I'm In Love with a Dead Jesuit

He was a celibate Jesuit priest, he wore nerdy eyeglasses, and he died in 1987. Still, I think I have met the love of my life.

Quotes from Fr. Anthony de Mello:

"It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!"

"There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them."

"As you identify less and less with the 'me.' you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!"

"Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance."

"Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality when your falsehoods clash with the truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering."

"People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favor progress, provided they can have it without change."

"Realizing that God has nothing to do with the idea I form of God...There is only one way of knowing him: by unknowing!"

Don't take de Mello's, or anyone's, word for it; if you're reading this blog, you have the questions that can lead you to your own answers. I think I love his answers so much because they are so simple and elegant and, in my moments of clarity, they reflect my experience.

If you're new to Tony de Mello's work, check out his books, Awareness
and Awakening.

©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Mind-blower for Facilitators

"The more enlightened you get, the less you believe your client believes [their thoughts]." —Byron Katie

Discuss.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Is The Work Nondual?

I used to say that The Work is a process leading to the state of nonduality as sought by students of Dzogchen Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta.

We could also say that Byron Katie is not a nondualist because she uses terms like "joy" and "happiness" to describe her existance, rather than the more advaitin terminology of "nothing" and "emptiness," thus making "nothing" into "something." ("No thing" is the optimal experience of advaita, by the way).

The trouble with the idea of nondualism is that it has to be demonstrated through language and concepts, which of course create more duality and separation.

However on a practical note, a book title like "No Identity and No Attachment to What Is Not," or "A Thousand Names for Nothing" probably wouldn't sell many copies to folks like you and me who still believe we are not awake. :0)


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

Vintage Katie Video with Kate Wolf Music

I just love this interview with Byron Katie from October, 1998, where she beautifully and lovingly recounts her "moment of clarity" and explains The Work. The interview is interspersed with video clips of the singer/songwriter Kate Wolf, performing her original songs including "Give Yourself to Love."

"Just hear the heart, hear what you know," Katie says in this video. "People don't want to hear what they know; they think it's going to cost them something. But if they hear what they know and they honor it, it will give them everything they ever thought they ever desired, only the desire stops, and just when you don't need anything, it floods in. People call it a letting go, but for me it's just following the heart, the thing that I know."

I found "it" letting go of me as I experienced this tender hour of hearing the heart.

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.

The Work on "I Will Never Become Enlightened"

I will never become enlightened.

Is it true?
I don't know. I don't even really know what enlightenment means.

Can I absolutely know that it's true that I will never become enlightened?
No; I gather one doesn't get to choose how, when and if it happens. So it could happen, if enlightenment even exists.

How do I react when I believe this thought?
I become saddened and discouraged whenever I am reactive and "unenlightened" (like today). I read accounts of "awakening" and I feel that I am so far from anything like illuminated that it is hopeless; I can't even imagine living out of this mindset. I compare myself unfavorably with those who appear to be awake to their "true nature," whatever that is. I am jealous and not a little mistrustful of those who teach about this state of oneness and illumination; if it is so natural, why can't I have it or be it right now?

I live in longing for something that to me, right now, is unreal. I don't love my "unenlightened" life or self.

When I have short-lived glimpses of what seems to be awakened awareness, I mourn for those moments afterwards. Or I become cynical; I tell myself that wasn't "it," and that maybe there is no such thing.

When I think this thought and I believe it, I'm no fun to be around. I'm in God's business. I experience increased stress, physical fatigue and am more aware of physical limitations than I normally am. I feel lonely and lost.

I hold this belief because it gives me an escape clause. I don't have to be dedicated to understanding myself. I get an excuse to play harder (which is not playing at all), to get lost in the world of emotions, to backtrack to what is comfortable.

But I also get such a deep sense of sadness and separation.

Who would I be without this thought?
I would inquire into my stressful beliefs and love the deepening and quickening that results. I would not worry about the future. I would love my "enlightened" moments and be gentle with myself the rest of the time.

I would revel in the beautiful descriptions I read of awakened awareness. And I would realize that I love those accounts because they reflect what is already true for me, what I already know and where I occasionally live.

Turnarounds:

I will always become enlightened.
This thought could be just as true. Byron Katie says, "You don't wake up forever; it's now. Now. Now." There is no future. Enlightenment occurs each time suffering is met with sanity, each time a stressful belief is revealed to be a lie.

I will never become unenlightened.
That feels truer than my original statement. As the old story goes, that snake is really a rope when we look closely. And once the truth is glimpsed, even if momentarily forgotten, the rope can never again be believed to be a snake.

I feel a bit closer now to being enlightened about what enlightenment is...even though my work's not done.


©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.

Can We Love Toxic Waste?

If you have ever asked yourself, "Why would a good and benevolent universe allow terrible things to happen?" you may want to visit the website of Mellen-Thomas Benedict. I was just made aware of this man's extraordinary "near death experience" and wanted to share a portion of it with you here. He and Byron Katie are essentially reading from the same script, even though his "awakening" was experienced as a NDE and hers was experienced as an ego death.

It's helpful to read his words without getting caught up in the spiritual jargon he sometimes uses. Behind it you'll find the same universal truths as taught by the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddha, Advaita Vedanta...and also those which we teach ourselves through inquiry.

Here's the part of Benedict's experience that resonated most deeply within me. What better reason to be an activist than to come together in love? How else can the planet be saved?

"I went over to the other side during my near death experience with a lot of fears about toxic waste, nuclear missiles, the population explosion, the rainforest. I came back loving every single problem. I love nuclear waste. I love the mushroom cloud; this is the holiest mandala that we have manifested to date, as an archetype. It, more than any religion or philosophy on earth, brought us together all of a sudden, to a new level of consciousness. Knowing that maybe we can blow up the planet fifty times, or 500 times, we finally realize that maybe we are all here together now. For a period they had to keep setting off more bombs to get it in to us. Then we started saying, “we do not need this any more.” Now we are actually in a safer world than we have ever been in, and it is going to get safer. So I came back from my near death experience loving toxic waste, because it brought us together."

Something terrible is going to happen...is it true?

©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.