Learn to Listen

Learn to Listen

The way to plenitude has some requirements. A very essential requirement is your ability to listen. Listening is uncommon. People hear all the time, but rarely do they really listen. It has been said, with a better translation: he that has ears to hear, let him listen. How come? We all have ears to hear. Yes, but we do not use them to listen. In order to understand wisdom, you need to use what has recently been called active listening, or empathic listening. At least, sympathetic listening. There are whole courses to teach people to practice active listening.

The essential point in the art of listening is that you put yourself in a receptive, receiving mode. You are normally like a glass full of muddy water, full with your preconceived ideas, biases, thoughts referred to spiritual development, interpretations of your past experiences, unpleasant emotions, strong opinions, etc…, which fill your glass with muddy water. It is so full, that such muddy water reaches the edge of the cup and spills out. Nothing can enter into your glass, which represents your mind.

In order to listen, what you need to do is to empty your glass. You may pour your substance into a, let us say, a cup of tea, that you have available, and let your glass crystal clear, empty, ready to receive new ideas or, better, the Ancient Wisdom.

That does not mean that you are going to swallow what you are going to listen. No, no. When Do what Socrates recommends. He said that an unexamined life is not worth to be lived. Therefore, please examine what you have read or listened to, and then you may reach your sound conclusions.

My daughter, when she was a child, used to tell me the following joke: there is a duck at the edge of a pond (more common versions place a man in a bar). He has a banana in his ear. So he could hardly hear. I doubt if I should tell him the problem that he cannot listen because he has a banana in his ear. Maybe he will be upset if I get close to him and tell him what is wrong with him.

Finally, I took courage, and decided to tell him the truth:

“Hey, Sir, excuse me, but you have a banana in your ear.”

“What?” The man cannot listen to me, so I cry loud.

“I say that you have a banana in your ear”.

“What?”  The man still cannot listen to me. I speak still louder.

“That you have a banana in your ear”.

“Sorry –said the man- I cannot listen to you because I have a banana in my ear”

Je, je. You know. He knew the problem, but he did not do anything to solve it. He kept the banana in his ear, and could go on unable to listen.

So, my dear friends. Please assume an active, alert and emphatic attitude, put to work your whole attention, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, please be present here and now, empty your glass of water, take your banana off your ear, and listen…

A Tale of the Dervishes

A Tale of the Dervishes

Once upon a time the Teacher of Moses called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially hoarded, would disappear. It would then be renewed with different water, which would drive men mad.

Only one man listened to the meaning of his advice. He collected water, and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.

On the appointed date the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat, and drank his preserved water.

When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of man. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they had no memory of what had happened, nor of having been warned. When he tried to talk to them, he realized that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.

At first, he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving, and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

Dear reader, are you like the man who collected his water, or like the other sons of man? Please examine yourself… If you were in the case of that man, would you also choose to become mad like the rest of the people? If you have drunk of the water that makes people mad, would you like to find the fresh water and drink it? Please examine yourself…

Do you want Healing or Just a Remedy?

Do you want Healing or Just a Remedy?

A problem of most spiritual seekers is that they only want a remedy for the temporary conflict they have at that time… a short-term remedy. You have a strong pain, and you take a strong analgesic. The analgesic remedies the pain, the symptom, but it does not operate on the root cause of the disease. Remedies only touch the surface, but they do not reach deep into your Inner Self, they do not heal your soul.

This Blog is a kind of practical course so that you gradually go deep into your inner being, and achieve for yourself an integral, holistic healing.

Eckhart Tolle tells us of a psychoanalyst who, after several years of treating a patient, gave him his five thousand-page file, and said, “Here is all the information about you.” Thousands of pages of “content” related to the subconscious mind. But a natural reaction of the patient would be, having the voluminous record in his hands: “Well, what do I do with this?”

