The Wild Reed: In the Garden of Spirituality

Showing posts with label In the Garden of Spirituality. Show all posts

Thursday, May 22, 2025

In the Garden of Spirituality – Mike George

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Mike George’s Discover Inner Peace: A Guide to Spiritual Well-Being.” This excerpt focuses on the “source of the spirit.”

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According to Hindu belief, atman (the Sanskrit word for self or individual spirit) is of the same essence as, but distinct from, brahman (the source of spirit.) One of many Westerners inspired by this idea was the 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman, who believed that true knowledge comes through union with the Self in its universal sense. At such moments of union (which Whitman called “merge”), we see the enhanced clarity and can read infinite lessons in common things. Our essential and original divinity of the individual spirit implies the equality of all and the universal responsibility we share for loving each other.

The idea of a transcendent spirit, or godhead, is present in most religions. Commonly this universal spirit is symbolized as light. It is also described as the source, a kind of inexhaustible spiritual reservoir to which we are all connected. This sense of derivation brings in the idea of parenthood – spiritually, we are the offspring of the source.

Try to hold these three ideas in your mind simultaneously: light, source, parent. But bear in mind too that no image or analogy is ever going to be able even to come close to conveying the true quality of the source, which to use an old-fashioned theological word is “ineffable” – too great or intense to be rendered in words.

In the same way that the physical source of life is the sun, the spiritual source is the divine, the eternal, the all-encompassing. We can recognize the reality of this within our own spirit with total conviction, but we cannot confirm that reality through the evidence of the senses or through the power of reason. Mystics have testified to their direct contact with the ineffable in language that is often powerful and strange; and people who have undergone near-death experiences have often described a rushing toward a light at the end of a tunnel or an encounter with a blaze of light that radiates underconditional love and acceptance. But if we wish to have a truer sense of the source, it is more fruitful to take a step inward, to the spirit, than to set too much store by the reported experiences of others.

Why do we lose awareness of the supreme source? Mainly because we are enticed by body-consciousness. . . . The heart of spiritual awareness is the reawakening of our relationship with the source. Our relationships on earth are horizontal and progress within limits. Our connection with the source of the spirit is the transcendent, vertical relationship that gives the deepest meaning to life, like the axis around which our world spins. Spiritual awareness is a moving current of energy that carries everything in the direction of higher evolution.

. . . Many people believe in God because they are attached to a belief system. They literally “hold” beliefs, hanging on to the dogmas and rituals of religion out of fear or habit rather than love (which keeps fear at bay). This dependence on systems and rules can prevent some people from truly connecting with the source. Purely intellectual belief has little, if any, transformative energy. One indicator that belief can be an attachment rather than an experience is the intolerance that we often find expressed toward people who believe in a different understanding of God.

When people tell us that the divine is everywhere, present in everything, yet requiring no obligations of us, we are witnessing a kind of spiritual draft-dodging. The obligations on us to live by the spirit, in love, openness and trust, are in fact profound; and so are the corresponding rewards. If we retrain ourselves to be open to the spirit from whom we came and to whom we will return, we will feel the rightness of this relationship, and we will also feel its joy.

– Mike George
Excerpted from Discover Inner Peace:
A Guide to Spiritual Well-Being
Chronicle Books, 2000
pp. 36-39

Saturday, November 02, 2024

In the Garden of Spirituality – Gregory L. Jantz

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with excerpts from Gregory L. Jantz’s Soul Care, a book of prayers, scriptures, and spiritual practices for “when you need hope the most.”

The excerpts I share this evening focus on two major spiritual practices identified and explored by Jantz: prayer and gratitude.

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Perhaps the most important spiritual discipline to adopt in your daily life is prayer. Now, when I write "pray," I don’t mean muttering a stream of rote, repetitious phrases you heard in church a long time ago. I’m talking about regular, heartfelt conversations with the one who created you, who loves you, and who desperately wants you to know him[/her/them] as intimately as he[/she/they] knows you.

So what should you talk about? Everything! There is no problem too big or too small to go to God with for help. . . . Ask God for wisdom and guidance. Ask God to give you the courage and strength to get through the tough times. But don’t stop there. Tell God about all the wonderful things that are happening in your life as well. Thank God for the daily blessings of family and friends. Share your accomplishments, your dreams, and your goals for the future. Talk to God about every aspect of your life, good and bad. It’s so easy to get mired in negativity. Regularly scheduled prayer time provides a wonderful opportunity to reflect on and express gratitude for everything that is going right in our lives.

