Understanding and Awareness
Understanding and Awareness
Friday of the Third Week of Lent – March 20, 2020
I remember sitting in front of Sr Adeline O’Donoghue at Ruah Center in Houston in the late 1990’s as she helped me unpack my convoluted interior life. Slowly I was seeing more and more of my interior . . . some of my first glimpses of the person I had become over the years. And I didn’t like what was popping up to the surface.
So one day, exasperated by the mess that once again had arisen from my dark depths, I spilled out my story to Sr Adeline, told her what I was seeing about myself, and reiterated how disgusting I found the darkness within me to be. She quietly looked at me – she had a way of looking straight to the interior of a person – and said, “Jerry, what would you like to do about that?”
I thought about it for a moment, before saying, “I want to get rid of it! Obliterate it!”
She replied, “And if you could obliterate it, what would be left of you then?”
I had no response. Nothing.
I began to learn, from that moment onward, that the darkness within us – whether attachments or prejudices or just a skewed worldview – is best dealt with not by avoidance or renunciation, not by force or obliteration. Rather, we are to notice it, become more aware of its tentacles reaching into all areas of our lives, and to understand ourselves in light of the darkness we see.
Anthony de Mello says this is how we deal with our attachments, not by renunciation but by understanding and awareness.
Now look at a person or a thing you have an attachment for: someone or something to whom you have handed over the power to make you happy or unhappy. Observe how, because of your concentration on getting this person or thing and holding on to it and enjoying it exclusively to the exclusion of other things and persons; and how, because of your obsession with this person or thing, you have less sensitivity to the rest of the world. You have become hardened. And have the courage to see how prejudiced and blind you have become in the presence of this object of your attachment.
When you see this you will feel a yearning to rid yourself of every attachment. The problem is, how? Renunciation and avoidance is no help, for to blot out the sound of the drum once again makes you as hard and insensitive as to concentrate solely on the drum. What you need is not renunciation but understanding, awareness. If your attachments have caused you suffering and sorrow, that’s a help to understanding. If you have at least once in your life had the sweet taste of freedom and the delight in life that unattachment brings, that too is a help. It also helps to consciously notice the sound of the other instruments in the orchestra. But there is no substitute for the awareness that shows you the loss you suffer when you overvalue the drum and when you turn a deaf ear to the rest of the orchestra.
[Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony De Mello, (New York: Doubleday, 1992).]
For Reflection:
o It is helpful for me to name my attachments honestly, to speak them before God. When I speak them before God, acknowledging that they exist, they lose their power over me.
o Further, bringing my attachments into prayer is an act that intentionally brings God onto the playing field of my spiritual life.
Friday of the Third Week of Lent – March 20, 2020
I remember sitting in front of Sr Adeline O’Donoghue at Ruah Center in Houston in the late 1990’s as she helped me unpack my convoluted interior life. Slowly I was seeing more and more of my interior . . . some of my first glimpses of the person I had become over the years. And I didn’t like what was popping up to the surface.
So one day, exasperated by the mess that once again had arisen from my dark depths, I spilled out my story to Sr Adeline, told her what I was seeing about myself, and reiterated how disgusting I found the darkness within me to be. She quietly looked at me – she had a way of looking straight to the interior of a person – and said, “Jerry, what would you like to do about that?”
I thought about it for a moment, before saying, “I want to get rid of it! Obliterate it!”
She replied, “And if you could obliterate it, what would be left of you then?”
I had no response. Nothing.
I began to learn, from that moment onward, that the darkness within us – whether attachments or prejudices or just a skewed worldview – is best dealt with not by avoidance or renunciation, not by force or obliteration. Rather, we are to notice it, become more aware of its tentacles reaching into all areas of our lives, and to understand ourselves in light of the darkness we see.
Anthony de Mello says this is how we deal with our attachments, not by renunciation but by understanding and awareness.
Now look at a person or a thing you have an attachment for: someone or something to whom you have handed over the power to make you happy or unhappy. Observe how, because of your concentration on getting this person or thing and holding on to it and enjoying it exclusively to the exclusion of other things and persons; and how, because of your obsession with this person or thing, you have less sensitivity to the rest of the world. You have become hardened. And have the courage to see how prejudiced and blind you have become in the presence of this object of your attachment.
When you see this you will feel a yearning to rid yourself of every attachment. The problem is, how? Renunciation and avoidance is no help, for to blot out the sound of the drum once again makes you as hard and insensitive as to concentrate solely on the drum. What you need is not renunciation but understanding, awareness. If your attachments have caused you suffering and sorrow, that’s a help to understanding. If you have at least once in your life had the sweet taste of freedom and the delight in life that unattachment brings, that too is a help. It also helps to consciously notice the sound of the other instruments in the orchestra. But there is no substitute for the awareness that shows you the loss you suffer when you overvalue the drum and when you turn a deaf ear to the rest of the orchestra.
[Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony De Mello, (New York: Doubleday, 1992).]
For Reflection:
o It is helpful for me to name my attachments honestly, to speak them before God. When I speak them before God, acknowledging that they exist, they lose their power over me.
o Further, bringing my attachments into prayer is an act that intentionally brings God onto the playing field of my spiritual life.
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