"To relate is to react. To react is to understand oneself. To understand oneself is to be enlightened. Relationships are schools for enlightenment." (Anthony De Mello)



Our lives are riddled with others. A puzzle of people.
Whether in a small or grand way, a constructive or a destructive way, many have shaped us, instructed us and acted as an example of how to or not to behave.
Another's story can teach us. We can learn many things from it. People make a lasting impression and our emulation of them defines their effect on us.
They give direction and inspire. We become an extension of their values and beliefs.
From their error we correct our own. Wise men learn from the mistakes of others but fools learn from themselves. We are who we meet.
The exposure we have to other people impacts the way we think and feel about the world. This influence can last a lifetime. There is power in this influence.
We cannot see the wind but it scars the hill side just the same.
Others help mould us into who we become and can reinforce who we are.
They are who we wish we could be.
Those we admire, inspire. As models of excellence, or corruption, they reinforce who we think we are. Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.
This sphere of influence exposes us to new ideas, greater thinking and lesser ways.
We modify in bits and pieces.
We are a complex weave of all those things we know, constantly shaped by these outside forces. As if we carry all those bits and pieces of other people with us. We become an amalgam of all we have known. A testimony to each story. A mirror reflecting back.
In turn, we affect many. We never really know how far that affect goes.
Our role models, heroes and mentors are meant for individual sway. Each one designed simply for us. They make themselves known to others as well, but what we receive is given to us alone. This would not be so if it had not been.
We must also measure another person's limitations or we will be stuck within their boundaries. Be influenced, but set your own standards and develop your own principles.
Teach yourself to defy gravity.
Remember, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
I firmly believed this as a child.
Jesus was my friend. He dwelt within me and was a safe harbour I could turn to when times got tough. My entire existence sings of His influence. How I think, how I act and who I have become all link to those early conceptions of His character.
What I absorbed as a child still dwells within me.
The ideas I formulated then were not filtered by perspective, circumstance and bias.
There was no preconceived notion for me to follow.
I saw as a child because I was a child.
The freedom to question we all have as children is stolen from us as we learn to follow orders. The message we hear when young becomes lost to doctrine and dogma.
All the theocracy does little when defying gravity.
With so many different versions of Jesus, stemming from so many different people, it is hard to stand firm on any convictions we have about Him.
He is everywhere, literally.
From the fabric of Western culture and civilization to the definition of God Himself, Jesus is. He has been misrepresented, however, by the very followers who claim Him as Lord. The being of Jesus I claim to know is not the interpretation of Jesus they claim I must follow. I am to emulate the nature of God, revealed in the Christ, so that others may see His light within me.
I am not to make myself that light.
I should not take scripture literally.
There are deeper, more important, truths to be discerned in the texts.
We discover in every expression the hidden splendour of the doctrines veiled in common and unattractive phraseology. We see greater meaning in a non-literal interpretation of scripture. We learn as if from parable. Whatever knowledge we are able to obtain of God, either by perception or reflection, we must of necessity believe that He is by many degrees far better than what we perceive Him to be.
Origen Adamantius, (185–254) was an early Christian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church despite not being considered a Church father by most Christians who recognize this distinction. Although condemned as a heretic for his teachings, his desire was not to impose his own mental reconstruction of the faith upon the Church: he was a man seeking to use his intellectual abilities to offer possible solutions to questions which in his day had not been answered.
He believed in the pre-existence of the soul. He believed that there were other worlds than our own which God had created and would continue to create. He believed that life after death was not a physical but rather, spiritual state.
Salvation is slow and gradual.
He believed a process of amendment and correction occurred during and after life.
Man is to be restored to God through discipline and chastisement.
The world, he taught, was created for this purpose and pre-existing souls are incarnated into human bodies. This process of purification does not end with death. The soul remains able to choose between good and evil. He saw any punishment as remedial rather than corporal. God is all good and punishment serves nothing other than bringing every soul back unto Himself. Origen believed both earth and hell are part of the soul's long progress towards God. Man controls his fate after death and hell is no one's final destiny. Our rise and fall shapes us.
Hell is not eternal as the soul is always free to repent.
When evil no longer exists anywhere and when there is no longer the sting of death, God will be One. We are then all in all.
It's the Origen of this species.
It's okay to question. It was okay to think differently.
Only man casts upon us condemnation.
When you seek the world, you get misery.
When you want to find the way out of misery, you find the Divine.

"Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.” (Anthony De Mello)

The people who have the greatest effect on our lives tend to leave quickly.
Our relationship with others is finite. Some come and go while others leave forever.
Most of the people who help shape us don't even know they have.
In a moment they are gone with but a glimmer lasting.
A prudent man should always follow in the path travelled by great men and imitate those who are most excellent. Very few men are wise by their own doing, or learned by their own teaching. Those who follow only themselves have a fool as a master.
Those we follow might be men of God. A man of God does not lead he reveals.
Anyone who has the grace of intelligence should fear that, because of it, they will be judged more heavily if they are negligent in its use.
When what we know about God becomes painted over by the futility of extremes and the old tapes which repeat over and over in our head linger on, we must recognize the need for deprogramming. We must rebuild our identity through the freedom to question.
Faith can be reconstructed
The coercive persuasion of fundamentalism has chiselled away at our faith structures and the foundations of Love and the nature of God we are taught as a child.
We become trapped within ourselves with no glimmer of hope to be found.
We must discern the truth or the truth will deceive us.
Judgement can be acquired only by acute observation, by actual experience in the school of life, by ceaseless alertness to learn from others, by study of the activities of men who have made notable marks, by striving to analyze the everyday play of causes and effects, by constant study of human nature.
We don't always realize the effect another has on us. We can go through our entire life not recognizing what someone else brought to our table. This silent impact can still shape us and mould us, even without our permission. Whether for the greater good or for something else, the influences we do not see can have as great an effect as anything noticeable or acknowledged. This invisible effort becomes clear with hindsight.
What we once cursed becomes mercy in review.
As we once called for justice we now see it was not needed.
Sometimes the things we think need fixed were never broken to begin with.
A wheelchair becomes a chariot of fire when you believe you can.
Things like perseverance and achievement redefine themselves with example.
Anyone can reach, strive and rise above, no matter the challenge.
Some see impossible things but all things are possible.
Some men try to catch the sun but learn too late the impossibility and send it on its way. Dying men see the possible and rage against the dying of their light.
When people die, we put them away in a place that is safe from constant sadness. It is through re-examination that we see some purpose in their living and the greater connection they had to us. We can look back and realize how blessed we are to have found such distinct examples to look to for guidance on our journey.
Death becomes a lesson on our innocence.
It should reveal the depth of this innocence and that we know nothing at all. Instead, it reveals the dirty little secret that quite often we just don’t care.
We are a painter without brushes or a sculptor without clay.
We do not have the tools to form a valid opinion about others or ourselves.
We all hold a beast, an angel and a madman in us. We want to know how they work but the problem is their subjugation and our effort their expression.
These three men and a maybe become our reality.
Just leave me the sweet illusions; faith and hope and truth.
Leave me my sweet illusions until there's never no more me and you.
We do not walk this path alone. We are shaped by so many.
We are contrived, formed through others. We are moulded to the places and faces we have come to know. Who we are we cannot tell ourselves.
We are all the puzzle pieces that have flowed together like shifting sands.
Our hands are not our own. On someone's wings we have flown.
How can I ever hope to be not knowing who's inside of me?
If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.
When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.
If at first you don't succeed, blame your parents.
Parents can only give good advice or put one on the right path.
Often we feel like a defective model that came off the assembly line flat out fucked.
Our parents should have taken us back for repairs before the warranty ran out.
If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance that you won't develop.
It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.
As much as you watch to see what your children do with their lives, they are watching you to see what you do with yours. You can't tell children to reach for the sun.
All you can do is reach for it, yourself.
Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.
There are two things we must give children. One is roots. The other is wings.
The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
Chance makes our parents, but choice makes them our friends.
It's the fifth commandment.
I miss my Mommy.
My Mom wasn't just my Mom, she was my friend.
We had an appropriate relation. I never forgot she was my Mother.
Her death deeply changed me. Even then she had an affect.
The first time I realized what love was my Mother was the centre.
It was her greatest gift to me. I never had to wonder, no matter what, that she would continue to love me. Everything I know about forgiveness and acceptance I know from her. She gave me my appreciation of music and art. She lifted me up.
She taught me to cook and imbedded the survival skills I would need to get by.
She gave me the permission I needed to explore my talents.
She often was my reason to go on.
I would not be here now if not for her then. She was an anchor to a life tossed about on stormy seas. She gave me laughter after I'd cried all my tears. She heard my dreams
while the rest of the world just closed its ears.
She demonstrated the simple, complex manner of love.
Her death was expected for years, and while I may have been prepared, I was nowhere near ready. When reality came around and cut me into little pieces I began to doubt all about God and His mercy. If He really does exist why did He desert her?
There was clear mercy in the manner of her death. She did not linger or suffer.
She is free from the burdens this life often brought her.
This does nothing to ease my weary soul. This does nothing to pass the time without her.
She loved in spite of everything.
She was a relentless willow which stood firm and strong against the sun and the earth and the wind. She danced with the rain and whispered to the snow. She thrived and she grew.
Only time could end the weeping.
Down into the ground the mighty tree lies sleeping.
My heart is happy, my mind is free. I had a father who talked with me.
When I was a boy, I thought my Dad could do anything.
We don't always see our father clearly.
We only see the outer person without realizing what lies within. It turns out what I thought of my Dad as a child was pretty damn close to the truth about the man.
Children just know, I'm told.
He defines for me what a man is. The inner quality of who we are is what counts, not the external stereotypes of a biased society. Ideas like standing on your responsibilities, never giving up and loving one another are embedded into my very fibre through the example of my father. He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.
I, for one, am glad to have had the chance to get to know my Dad as an adult.
My father reflects the Father.
In most simple of ways he is a true expression of the nature of god.
His light shines. A foundation laid.
He is constant reminder to me that love is all that matters and the rest is just noise.
As a Christian, he could have easily turned on me when I revealed my sexual orientation.
For all I know, he was bruised by this revelation, but he never indicated so. He did not reject me with word or action. He accepted me.
Even Jesus couldn't stand between this man and his family.
He loves because of God not in spite of God.
All these years, all his sacrifice and it seems little to him now, without a reason. All us kids have grown and my Mother has passed away and he struggles through each day with promises made which he intends to keep in the name of.
When I look at a photograph of myself I see him.
I find I'm more and more like him each day.
I notice I walk the way he walks.
I notice I talk the way he talks.
I'm starting to see my father in me.

