Do you want to change the world? How about beginning with yourself? How about being transformed yourself first? But how do you achieve that? Through observation. Through understanding. With no interference or judgement on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand.
When you say of someone, “He’s a communist,” understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on him. Understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on her, and if the label carries undertones of approval or disapproval, so much the worse! How are you going to understand what you disapprove of, or what you approve of, for that matter? All of this sounds like a new world, doesn’t it? No judgement, no commentrary, no attitude: one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is. Because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand. A scientist observes the behavior of ants with no further end in view than to study ants, to learn as much as possible about them. He has no other aim. He’s not attempting to train them or get anything out of them. He’s interested in ants, he wants to learn as much as possible about them. That’s his attitude. The day you attain a posture like that, you will experience a miracle. You will change – effortlessly, correctly. Change will happen, you will not have to bring it about. As the life of awareness settles on your darkness, whatever is evil will disappear. Whatever is good will be fostered. You will have to experience that for yourself.
But this calls for a disciplined mind. And when I say disciplined, I’m not talking about effort. I’m talking about something else. Have you ever studied an athelete. His or her whole life is sports, but what a disciplined life he or she leads. When there’s something within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own discipline. The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness. Oh, it’s so delightful! It’s the most delightful thing in the world; The most important, the most delightful. There’s nothing so important in the world as swakening. The great Socrates said, ” The unaware life is not worth living.”That ’s a self-evident truth. Most people don’t live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts – generally somebody else’s mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. Do you want to see how mechanical you really are?
Do you like being in prison? Do you like being controlled? Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not good. As long as you live to fulfill other people’s expectations, you better watch what you wear, how you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished – in short, whether you live up to every damned expectation of theirs.
That is what you’ll discover when you observe yourself! You’ll be horrified! You’ll make great discoveries. These discoveries will change you. You won’t have to make the slightest effort, believe me.
Anthoby de Mello Edited by J Francis Stroud