Therapies usually remedy problems, but usually do not achieve a complete, complete cure. Tony de Mello says that many people came to his practice to raise the conflicts about their relationships and their communication with their friends and relatives. Many times, therapy provided some help, some remedy. But, he says, I often wondered if it was right to give him or her that remedy, because its effects are temporary, and the patient is still asleep and subject to the tangle of unpleasant attachments and emotions.

In extreme cases, of psychosis or true severity, therapy is not only useful, but necessary to reduce such an agonizing state, such acute despair.

But, Tony tells us, in ordinary, not extreme cases, it may be preferable, instead of giving him or her such a remedy, to allow the problem and conflict to grow, until he reaches a point where he says, “I am fed up with everything! I need to wake up.” Maybe then he will have the motivation, the impulse to change, and to persevere in such change, practicing the necessary discipline, strict observance of the spiritual path.

In theory, complete healing could be achieved in three minutes if the person attained an understanding of Reality, and made the inflexible decision to drop his or her unpleasant attachments and emotions.

However, 90% of people require to follow a path, to follow a process, a discipline of one to three years, depending on how strict is the observance of techniques or methods of cleansing the link that connects you with the Spirit.

In language courses, there are schools that tell you: “Learn Spanish in six months.” And you're off with the feint. In six months, you manage to hold a conversation, yes, it is true… but mastery of a foreign language requires three to five years.

In the matter of spiritual development, the same thing happens. There are now numerous short courses of three to six months. Of course, they are useful (as the Spanish you learn in six months is useful), but at the end of those courses you realize that you are only at the threshold of initiation of the full path.

We also have access to weekend retreats or one-day seminars. These are useful because in them you can have a moment when you decide a crucial change. Moments of clarity and outstanding understanding. Some call it a turning point or “a moment of aha!”, a moment in which “get it or grasp it”. In other short retreats or seminars, they give you the tools to, after you leave them, you develop a plan of action to change, to take control over your life. You should have a life project.

A day or a weekend, in theory could be enough to generate the change, but usually they are not enough. Normally a seminar or a one-day seminar is conceived to sow in you a seed that in another time can flourish. For such seed to flourish, your task is to cultivate it. You do not have to examine under the ground your roots every day, but if you take care of the seed with love, and if you provide it with that water, which in spiritual writings has been called aqua viva, living water within you.

I invite you to seek not a remedy, but your complete healing. Keep in touch with this Blog. Let your health gradually permeate you…

Unconditional Freedom

Unconditional Freedom

We may enjoy unconditional freedom, unconditional love, unconditional happiness.

Tony de Mello told me that people tend to desire conditional happiness. “I am ready to be happy provided I have this or that or the other thing.” Or something like this: “You are my happiness. 

If I don´t get you, I refuse to be happy.”

Maybe you cannot conceive of being happy without those conditions. Those conditions are what we typically call attachments.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time there were two friends, Vany and Bella. When they were fifteen years old, they went with their classmates and teachers to a visit to an art gallery. There they saw a beautiful painting. They were enormously impressed… It was a landscape…  A green field full of flowers of multiple colors. A nice girl with a spring dress that matched the scene. A marvelous blue sky with white clouds… The peace of the scene and the combination of colors grasped the feelings of Vany and Bella. They were captivated, ecstatic. Both wanted to own it!

Five years later Bella was married to a prosperous young man. She told him about the beautiful painting, and he bought it for her. When Vany, which at this time was married too, visited Bella, she almost died, full of envy! “How come you bought the painting I like!” Vany suffered because she wanted to have it at her house. She started pressing Bella to sell it to her. She insisted for years… three years, until Bella finally sold it to Vany, and replace the painting with other nice one.

Vany was thoroughly happy! Finally, she owned the painting. It was in her leaving room. She used to sit down at her favorite armchair in front of the fireplace, and watched at it for hours. She felt completely satisfied.

Two years later Vany´s husband had some financial problems, and he had to sell all the art works he possessed, including the marvelous painting. He sold all of them to an art gallery. Vany felt desolated. Instead of feeling satisfied for hours every day, she cried for hours every day. She sat at the same spot. She didn´t kindle the fire, since she felt depressed. She even didn´t turn on the lights, since she preferred to suffer her depression in the darkness.

