Reality is not problematic

Negative feelings are in you, not in reality. So stop trying to change reality. That’s crazy! Stop trying to change the other person. We spend all our time and energy trying to change external circumstances, trying to change our spouses, our bosses, our friends, our enemies, and everybody else. We don’t have to change anything. Negative feelings are in you. No person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person. Nobody told you this; they told you the opposite. That’s why you’re in the mess that you’re in right now. That is why you’re asleep. They never told you this. But it’s self-evident.

Let’s suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What’s causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? When you bump your knee against a table, the table’s fine. It’s busy being what it was made to Be — a table. The pain is in your knee, not in the table. The mystics keep trying to tell us that reality is all right. Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. We might add: in the stupid, sleeping human mind. Reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and life would go on, nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem. You created the problem. You are the problem. You identified with “me” and that is the problem. The feeling is in you, not in reality.

Anthony De Mello

Five Stages of Growth of the Consciousness on the Spiritual Path

A person significantly developed ethically and intellectually is capable of mastering the following five main stages of the growth on the spiritual Path:
1. This is a preparatory stage: one has to master the true knowledge about God, about the meaning of our lives, about the methodology of the spiritual growth — and then to change correspondingly one’s own way of life.
2. Then such a person becomes established in the localization of himself in the chakra anahata and perceives the outer world from it, reacts from this chakra to the events that take place around.
3. Then he/she becomes a spiritual heart much larger than the material body. He/she can assume giant forms similar to the appearance of the human body. Now he/she possesses the ability to move in the universal space as a consciousness free from the fetters of matter: to move, in particular, with the help of the arms of the consciousness which grow from the spiritual heart and are coessential to it.
4. Having refined himself to the state of the Holy Spirit and having cognize the Creator in His Abode, He/She lives now among other Holy Spirits feeling Them, embracing Them, merging with Them — and together with Them helps other incarnated beings in their spiritual advancement.
5. Having submerged into the Ocean of the Primordial Consciousness (the Creator) and having finally merged with Him, He/She lives in two main states of the Creator: in Calm or in an active state which is called the Divine Fire. He/She is merged with the wholeness of the Absolute but also comes to incarnated beings as a Representative of the Creator — a Holy Spirit.
© Antonov V.V., 2010.

The Science of Reincarnation