christopherhildreth

In a couple of weeks I’ll be speaking about my One Prayer. I’ll let it out now and say that my One Prayer is that we be Aware. This is a concept that has been a part of my thinking for several years now. One of the books and authors that has had a great impact has been Awareness by Anthony De Mello.

This week a section of the book came up in a conversation with Mike our Executive Pastor here at Lifepoint. I thought I would share this liberating section with you.

“The great Socrates said, ‘The unaware life is not worth living.’ That’s a self-evident truth. Most people don’t live aware lives. They live mechanical lives…’My that’s a lovely shirt.’ You feel good hearing that. For a shirt for heaven’s sake! You feel proud of yourself when you hear that. People come over to my center in India and they say, ‘What a lovely place, these lovely trees’ (for which I’m not responsible at all), ‘this lovely climate.’ And already I’m feeling good, until I catch myself feeling good, and I say, ‘Hey, can you imagine anything as stupid as that?’ I’m not responsible for those trees; I wasn’t responsible for choosing the location. I didn’t order the weather; it just happened. But “me got in there, so I’m feeling good about “my” culture and “my” nation. How stupid can you get?….Indian culture has produced great mystics. I didn’t produce them. I’m not responsible for them. They tell me, ‘ That country of yours and it’s poverty – it’s disgusting.’ I feel ashamed. But I didn’t create it. What’s going on? Did you ever start to think? People say, ‘I think you’re charming’, so I feel wonderful. I get a positive stroke …I’m going to write a book someday and the title will be . “I’m an Ass, You’re an Ass”. That’s the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you’re an ass. It’s wonderful. When people tell me, ‘You’re wrong.’ I say, ‘What can you expect of an ass?”

Hope this helped to lighten your load as much as it did mine!

This entry was posted on June 18, 2008 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Awareness, Belief, Cultural Ideas, Life. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.