Anthony de Mello wrote a potent little book titled Awareness.

Do not read this book.

If you read this book, you will be picked up, shaken out, and dropped several feet from where you started. You will most certainly be unselfed (see November 29, 2010).

Awareness is the least definable of my core words. I will try to explain what it means–or more accuately, what it means to me. Take what you will.

Awareness is openness to what is. It is openness of mind (without analysis), openness of heart (without judgement), openness of soul (without striving), openness of spirit (without expectation).

Awareness is presence. It is now.

Awareness is realization. It is epiphany.

Awareness is acceptance. It is reality.

Awareness is simultaneously empowering and disempowering; it is beyond the very thought/need of power.

Awareness embraces all.

Awareness doesn't do. It is.

These words by the poet Rumi (1207-1273) also express it for me:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down
in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language,
even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.