"You see persons and things not as they are but as you are. " (Anthony De Mello)

Spirituality means waking up.
Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep.
We are born asleep, we live asleep, we die in our sleep without ever waking up.
We never understand the beauty contained in this thing that we call human existence.
No matter what the theology, no matter what the religion, great men of faith are unanimous on one thing: all is well, all is well.
Although everything is a mess, all is well.
A strange paradox, to be sure.
Tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep.
They are having a nightmare
Change can occur, in its own way and in its own time.
We must yield to the current of life unencumbered by our baggage.
The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.
To discover God, one only need look.
The answer is within each of us. We must wake up!
We can use another's art, their exertion to help revive us.
Their extension becomes our alarm clock.
The Song of the Bird, written by Anthony De Mello, is a collection of 124 stories from a variety of traditions, both ancient and modern. The collection uses the art of parable as if the bird from the song. De Mello illustrates through fable and proverb, inspiring a journey of sorts. The song is meant to awaken our heart and soul.
It alerts the reader to the presence of God in our midst.
We need not just observe God, we can see Him.
The notion of God surrounding us only takes a change in our point of view.
Notice. See the wonderment that surrounds you.
Profound realities about our everyday concerns and spiritual matters can be approached from a new perspective if we are willing to allow our mental evaluation of reality to shift into the here and now. Ideas about good and evil are simply mental evaluations imposed upon us in this reality.
An elephant will sooner fit into the skin of a rat than God into our notions of Him.
You should not cage the bird from the song.
Just like those who influence us with positive reinforcement and admirable qualities, there are those who bring with them chaos and darker times.
While there are those who bring out the best in us, so too can someone bring out the worst in us. We harbour deep resentment for these now strangers, with whom we crossed paths on our journey. The walls are to high to jump.
For better or worst, there is a bitter hard reality found in those we hate.
It is irrelevant whether we know how wrong this is.
People will use any excuse to get what they want and it's difficult to get past what they did to us and those we love so we trust no one. Therein lies the lesson.
We carry the ways of this mortal coil in spite of all our study and awareness. We cannot forgive the lament and anguish they brought to our lives.
It is not in us to let go, yet. We get to forgiving, all in due time.
I carry this burden. I still hold to old ways.
Maybe it is too fresh in my mind and I can't separate my emotions from my centre.
Maybe I'm just being human.
We cannot change things anyway and I would not want to play with the carefully placed pieces of the puzzle which pictures my life.
Time is a valuable thing and I watch it fly by as the pendulum swings. I watch it count down to the end of the day, the clock ticks life away but in the end it doesn’t even matter.
It's a mad world, after all.
We are not alone in our suffering.
The experiences we have ourselves are not the only experiences which can shape us. We can look past the individual and can look to our collective and what the whole has experienced.
Mankind has much to say.
The experience of us all reveals that we all are screaming. Sometimes it seems we have all gone insane. The vicious circle of life often reveals a sense of nihilism and reckless abandon. There is little reason in anything. There is no safe place.
We do not see that someone else's pain is our pain.
We do not realize that they are laughing at us as we laugh at them.
We do not stop to understand how connected we are. We see the painter and forget the painting. We hear the singer and give little to the song.
We do not see the lessons.
We have abandoned purpose for pleasure, to fill the emptiness with tears of more.
Each one of us feeling and hurting and thinking the very same things.
Our perspective is different but the reactions are the same.
Our pain is identical. We do not see that what happens to my neighbour happens to me. We do not gain from others those lessons which, if we took them to us, could save us from those experiences. We do not realize we are all equal.
There is little difference in you and me. Therefore but by the grace of God go us all.
Our differences may define us but they do little to explain us as we battle for mercy in this world gone mad. We find it kind of funny and we find it kind of sad when the dreams in which we're dying are the best we've ever had.
We can learn so much from each other. If you are going to learn, you have to listen. Something can not teach you if you do not pay attention.
Another can shape us, but we can all shape each other.
Someone we don't even know can still shape us.
They gain entrance without our permission.
These strangers can have more of an effect on our lives than those with whom we share real time. We really do spend our lives collecting other people.
These faces we will never touch, these voices we can only know from a distance, they too become a part of us, and in so doing become part of who we are as a person. We observe their struggle, and in so doing, see our struggle. We identify with their human condition and this makes us more aware of our own. We absorb these others.
We do not have to know a person for them to influence us.
Sometimes we spend our life walking alongside a stranger.
We follow their life as we follow our own. Eventually, we become like a weave with the essence of who we believe they are. Often, we know them better than we know ourselves.
We look at their journey and find comfort in the common chaos which comes from living. We can read and hear their words and in them find strength and truth and wisdom.
Little words can bring great meaning.
We accumulate and borrow knowledge and it becomes part of us.
All the music, all the movies, all the television, all the books, all the travels, all the conversation and all the contact you have had with strangers will change you.
One word from a completely unknown person can stay with you your entire life and shape you more than someone who you see and talk to every day. The measure of a man is not his effect on himself but the effect he has on others.

"Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions." (Anthony De Mello)

We spend our entire lives looking for someone to love.
Some of us find comfort in another and our life becomes our lives.
Time it goes so fast like a river running past and you're lucky if you find at last
just one faithful heart. When we don't find our better half we settle.
We settle because we cannot bear to be alone. We settle because we believe we are getting what we deserve. We settle because we have nothing else.
It is the most wonderful of things to know you are loved and to love in return. True love completes you. Without the safety of being loved, most would be lost. Love grounds you and, in its purest form, instructs us how to love others and God.
You do your best, you do all this stuff, but the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Nothing but love can stand in the way.
Love will find a way.
It always does.
When it does you can't argue with destiny. Twin hearts do exist.
The idea of the soul mate has long held mystical connotations. From antiquity to modern science, the concept of two separate entities bound together by Divine providence and mortal love has always been seen through romantic notions and the eyes of inspiration.
It may not be likely and we may only be wishing on dreams but when another completes you there is nothing but love.
Love is not instant and it does not come in waves or like shooting stars.
Love at first sight is but a flash in the pan on a useless element. It holds no heat.
Love takes time . We discover each other over that time. You may think you fell, you may imagine you have but, it is the long haul which determines the heart.
So tell me how you know when true love really starts?
True love never ends. It is an ethereal connection which drives us to go on.
We don’t need a connection to be influenced by another but the very thing we hate can end up mattering the most. For every white there is a black.
As we look back on the beaten path someone we could not have envisioned stands out.
We get stuck together like rice cakes. They leave both a lasting impression and influence us in ways we could never have imagined.
Their counsel makes a difference. They connect with us in secret, expressing an invisible ray of hope. In hindsight, that which we despise can end up shaping us more than all the other articulations from that period put together.
It is strange that some voices are like cages but some cages set us free.
Some voices cry out in the night echoing for more. They are no mere reverberation but the voices, all the voices of those who got to go first.
They do not understand why we do not hear.
The dead can talk to us but we pay them no mind. They are less than a whisper.
They linger about.
They are the silent shadows of things now lost and they haunt us whether we hear them or not. Invisible hands twist and mould the clay before them.
We forget they were once here, but they don't.
The dead offer lessons which can guide us on our way; the anatomy of a traveller who once was here. If we study their history, the lesson is already planted within their example. It is when we hear their voice and understand what they are saying that the ghosts of those we knew begin their haunting.
They are a warning of things once done. They remind us of things to come. They are an ode to a love then captured. They are singing songs about sadness and songs about joy. Telling tales of grave mistakes once made and the bitter sting of consequence laid.
We can use them, allow them to help us beyond their grave.
They are often our hope, a kindred spirit to pull us through when we too greet the light they exist within. They are a gentle assurance, as the dark approaches, they wait for us just beyond the night. They flaunt their freedom.
They can teach us, enlighten us or hamper us on our journey.
They never stay long, but they always come back.
They are the voices of those lost to us, but we can find them still.
The tales they tell and the life they lived are as good as gold when we let them be.
They plead we remember what happened to them.
History itself is a message from the past, chanted by the voices of the dead.
The journey we all travel is paved with the faces of all who have gone before us. We can use them to move along as they smile at us fiercely. We consign their lesser qualities to oblivion and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature of their lives.
Death cancels everything but truth. It strips them of everything but their genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred and it grants immortality. Death ends a life, not a relationship.
While the dead speak to us I am also convinced we can talk to the dead.
We can talk to the wind should we choose, but does it listen?
It's like when you drink scotch with milk.
You can combine the two all you wish but they still don't mix well.
Each portion is forced to stand alone.