Once Bella visited an art gallery, and she saw the painting. She felt it was strange to find it again! She didn´t know about the financial problems of Vany´s husband. She thought that maybe the taste of Vany for that particular painting was ephemeral, and that she had finally got rid of it. Bella liked the painting too much, so she asked her husband to rebuy it, and he did.

On Bella´s birthday she threw a party, and Vany was one of her guests. Imagine Vany´s surprise when she saw what she considered her painting in one of Bella´s walls. “Noo! You can´t do this to me!” “What did I do to you?” “You have my painting. I will never forgive you!”

During the following days, Bella considered Vany´s reaction. She knew it was not justified, and she didn´t like the idea of being subject to a sort of emotional blackmail. However, well, she like the painting, but she did not feel attached to it. And she had other nice art work too. So, as she loved Vany and was sensible to her special life situation, she decided to give the painting to Vany as a gift. Now she knew Vany could not afford to pay for it.

Vany was thrilled! She didn´t change herself for anyone in the world! Again she place the painting in the old spot, above the chimney, and spent hours and hours delightfully watching at it.

Until… one day Vany´s marriage deteriorated. She and her husband were divorced. A Saturday morning Vany went to have breakfast with her mother. When she came back home, Vany´s husband had taken some stuff to the new place where he was moving… including the painting!

Vany was truly upset, angry. She called her now ex-husband, and told him that the painting belonged to her, since it was a gift from Bella. But her husband replied that when Bella formalized the transaction, she made the paperwork naming him as the new owner (for Bella, at that time, it was the same thing to set forth in the paper the name of Bella or that of her husband).

So Vany was desolate again. She was attached to her now former husband and to the painting, and she had lost both.

Bella was happy with or without the painting. She was not attached to it.

Dear reader, examine your own reactions. Are your reactions like those of Vany, or like those of Bella? 

Examine yourself… If you are like Bella, congratulations! You are now closer to the plenitude which lies at the end of the process of spiritual development. If you are like Vany, you have an option: go on suffering, or resolve to change, starting right now!

I invite you to examine yourself, and to congratulate yourself, or to start changing right now, as the case may be.

Knocking for Help

Knocking for Help

Spirit is constantly knocking the door of your soul. We are used to pray, “Our Father who is in Heaven, Your Will Be Done in Heaven as in Earth. Heaven means your inside realm, and Earth means the external realm of manifestation.

What is His Will? His Will is that we manifest His attributes: freedom, happiness, love, peace, and wisdom.

How come we do not manifest those wonderful attributes in our life?

Alice was crying so much, that she was drowning in a pool of tears. Why?

Are you, dear reader of this Blog, like Alice, crying so much, that you are drowning in a pool of tears? Why?

Here is the answer from Ancient Wisdom.

The human being as we know him, is not fulfilling his purpose of manifesting the attributes of the Supreme Being. The cause of this is that since you were a child, you absorbed a cultural conditioning which resulted in your sorrowful condition of expressing negative, unpleasant, irritating emotions, and developing attachment to persons, things, ideas, and situations.

Since you could not thoroughly process such emotions and attachments, you started to gather them in your subconscious mind, and those emotions became blocks like heavy rocks that blocked the passage of the higher attributes, which could not anymore pass through your subconscious mind.

The connection with the Spirit was lost. You need to clean the link that blocks you from connecting and uniting with the Spirit on a permanent basis. The book I am about to publish, which title has changed to The Secret Way of Alice, explains -as much as an explanation can be provided in this matter- how to clean the link with the Spirit. In the meantime, in this Blog I can give you some hints that will prepare you to start working right now in a direction leading to clean the link and reestablish your connection with Your Divine Self.

Here is a hint… Spirit is constantly knocking the door of your soul. But you are filled with subconscious blocks, so you shot the door. You don´t open the door to the Spirit, Who is trying to descend into you, and to manifest through you. That is His Will: to descend into you and manifest His attributes through you!