If you’re not used to talking with God or you aren’t sure how or where to start, try writing God a letter or pairing your prayer time with another activity like going for a walk. Whatever you do, don’t overthink it! God isn’t concerned with eloquence or fancy language. God just wants to hear from you. So be yourself. Before you know it, you’ll be looking forward to your daily quiet time with God. You may even start talking with God throughout your day! Nothing soothes the soul and quiets the mind like quality time spent in the company of a dear and trusted friend. So get into the habit of giving yourself a daily dose of hope. God would love to hear from you!

. . . Why should we make a habit of regularly experiencing and expressing gratitude? Because simply put, gratitude fosters optimism, and optimism fuels hope. And hope is what gives us the strength to keep moving forward on even our darkest days. That’s why it’s hard to imagine more effective soul medicine than gratitude – it’s impossible to feel grateful and hopeless at the same time!

Granted, sometimes when we’re really struggling, gratitude can be hard to muster. So start with the small things. Anyone can come up with those – and the more whimsical, the better. For example, I’m grateful for ice cream and for the inspired genius who invented it. I’m grateful that freshly mown grass is part of my world on summer evenings. I’m grateful for how it smells and how it feels on bare feet. I’m even grateful for rainy days, because I love the way the air smells after a storm passes. As you have your daily conversations with God, make a habit of thanking God for something that brings you joy.

The medieval Christian philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” And if you think about it, the list of things we can and should be thankful for – even in our darkest moments – is practically inexhaustible. So say thank you – out loud and with gusto – for teriyaki sauce or butterflies or kites or Mozart . . . anything that has ever made you smile. Say thank you for hot showers and soft towels. . . . For tulips poking out of the dirt in the spring and that magic moment when the lights go down in the movie theater.

The wonderful thing about gratitude is that it is a multiplier – not of the beauty and good all around us in the world (that never changes) but of our awareness of it and of the loving God responsible for it all. When dark thoughts threaten to push everything else aside, practicing purposeful gratitude to our Creator is a powerful way to push back.

– Gregory L. Jantz
Excerpted from Soul Care:
Prayers, Scriptures, and Spiritual Practices
for When You Need Hope the Most
Tyndale Momentum, 2019
pp. 3-4 and 23-25

Friday, May 12, 2023

In the Garden of Spirituality – Peng Roden Her

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from an article by Peng Roden Her on “true awakening.” This article was first published in the December 2022 issue of The Edge.

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A true awakening is messy. It’s raw, honest, vulnerable, profound, and not as wonderful/blissful as many make it out to be. . . . It’s a complete take down of the identity you’ve constructed for others to see, in the exchange for who you were meant to be. [It’s a “you” at one with] a higher purpose, a higher calling, a deep and profound awakening.

A true awakening is not changing who you are, but a process of discarding who you are not. . . . It’s a process of unbecoming to become. It is a process of aligning who you are (currently) with who you are meant to be (divinely) – the highest self, divine-self, ideal-self, or eternal self.

. . . No one has the ability to choose you [to be awakened] but you. Your daily actions, habits, and routines determine your capacity for the calling. You choose you (daily) through removing habits which aren’t in alignment with your highest self.

– Peng Roden Her
Excerpted from “Ready for Your Awakening?”
The Edge
December 2022

Saturday, September 17, 2022

In the Garden of Spirituality – Pema Chödrön

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Pema Chödrön’s book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times.

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We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death. It doesn’t have any fresh air. There’s no room for something to come in and interrupt all that. We are killing the moment by controlling our experience. Doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, because sooner or later, we’re going to have an experience we can’t control: our house is going to burn down, someone we love is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head, somebody’s going to spill tomato juice all over our white suit, or we’re going to arrive at our favorite restaurant and discover that no one ordered produce and seven hundred people are coming for lunch.

The trick is to keep exploring and not bail out, even when we find out that something is not what we thought. That’s what we’re going to discover again and again and again. Nothing is what we thought.

Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, non-aggressive, open-ended state of affairs. To stay with that shakiness – to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge – that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic – this is the spiritual path. Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.

– Pema Chödrön
Excerpted from When Things Fall Apart:
Heart Advice for Difficult Times
Shambhala, 1996

Thursday, October 07, 2021

In the Garden of Spirituality – Thomas Crum

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

It’s been quite some time since I visited the “garden of spirituality,” my series of reflections on key ideas, experiences, and practices in the spiritual life.

