No Looking Back

NO ONE WHO PUTS HIS HAND TO THE PLOW AND LOOKS BACK IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD.  

-LUKE 9:62

"God's kingdom is love. What does it mean to love? It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one. For ex­clusion can only be achieved through a harden­ing of oneself, through closing one's doors. And the moment there is a hardening, sensitivity dies. It won't be hard for you to find examples of this kind of sensitivity in your life. Have you ever stopped to remove a stone or a nail from the road lest someone come to harm? It does not matter that you will never know the person who will benefit from this gesture and you will receive no reward or recognition. You just do it from a feeling of benevolence and kindness. Or have you felt pained at the wanton destruction in another part of the world, of a forest that you will never see and never benefit from? Have you gone to some trouble to help a stranger find his way though you do not know and will never meet this person again, purely from a good­ heartedness that you feel within you? In these and so many other moments, love came to the surface in your life signalling that it was there within you waiting to be released.

How can you come to possess this kind of love? You cannot, because it is already there within you. All you have to do is remove the blocks you place to sensitivity and it would sur­face.

The blocks to sensitivity are two; Belief and Attachment. Belief - as soon as you have a be­lief you have come to a conclusion about a per­son or situation or thing. You have now become fixed and have dropped your sensitivity. You are prejudiced and will see the person from the eye of that prejudice. In other words, you will cease to see this person again. And how can you be sensitive to someone you do not even see? Take just one or two of your acquaintances and list the many positive or negative conclusions you have arrived at and on the basis of which you relate to her/him. The moment you say so and­ so is wise or is cruel or defensive or loving or whatever, you have hardened your perception and become prejudiced and ceased to perceive this person moment by moment, somewhat like a pilot who operates today with last week's weather report. Take a hard look at these be­liefs, for the mere realization that they are be­liefs, conclusions, prejudices, not reflections of reality, will cause them to drop.

Attachment - how is an attachment formed? First comes the contact with something that gives you pleasure: a car, an attractively adver­tised modern appliance, a word of praise, a per­son's company. Then comes the desire to hold on to it, to repeat the gratifying sensation that this thing or person caused you. Finally comes the conviction that you will not be happy with­out this person or thing, for you have equated the pleasure it brings you with happiness. You now have a full-blown attachment; and with it comes an inevitable exclusion of other things, an insensitivity to anything that isn't part of your attachment. Each time you leave the object of your attachment, you leave your heart there, so you cannot invest it in the next place you go to. The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the mel­ody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music, thereby producing disharmony and conflict be­ tween what life is offering you and what you are clinging to. Then comes the tension and anxiety which are the very death of love and the joyful freedom that love brings. For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow.

How does one drop an attachment? People try to do this through renunciation. But to re­nounce some bars of the music, to blot them out of one's consciousness creates exactly the type of violence, conflict and insensitivity that cling­ing does. Once again you have hardened your­ self. The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow. How? Through many hours of observ­ing the rottenness, the corrupt nature of an at­tachment. You generally concentrate on the thrill, the flash of pleasure that it brings. But contemplate the anxiety, the pain, the un­freedom; simultaneously contemplate the joy, the peace and freedom that are yours each time an attachment drops. Then you will stop look­ing back and allow yourself to be enchanted by the music of the present moment.

Finally take a look at this society we live in - rotten to the core, infected as it is with attach­ments. For if anyone is attached to power, money, property, to fame and success; if anyone seeks these things as if their happiness depended on them, they will be considered productive members of society, dynamic and hardworking. In other words, if they pursue these things with a driving ambition that destroys the symphony of their life and makes them hard and cold and insensitive to others and to themselves, society will look upon them as dependable citizens, and their relatives and friends will be proud of the status that they have achieved. How many so­ called respectable people do you know who have retained the gentle sensitivity of love that only unattachment can offer? If you contem­plate this long enough, you will experience a disgust so deep that you will instinctively fling every attachment away as you would a serpent that has settled on you. You will revolt and break loose from this putrid culture that is based on acquisitiveness and attachment, on anxiety and greed and on the hardness and in­ sensitivity of nonlove."

from the book "The Way to Love" by Anthony de Mello

...in truth, OdiliaCarmen