will seem frightened. All of a sudden, no one has the power to
hurt you anymore. No one has the power to put pressure on you. It's
something like this: You leave a book on the table and I pick it up and
say, "You're pressing this book on me. I have to pick it up or not pick it
up." People are so busy accusing everyone else, blaming everyone else,
blaming life, blaming society, blaming their neighbor. You'll never change
that way; you'll continue in your nightmare, you'll never wake up.
Put this program into action, a thousand times: (a) identify the negative
feelings in you; (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not
in external reality; (c) do not see them as an essential part of "I"; these
things come and go; (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.
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