Today’s post could just as well be called “In the Center of the Garden of Spirituality,” as its focus is on the spiritual art of centering as defined and explored by Thomas Crum in his book, Journey to Center: Lessons in Unifyng Body, Mind, and Spirit.

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Joseph Campbell once suggested that we are not searching for the meaning of life. We are searching for the experience of being alive. Centering is the art of being fully alive. And wherever the art of centering is practiced, things change dramatically.

. . . Centering is not an abstract term, but rather a practical tool available to all of us. . . . Centering happens as the mind, body, and spirit begin to align. Our muscles noticeably relax, our body straightens, clarity of thought and action become more prevalent, and vitality builds. Centering is not a stoic tightrope through life keeping us from our feelings and passions. Instead, centering is a spacious field in which we can embrace emotions and events with awareness and compassion. Centering will allow us to fully feel emotions and will at the same time give us strength to take action not from the ever-changing weather patterns of emotions but from our higher purpose.

We have each had the experience of being centered hundreds of times in our lives (often without being mindful of it). Centering happens in shades, in degrees of intensity. We don’t have to be perfect about it, because each shade makes a difference. Centering is “the zone” spoken of by great athletes. It can also be a barefoot run on the grass on a summer’s eve, with the wind in your face and the senses wide open. Center is a focus so present that time seems to stop as it does for a child at play. Center is a connection so deep that there is no separation between subject and object, an awareness so heightened that beauty and truth, the form and formless, melt together. It is like a delicate flower growing out of solid rock. Center can be a cosmic laugh rippling out to the ends of the universe. It can be simply relaxing in rush-hour traffic. Center is returning home. It is always a choice we can make.

. . . Our centering ability grows with practice. And isn’t life itself the ideal practice time? The challenges and chaos that we live in can be the sandpaper to smooth out our rough edges. And centering is a tool to help us get the job done with maximum joy and minimum effort. Life is worthy of our awe, our focus, and our laughter. A Christian monk, Brother Lawrence, once said, “It is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelet in the pan for the love of God.”

. . . We are immersed in a world of major transition, both planetary and personal. Many of us are confused about our profession, our relationships, our purpose, our world. By staying busy, we can avoid taking a deep look and unveiling the truth about our cluttered lives and deepest fears. We can hide from the confusion, the uncertainty. But we do have a choice. We can be courageous enough each day to go inside, to our own center. We can discover who we really are and take a stand on our deepest values. This is how we mindfully live a life of center.

Center is about accepting the pressures of life. Center is about inviting change, not mindlessly holding on to a position. It takes courage to change our perspectives. It takes courage to examine which beliefs really work for us. It takes guts to get off a limiting, but often comfortable, point of view and shift to a larger viewing point. When we’re lost in a densely wooded area, it helps our perspective to move to higher ground. This enables us to witness our position – not in isolation but in relation to everything around us.

We can learn, each moment, to pierce through our cluttered thoughts to a higher purpose, and journey to higher ground. It is a path of learning and magic. It is the center of the storm.

– Thomas F. Crum
Excerpted from Journey to Center:
Lessons in Unifyng Body, Mind, and Spirit
Fireside, 1997
pp. 13-18

Friday, October 12, 2018

In the Garden of Spirituality – Gerald May

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Gerald May's book The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth (2004).

In his book, May draws on the spiritual insights and writings of the two great sixteenth-century Christian mystics, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. He notes that for them, the soul is not "something a person has, but who a person most deeply is: the essential spiritual nature of a human being.

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People would be surprised if they knew
what their souls said to God sometimes.

– Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection

Centuries before Freud “discovered” the unconscious, contemplatives such as Brother Lawrence, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross had a profound appreciation that there is an active life of the soul that goes on beneath our awareness. It is to this unconscious dimension of the spiritual life that Teresa and John refer when they use the term “dark.”

When we speak of darkness today, we are often referring to something sinister, as in “powers of darkness” or the “dark side.” This is not what Teresa and John mean when they used the Spanish word for dark, oscura. For them, it simply means “obscure.” In the same way that things are difficult to see at night, the deepest relationship between God and person is hidden from our conscious awareness.

In speaking of la noche oscura, the dark night of the soul, John is addressing something mysterious and unknown, but by no means sinister or evil. It is instead profoundly sacred and precious beyond all imagining. John says the dark night of the soul is “happy,” “glad,” “guiding,” and full of “absolute grace.” It is the secret way in which God not only liberates us from our attachments and idolatries, but also brings us to the realization of our true nature. The night is the means by which we find our heart’s desire, our freedom to love.

