The first thing you have to do is get in touch with the negative feelings of which you are not aware. Many people have negative feelings without knowing it. Many people are depressed and do not know they are depressed. Only when they come into contact with joy do they understand to what extent they are depressed. You cannot treat a cancer that has not been detected. You cannot get rid of the weevil on your farm if you don't know it exists. The first thing you need is to be aware of your negative feelings . What negative feelings ? The melancholy, for example. You are melancholic and sad. You feel that you hate yourself, or feel guilty. It seems to you that life has no purpose, that it makes no sense; You feel hurt, you are nervous and tense. The first step is to get in touch with those feelings.
The second step (this is a four step program) is to understand that the feeling is in you, not in reality. This is so obvious, but do you think human beings know it? They don't know, believe me. They have doctorates and are rectors of universities, but they have not understood this. At school they didn't teach me to live. They taught me everything else. As someone said: “ I have a very good education . It took me years to overcome it. ” Spirituality is about that: unlearning. Unlearn all the trash they taught one.
Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. Then, stop trying to change reality. That's crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and our energies trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouse, our boss, our friends, our enemies, and everyone else. We do not need to change anything. The negative feelings are in you. On earth there is no one who has the power to make you miserable. On earth there is no event that has the power to alter or hurt it. No event, condition, situation or person. No one told him this; They told him otherwise. That is why he is in the mess he is in. That's why he is asleep. No one has told him this; But it is evident. Suppose the rain ends with a country walk.
Who feels negative? The rain? or you? What causes the negative feeling? The rain or its reaction? When you knock one knee against a table, nothing happens to the table. It is occupied in that for which it was made: to be a table . The pain is in your knee, not on the table. The mystics continually try to tell us that reality is fine. Reality is not problematic. Problems only exist in the human mind. We could add: in the stupid and sleeping human mind. Reality is not problematic: if human beings disappear from this planet, life will continue, nature will continue with all its beauty and all its violence. Where will the problem be? There would be no problem . You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with the mi and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.
The third step : Never identify with that feeling; This has nothing to do with the yo . Do not define your essential being based on that feeling. Do not say: I am depressed. if it means that the depression is there, that's fine; If it means that the melancholy is there, that's fine. But don't say: I am melancholy. You are defining yourself based on this feeling. That is his illusion: that is his mistake. There is a depression there right now, there are hurt feelings there right now, but let them go, leave them alone. That will happen. Everything happens, everything. Your depressions and emotions have nothing to do with happiness. They are the movement of the pendulum. If you see emotions, prepare yourself for depression. Do you want your drug? Prepare for the hangover. The pendulum moves from one end to the other.
This has nothing to do with the yo ; It has nothing to do with happiness. It is the mi . If you remember this, if you tell yourself a thousand times, if you try these three steps a thousand times, you will succeed. You may not need to do it three times. I don't know; There is no rule. But do it a thousand times and you will make the greatest discovery of your life. What do these gold mines matter in Alaska? What are you going to do with that gold? If he is not happy, he cannot live. So he found gold. What does it matter? You are a king; you are a princess. You are free: you don't mind being accepted or rejected, it doesn't matter. Psychologists tell us that it is very important to have a feeling of belonging. Straw!
What do you want to belong to someone for? It does not matter anymore.
A friend told me that there is an African tribe in which the death penalty is being ostracized. If you were expelled from New York or where you live, you would not die. Why does the member of that African tribe die? Because he participates in the common stupidity of humanity. He thinks he won't be able to live if he doesn't belong. Is it very different from most people, or not? He is convinced that he needs to belong. But you do not need to belong to anyone or anything or any group. You don't even need to be in love. Who told him that he needed it? What you need is to be free. What you need is to love. That's; That is his nature. But what he is really telling me is that he wants to be desired. You want to be applauded, be attractive, that all the monkeys run behind you. He is wasting his life.
WAKE UP! You do not need that. You can be fully happy without it.
Society is not going to be glad to hear this, because you become terrifying when you open your eyes and understand. How to control a person like you? You do not need her; he doesn't feel threatened by his criticism; He doesn't care what she thinks or what she says. You cut all those ties; It is no longer a puppet. it's frightening. “So we have to get out of it (society sentences); he says the truth; he is not afraid; He is no longer human ”
HUMAN! Look! Finally a human being! He escaped his slavery, escaped his prison.
No event justifies a negative feeling. There is no situation in the world that justifies a negative feeling. That is what our mystics have told us until weary. But nobody listens. The negative feeling is in you. In the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred book of the Hindus, Lord Krishna tells Arjuna: "Throw yourself into the ardor of battle and keep your heart at the feet of the Lord ." A wonderful phrase.
You do not have to do anything to be happy. the great Meister Eckhart said beautifully : "One does not reach God through a process of addition, of adding something to the soul, but by the process of subtraction." You do nothing to be free, you discard something. Then it is free.
The fourth step : How does one change things? How does one change oneself? There are many things that need to be understood here, or rather, only one thing can be expressed in many ways. Imagine a patient who goes to the doctor and tells him what he is suffering from. The doctor tells him:
-Very well, I understand your symptoms. Do you know what i will do? I will prescribe a remedy for your neighbor!
The patient responds:
- Thank you very much, doctor, that makes me feel so much better.
Isn't it absurd? But that is what we all do. The person who is asleep always thinks they will feel better if another person changes. You suffer because you are asleep, but think: “How wonderful life would be if the other person changed; how wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, if my wife changed, if my boss changed. ”
We always want another person to change so we can feel good.
But have you ever thought that if your wife changes or if your husband changes, does that affect you? You are still as vulnerable as before; still as idiot as before; He is still as asleep as before . You are the one who has to change, the one who has to take the remedy. You insist again and again: "I feel good because the world is good." You are wrong! The world is fine because I feel good. That is what all mystics say.
AUTHOR: Anthony de Mello
Excerpt from the book: Awake by Anthony de Mello
