Don't personalize what is happening to you. Obderve !

[Guest guest]

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The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your

ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's

one thing that you can do, but NO ONE CAN HELP YOU. 

 

What is this most important thing of all? 

 

It's called self-observation. No one can help you there.  No one can give you a

method.  No one can show you a technique.  The moment you pick up a technique,

you're programmed again. But self-observation -- watching yourself -- is

important. 

It is not the same as self-absorption. Self-absorption is self-preoccupation,

where you're concerned about yourself, worried about yourself. 

 

I'm talking about self-OBSERVATION.

What's that? 

 

It means to watch everything in you and around you as far as possible and watch

it as if it were happening to someone else.  What does that last sentence mean? 

 

It means that you do not

personalize what is happening to you. It means that you look at things as if you

have no connection with them whatsoever.

 

The reason you suffer from your depression and your anxieties is that you

identify with them.  You say, " I'm depressed. " But that is false. You are not

depressed.  If you want to be accurate, you might say, " I am experiencing a

depression right now. " But you can hardly say, " I am depressed. "  You are not

your depression. That is but a strange kind of tuck of the mind, a strange kind

of illusion.  You have deluded yourself into thinking -- though you are not

aware of it -- that you ARE your

depression, that you ARE your anxiety, that you ARE your joy or the thrills that

you have. " I am delighted! " You certainly are not

delighted. Delight may be IN you right now, but wait around, it will change. It

won't last: it never lasts; it keeps changing; it's always changing.

 

Clouds come and go: some of them are black and some white, some

of them are large, others small. 

 

If we want to follow the analogy, you would be the sky, observing the

clouds. You are a passive,

detached observer. That's shocking, particularly to someone in the Western

culture. You're not interfering. Don't interfere.  Don't ''fix'' anything. 

Watch! 

 

Observe!

 

The trouble with people is that they're busy fixing things they don't even

understand. We're always fixing things, aren't we? 

 

It never strikes us that things don't need to be fixed. They really don't.

 

This is a great illumination. They need to be understood. If you understood

them, they'd change.

 

Anthony De Mello, SJ

 

 

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Era

 

 

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