This is not to say that all darkness is good. Teresa and John use another word, tinieblas, to describe the more sinister kind of darkness. There is no doubt about the difference. Teresa uses oscura in saying that the spiritual life is so dark she needs much patience “in order to write about what I don’t know.” But she uses tinieblas when she says, “The devil is darkness itself.” Similarly, John says it is one thing to be in oscuras and quite another to be in tinieblas. In oscuras things are hidden; in tinieblas one is blind. In fact, it is the very blindness of tinieblas, our slavery to attachment and delusion, that the dark night of the soul is working to heal.

For Teresa and John, the dark night of the soul is a totally loving, healing, and liberating process. Whether it feels that way is another question entirely. Nowadays most people think of the dark night of the soul as a time of suffering and tribulation – redemptive, perhaps, but entirely unpleasant. That is not always the case. . . . Liberation, whether experienced pleasurably or painfully, always involves relinquishment, some kind of loss. It may be a loss of something we’re glad to be rid of, like a bad habit, or something we cling to for dear life, like a love relationship. Either way it’s still a loss. Thus even when a dark-night experience is pleasant, there is still likely to be an accompanying sense of emptiness and perhaps even grief. Conversely, when a dark-night experience leaves us feeling tragically bereft, there still may be a sense of openness and fresh possibility. The point is, no matter how hard we try, we cannot see the process clearly. We only know what we’re feeling at a given time, and that determines whether our experience is pleasurable or painful. As one of my friends often says, “God only knows what’s really going on – literally!”

The only characteristic of the experience of the dark night that is certain is its obscurity. One simply does not comprehend clearly what is happening. . . . The obscurity of the dark night is so constant that I sometimes say, “If you’re certain you’re going through a dark night of the soul, you probably aren’t.” The statement is flippant, but in my experience people having an experience of the dark nigh almost always think it is something else. If it’s a pleasant experience, they may call it a mysterious breakthrough, a moment of unexplainable grace. If it is unpleasant, they tend to see it as a failure on their part: laziness, lassitude, resistance, or some other inadequacy.

If, as John maintains, the night is such a gift, why must the process remain so obscure? Since the night involves relinquishing attachments, it takes us beneath our denial into territory we are in the habit of avoiding. We might feel willing to relinquish compulsions we acknowledge as destructive, but anyone who has made a New Year’s resolution knows how self-defeating such attempts can be. And what about the attachments we love, the ones we honor and value? Would we willingly cooperate in being freed from drivenness to do good works or to care for our family, even though we know it comes from compulsion rather than love? Would we willingly join God’s grace in relinquishing attachments to the beliefs and images of God that give us comfort, security, and meaning, even if we recognize how they restrict and restrain us?

If we are honest, I think we have to admit that we will likely try to sabotage any movement toward true freedom. If we really knew what we were called to relinquish on this journey, our defenses would never allow us to take the first step. Sometimes the only way we can enter the deeper dimension of the journey is by being unable to see where we’re going.

John’s explanation of the obscurity goes further. He says that in worldly matters it is good to have light so we know where to go without stumbling. But in spiritual matters it is precisely when we do think we know where to go that we are most likely to stumble. Thus, John says, God darkens our awareness in order to keep us safe. When we cannot chart our own course, we become vulnerable to God’s protection, and the darkness becomes a “guiding night,” a “night more kindly than the dawn.”

Let me say it again: whether we experience it as painful or pleasurable, the night is dark for our protection. We cannot liberate ourselves; our defenses and resistance will not permit it, and we can hurt ourselves in the attempt. To guide us toward the love that we most desire, we must be taken where we could not and would not go on our own. And lest we sabotage the journey, we must not know where we are going. Deep in the darkness, way beneath our senses, God is instilling “another, better love” and “deeper, more urgent longings” that empower our willingness for all the necessary relinquishments along the way.

This transformative process – the freeing of love from attachment – is akin to the ancient biblical concept of salvation. Hebrew words connoting salvation often contain a root made of the letters y and s, yodh and shin. One example is the Hebrew name of Jesus, Yeshua, “God saves.” This y-s root implies being set free from bondage or confinement, enabled to move freely, empowered to be and do according to one’s true nature. In contrast to life-denying asceticism that advocates freedom from desire, Teresa and John see authentic transformation as leading to freedom for desire. For them, the essence of all human desire is love.