"You have within yourself the answer to every question you propose - if you only knew how to look for it. In the land of the spirit, you cannot walk by the light of someone else's lamp. You want to borrow mine. I'd rather teach you how to make your own"
(Anthony De Mello)

The journey I have taken has made me.
Faults and all, I have been shaped into this being.
I am the sum of all the good and bad and bitter things that have passed before me but it is
my own self to whom I must be true. I got me here, no one else.
I have no greater influence than myself. I travelled to this destination solo.
The chorus of other which has helped determine my approach did not make the landing.
I did. If there is one person I can look up to, one person who really commands my respect, it is me. I can count on me when others fail. I am my own hero.
I am satisfied that I have paid attention, learnt my lessons and arrived where I am supposed to be. I am free from the man I was so I can be the man I want to be.
I never gave up. I battled on, in spite of the occasional surrender.
Every day, stepping forward, I carried on regardless of the weight life placed upon my back. What a heavy load. All the others with whom I have given credit still stand beside me and shape me the same, but I am the only one who can claim to have foraged through all the borrowed knowledge and come out the other side better than before.
It started with the man in the mirror.
I asked him to change his ways.
In this reflection I see so much clearer. To make the world a better place I need to look at myself and then make alterations. Pay attention or die confused.
So many options, so many choices which only you yourself can make.
Only you can change you. You are the only one responsible for your decisions, no one else. The devils and gods you listen to are your own creation, no one else's. We are all things through Grace, but it is my face in this place. When I die I die alone.
We die alone but we also survive alone.
We think in surviving that we are learning how to live but we are really learning how to die. Live deliberately. Confront the essential facts of life and learn what they have to teach. Don't discover too late that you have not lived. There is more to this life and you can never stop growing or you'll start to die.
In the long run it matters little how you got here and it matters little where you've been.
All that matters is that you are here, now, carrying on and growing.
Pay homage to yourself for a change.
Most of the world's problems come from people not knowing themselves. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
How then can we know anyone else?
Be around the people you want to be like, because you will be like the people you are around. Realizing just how much others have affected you can come as a big shock. I don't think most people catch on to the accumulation of those influences within themselves. They do matter; little pieces of all the souls that have blended with our own.
They accumulate. We all take different paths in life, but no matter where we go, we take a little of each other with us.
We are the sum of our experiences but it is the people who leave the lasting impressions.
Everything we say and do is the length and shadow of our own souls and our influence is determined by the quality of our being.
We are created, we grow and sometimes we even blossom.
We cannot expect ourselves to be more than what we were made to be or less than we should be. When you make a puzzle man you start with the edges first.

"When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger." (Anthony De Mello)




Sources


Think Exist
http://thinkexist.com/quotes/anthony_de_mello/

Inspiration Peak
http://www.inspirationpeak.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?search=anthony+de+mello

Spiritual Experiences
http://www.spiritual-experiences.com/spiritual-quotes/quote.php?teacher=13

Anthony De Mello
http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/anthony-de-mello




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