But in order to do that, He needs… your help! That is because He, even though He is all powerful, He decides to respect your Free Will. He will not impose on you. That is not His Will… to force you to act as He, with His Divine Compassion, would like you to act.

Do you think that His Will is our attachment to persons, things, ideas, or situations? No, no, no. The truth is that our attachments are an expression of our free will.

The truth is that, except for physical harm, nobody, nobody, nobody can help or harm you. You harm or help yourself. The role of the teacher is not to help. A true teacher only models, dances his own dance, exhibits his attainment or, in words of Jesus, just bears testimony of the truth. The rest is your choice, your work, your decision. If you want to wake up, great! If you do not, great too! It is your personal decision, your personal responsibility, not mine or any other person´s.

Even God does not give you any special help. He (or She) is continuously knocking your door, that is the extent of His help. He is continuously trying to descend upon you, continuously trying to manifest through you, but He will not impose on you.

So, you are the one who can help Him and yourself, by cleaning the connecting link with the Spirit, so that He may manifest through your conduit, through your vehicle. Then you may start dropping your attachments and your unpleasant emotions. Do not blame you, it is not your fault. It is the programming of your culture that you have received…

But now, today you know that you can help yourself. The time for self-complacency is over. Today, now is the time to change yourself.

You may start to help yourself by letting Him guide you. Give yourself permission to be guided! Start acting as a conscious conduit for the Only Being, for the Spirit. This way you are starting cleaning your link with the Spirit!

When Should We Wake Up to Love

When Should We Wake Up to Love?

When should we awaken to love and freedom? Once upon a time Tony de Mello heard on Spanish television a story about this gentleman who knocks on his son´s door, and tells him:

Father: “Jaime, wake up!”

Jaime: “I don´t want to get up, Papa.”

The father shouts: “Get up, you have to go to school.”

Jaime: “I don´t want to go to school.”

Father: “Why not?”

Jaime: “Three reasons. First, because it´s so dull. Second, the kids tease me. And third, I hate school.

Father: “Well, I am going to give you tree reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty. Second, because you are… forty-five years old! And, third, because you are the headmaster!”

Dear reader of this Blog: Wake up! Awake to love! Wake up to freedom! When should we wake up to love and freedom? Today! Today, at this moment, at least start your process of awakening! You are no longer a child. Maybe you're not Jaime's age, but you're too old to be asleep anyway. Awake! Stop playing with your toys.

Most people tell us that they want to grow, but they prefer to continue in kindergarten. People just want to repair their broken toys, their attachments ... Give me back my partner! Give me back my job! Give me back my money! Give me back my reputation, my success! This is what most people want… to strengthen their attachments. People just want their toys repaired or replaced. That is all. 

Many psychologists say that most people do not really want a cure, an integral healing. What they want is just relief, an aspirin.

The thing is that… you get relief from outside. Deep healing must start from within… it's up to you, and only to you, to carry it out.

Waking up to life is a very pleasant thing, it is a wonderful thing… But when someone tries to wake you up without your consent, without you request, or because you feel it as an obligation (for example, if you need to go to work) oh! Sometimes you do not like it. You say, “I'd rather sleep a little bit more.” Or at the weekend, you sometimes say, “Mmm… it is delicious to sleep. I´m going to wake up late, too late!”

So, for it to be wonderful, the awakening, the awakening to love and freedom is something that must come from you, from your desire, from your decision.

I do not write this Blog to wake you up. I just invite you to do it. Oh, how joyful I would be if I could see you waking up! I am giving you tools so that you can use them, so that you wake yourself up. I have already awakened, so now the meaning of my life consists in the joy of seeing others wake up. I deeply appreciate those who stimulated me, who enthused me to access peace, happiness, and wisdom.

Oh God! What a wonderful life! That's why Alice went into Wonderland. She realized that this is a wonderful world.

I dedicate myself to experience freedom, and to love…  I invite you to do the same. I invite you intimately to think thoughts of loving-kindness, to feel feelings of loving-kindness.