In their understanding, the blindness of tinieblas is enslavement to attachment and sin, an impoverishment of love. Being “saved from sin,” then, is synonymous with being freed for the fullness of love. John, in the theology of his time, saw the transformative process of the dark night as identical to what supposedly occurred in purgatory – only it was happening now, during this life.

The goal of the transformation, the dawn after the night, consists of three precious gifts for the human soul. First, the soul’s deepest desire is satisfied. Freed from the idolatries of their attachments, individuals are able to be completely in love with God and to love their neighbors as themselves. This love involves one’s whole self: actions as well as feelings. Second, the delusion of separation from God and creation is dispelled; slowly one consciously realizes and enjoys the essential union that has always been present. Third, the freedom of love and realization of union leads to active participation in God. Here one not only recognizes one’s own beauty and precious nature, but also shares God’s love and compassion for others in real, practical service in the world.

When we begin to grasp the breadth and depth of this vision, it becomes obvious that we could never achieve it on our own. It seems a miracle that it could happen at all.

– Gerald G. May
Excerpted from The Dark Night of the Soul:
A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection
Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth
pp. 66-74

Thursday, May 10, 2018

In the Garden of Spirituality – David Richo

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from David Richo's book How to Be An Adult in Faith and Spirituality (2011).

The literal facticity of a story is necessary in fundamentalist religions. This view does not allow for the bigness of truth that transcends fact, what literally happened, in favor of a larger metaphorical meaning. This does not mean that some religious events did not really happen but rather that they are meant to be seen as happenings that are still in evidence in our lives today.

[. . .] A religion with all the answers may fall prey to the admonition of Abraham Maslow, who wrote, "Most people lose of forget the subjectively religious experience, and redefine religion as a set of habits, behaviors, dogmas, and forms which, at the extreme, becomes entirely legalistic and bureaucratic, conventional, empty, and in the truest meaning of the word, anti-religious." This statement is reminiscent of Allen Ginsberg's pithy statement: "Absolutes are coercion."

A good poem leaves us with unanswered questions. Then we find room for our central ineradicable and universal human longing, the journey toward personal meaning. A religion that is suspicious of pilgrim journeyers will not appeal to adults on such a venture. An adult looks to a religion that does not explain reality since that is a closing. An adult seeks a religion that illuminates reality because that is an opening. Faith is always about opening.

Religions that are healthy do not tie an individual to one way but offer variety to their devotees. In the Bhagavad-Gita (4:11) we hear Krishna, the Hindu god of love, say, "In whatever way people come to me, even so do I accept them. Whatever path they choose is mine." In [the] Western tradition we hear Sir Gawain in the Quest for the Holy Grail, "Let us set forth to behold the Grail unveiled." The knights "though it a disgrace to go forth [in the same direction]. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had selected, where it was darkest and where there was no way or path." To be individual is to seek our own path into life's mystery.

– David Richo
Excerpted from How to Be An Adult
in Faith and Spirituality
pp. 19-20

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

Saturday, March 10, 2018

In the Garden of Spirituality – Marianne Williamson

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Marianne Williamson's book Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage (1994).

In this excerpt, Williamson explores the meaning of spiritual work, the purpose of meditation and prayer, the transforming power of Divine love, and how all of these can be connected to potentially change in both our individual selves and all of humanity.

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Spiritual work is not easy. It means the willingness to surrender feelings that seem, while we’re in them, like our defense against a greater pain. It means we surrender to God our perceptions of all things.

Spiritual values present a radical alternative to the world’s prevailing thought system.

We are renewed and cleansed as we receive the pure and vibrant energy transmissions being sent by God to heal us. This is the purpose of meditation and prayer, that we might open to receive God’s programs of redemption and resurrection. Divine love can penetrate the veils of worldly error. It changes our coding as planetary beings, imprinting us with God’s plans for our salvation and rebirth. We are graduating to a new level of awareness, and with it shall come a new sense of oneness with each other and with God. We can, through continued and sincere devotional practice, transmute the world of material form. We shall bring it into harmony with the structures of the living light. We shall live from that light and become that light. What lies before us will one day be known as the Great Transformation of the human race.

If we choose to remain with meaningless thoughts, preoccupied with meaningless things, then we will continue to experience meaningless patterns of existence. This will not change our coding or our potential, however. We have the choice, at every moment, to leave the world of death behind us and enter, through prayerfulness, the gates of heaven. There is a gate. It is not illusion or metaphor, but rather an energetic force field in which the thoughts of fear are transformed to love, the darkest nights illumined by dawn.

