Francis Lucille on Awareness and De Mello[
]
"We know a bit of what the sage experiences... 'no-self' is not entirely
foreign to us..... we experience it when we are working on something we
enjoy and there is an alertness and presence to the situation but no
thought of self..... and no sense of time.....or when we are with
friends, in timeless, selfless, friendliness with no thought of
self....just totality in unselfconscious joy... we don't even know we are
experiencing joy....we are joy...... And we know there have been these
moments.
For many of us our journey toward no-self is through attention to
awareness, consciousness, presence...whatever term we use for it. THAT,
in which objects, thoughts, feelings, the body and the world,
appears...... Awareness, that which is most 'I'.... an awareness that
would be so clearly there even if we lost our memory.... we would still
know, we are...... if we lost all memory, all sight, all hearing, all
sense of touch, all senses, we would still know, so clearly, that we
are.... Am-ness, awareness Itself.....
Most of us have discovered that going to this awareness is not an
effort..... not if we have tasted it even once..... and there is a
stirring each time presence reminds us of itself....awareness watching
awareness..... consciousness aware of itself....and there is a delight,
an ease, an at home ness there..... there is something inside us that
recognizes that we are on the right track..... this sacred awareness,
welcoming, without judgement, all that arises....is the way home.....
It is a process of unlearning.... of becoming less, not more..... Eckhart
Tolle put it like this....This is not a human development conference but
a human diminishment conference. It is about reducing self and increasing
awareness. It is seeing our reactions to things, resulting from beliefs
we are attached to, relationship were attached to, theories we are
attached to..... and just seeing them for what they are.... mere
appearances....that none of them is the truth..... just thoughts
appearing and disappearing.... arising and disappearing into something
that is of a totally different realm.
And when we take our stand as awareness, there is this freedom.....there
is a sense of being in the presence of Beauty.... with no effort
required..... because there is nothing to achieve..... it is more like
the effort of a starving person makes to eat his food, or a mountain
climber makes climbing his favorite mountain or going to one's
beloved..... a lot of energy expanded...perhaps, even hardship but it is
fun, ......effortless activity......
Anthony De Mello expressed it so beautiful in his last book, The Way to
Love...Tony was Indian and Jesuit..... a lovely combination..... He
speaks of what will happen if we turn our attenton to awareness.
"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 moment to moment a life made full
and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough for you to be
watchful and awake. For in this state your eyes will see the Savior [the
Source]. Nothing else, but absolutely nothing else. Not security, not
love, not belonging, not beauty, not power, not holiness---nothing else
will matter any more."
It all happens by grace, and by grace, the witness too, will
disappear......for there is only the Beloved.... She is All That Is....."