You can do that today. Right now. At this time. That is the beginning of awakening. Try to keep yourself in that state of loving-kindness as long as possible. At least, until we meet again through this Blog.

We are building a community of readers of this Blog. Anyone who reads it, is reading it because he wants to start generating vibrations of loving-kindness. You want to start generating noble and elevated thoughts and feelings ... and the whole of our noble and elevated thoughts is forming a vibratory mold that stimulates us all ...

Wake up! Right now! Wake up to freedom, to love, to happiness, to peace and wisdom! Feel that you are free right now. Loves everyone from this moment on, just like the sun gives its light generously for all, without excluding anyone. Just like the rose spreads its fragrance for all that comes close to it, without excluding anyone. Yes, you can! Try it now! Now! Feel yourself impregnated with bliss right now. Feel peace and wisdom. Feel… feel… feel… be still… be still… feel and enjoy your life from this moment.

Accept my invitation. Wake up now, please!

The Divine Paradox

All is well and everything is a mess… How come?

Imagine God in the process of Creation of the Universe. He has already created the heavens and the earth, and the seas, angels, archangels and all heavenly choirs, animal and vegetable creatures… His next step is to create what we humans like to call “the crown of Creation” (meaning us, of course).

God has His divine attributes (of course they are divine! Or not?): Freedom, happiness, love, peace, and wisdom. Now, He is talking to himself:

“Oh God! that is, Oh I! I have already created the heavenly angels, archangels, and heavenly choirs, but they all have a restriction: they cannot manifest my divine attributes in the outer world, in the material or physical world! Everything is internal, subtle and sublime, but it does not transcend the sensual and wonderful world of Alice (when the story is written), the wonderful world of sensation. I want to create a being through whom I can look at the material world, and can hear, touch, smell, taste ... well, enjoy! “

“How do I do it, how do I do it? Ah! I got it! I will create the Human Being, I will create the Male and the Female, the Man and the Woman, and through them I will manifest Myself, I will express my divine attributes. Yeah! What a good idea! It is indeed a Divine Idea! “

“But ... I have two options. Do I create it with free will or without free will? If I create it without free will, it will happen as in the film A Clockwork Orange (when the film is shot) in which a ruffian loses his ability to choose, because when he chooses evil, he hears the beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (which he used to like before), and it causes him to have such a sharp and intense pain in his ear, that he represses his impulse to behave badly and therefore, he behaves good.”

“That human being, without free will, could not (rightly) call himself “the crown of My Creation.” He would be a mere robot, an automaton. No, no. I must create him with free will. That means he will have the faculty of eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil (that is, he will start describing each experience as “good” or “bad”, although the truth is that everything was good and wonderful in the beginning).”

“He will have the power to seek his own interest, even to the detriment of himself or of others (egoism). He will have the ability to cling, to attach to people, things, situations, and ideas. He will have the power to generate unpleasant emotions, such as irritation, anguish, resentment, and worry… but this faculty will exalt him because, as a counterpart, he will also have the faculty to express My divine attributes, the attributes for whose manifestation I have created him. He will have the power to manifest freedom, love, happiness, peace and wisdom.”

“The human being will have the power to generate himself a wonderful world (like Alice's), a world of harmony, or vibrate in a world of conflict, dysfunctional.”

“Thus, the human being will be able to know that All is Well, because the Creation, which includes his freedom, is perfect… and if he did not include such freedom, he would be imperfect. And, paradoxically, everything will be a mess, when in the exercise of his free will he chooses conflict, attachment, hatred, fear… a nightmare.”

Turning to you, reader of this Blog, in particular, God completed His idea, saying:

“Everything is good because you are free. Although someone chooses the conflict, You Can Choose Harmony. You can choose to Love, to Love Me, to Love You and to Love every being that crosses your path.”

In order to constantly manifest the attributes of God: freedom, love, happiness, peace, and wisdom, you must wake up…

It's up to you… It is your decision!