– Marianne Williamson
Excerpted from Illuminata: Thoughts, Prayers, Rites of Passage
pp. 59-60

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

In the Garden of Spirituality – Anthony de Mello

“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello.

Anthony "Tony" de Mello (1931–1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, writer and public speaker. In the excerpt below, he reminds us that holiness is not an achievement, but rather a grace; a grace called awareness.

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Sooner or later there arises in every human heart the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears mystics speak of a divinity all around them that is within our grasp, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. People have some sort of a vague idea as to what this thing is and they read books and consult gurus, in the attempt to find out what it is that they must do to gain this elusive thing called Holiness or Spirituality. They pick methods, techniques, spiritual exercises, formulas; then after years of fruitless striving they become discouraged and confused and wonder what went wrong. Mostly they blame themselves. If they had been more fervent or more generous, they might have made it. But made what? They have no clear idea as to what exactly this holiness that they seek is, but they certainly know that their lives are still in a mess, they still become anxious and insecure and fearful, resentful and unforgiving, grasping and ambitious and manipulative of people. So once again they throw themselves with renewed vigor into the effort and labor that they think they need to attain their goal.

They never stopped to consider this simple fact: Their efforts are going to get them nowhere. Their efforts will only make things worse, as things become worse when you use fire to put out fire. Effort does not lead to growth; effort, whatever the form it may take, whether it be will-power or habit or a technique or a spiritual exercise, does not lead to change. At best it leads to repression and a covering over of the root disease.

Effort may change the behavior but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when we ask, "What must I do to get holiness?" Isn't it like asking, How much money must I spend to buy something? What sacrifice must I make? What discipline must I undertake? What meditation must I practice in order to get it? Think of a person who wants to win the love of another and attempts to improve his/her appearance or build his/her body or change his/her behavior and practice techniques to charm the other person.

You truly win the love of others not by the practice of techniques but by being a certain kind of person. And that is never achieved through effort and techniques. And so it is with Spirituality and Holiness. Not what you do is what brings it to you. This is not a commodity that one can buy or a prize that one can win. What matters is what you are, what you become.

Holiness is not an achievement, it is a Grace. A Grace called Awareness, a grace called Looking, Observing, Understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is accurately, clearly, exactly as it is without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observed this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you. Only you will not be in control of these changes, or be able to plan them in advance, or decide how and when they are to take place. It is this nonjudgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time.

What specifically are you to be aware of? Your reactions and your relationships. Each time you are in the presence of a person, any person, or with Nature or with any particular situation, you have all sorts of reactions, positive and negative. Study those reactions, observe what exactly they are and where they come from, without any sermonizing or guilt or even any desire, much less effort to change them. That is all that one needs for holiness to arise.

But isn't awareness itself an effort? Not if you have tasted it even once. For then you will understand that awareness is a delight, the delight of a little child moving out in wonder to discover the world. For even when awareness uncovers unpleasant things in you, it always brings liberation and joy. Then you will know that the unaware life if not worth living, it is too full of darkness and pain.

If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don't force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. You will then understand that awareness involves as much effort as a lover makes to the beloved . . . or a mountaineer to get to the top of his/her beloved mountain; so much energy expended, so much hardship even, but it isn't effort, it's fum! In other words, awareness is an effortless activity.

Will awareness bring you the holiness you so desire? Yes and no. The fact is you will never know. For true holiness, the type that is not achieved through techniques and efforts and repression, true holiness is completely unselfconscious. You wouldn't have the slightest awareness of its existence in you. Besides you will not care, for even the ambition to be holy will have dropped as you live from moment to moment a life made full and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough to be watchful and awake.

– Anthony de Mello
Excerpted from The Way to Love:
The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
pp. 191-196

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• The Source is Within You
• The Soul Within the Soul
• Clarity, Hope and Courage
• "Joined at the Heart": Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All

Opening image: Michael J. Bayly.

The Wild Reed

Thursday, May 22, 2025

In the Garden of Spirituality – Mike George

Saturday, November 02, 2024

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Friday, May 12, 2023

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Saturday, September 17, 2022

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Thursday, October 07, 2021

In the Garden of Spirituality – Thomas Crum

Friday, October 12, 2018

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Thursday, May 10, 2018

In the Garden of Spirituality – David Richo

Saturday, March 10, 2018

In the Garden of Spirituality – Marianne Williamson

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

In the Garden of Spirituality – Anthony de Mello

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