blame us because we are who we are/hate us because you'll never get that far...

Ang haba ng sagot ko kay titopao so entry na lang siya uilt :) somehow, Better Than Ezra's At The Stars (lyrics above) could be one's last laugh to eternity while those who are left wandering (and wondering) on earth never tire of pointing fingers ;)

**********

True, true. thanks for the link :)

I do believe, however, that De Mello's radical perspective poses a challenge for those who may achieve higher spiritual awareness and will eventually seek greater depth than what is available to the lay congregation. The rise in popularity of ecumenism is witness to more and more people awakening their souls without losing their faith, almost like a new Pentecost(!), and a lot of what has been said before to be invincible has been broken down. We are past the age of burning books, and there are a lot out there which may help us find the truth, which may lead us to what has always been thought to be true, and then there are instruments of deception swirled with chocolate icing :) Discernment is key, and I'm hoping that the Church is staying true to the basic meaning of what it basically means to be "catholic".

Dancing close to the fire is exhilarating, albeit bordering on madness. A little more grace, though, is good to pray for :)

come on and shine!

I was cleaning my pc of files to discard and chanced upon this prayer I used for Hangad practice. I guess I'd better post it here so I won't lose it if my system breaks down...

I’ve recently been reading Anthony De Mello’s compilation of “story meditations” entitled Taking Flight. The appeal of this book to me is a cross between “Laughter, The Best Medicine” and a short Richard Bach novel. Let me share with you a story taken from this book’s section on “Awareness”.

“An oyster saw a loose pearl that had fallen into the crevice of a rock on the ocean bed. After great effort she managed to retrieve the pearl and place it just beside her on a leaf. She knew that humans searched for pearls and thought, ‘ This pearl will tempt them, so they will take it and let me be.’

When a pearl diver showed up, however, his eyes were conditioned to look for oysters and not for pearls resting on leaves.

So he grabbed the oyster, which did not happen to have a pearl, and allowed the real pearl to roll back into the crevice in the rock.

You know exactly where to look. That is the reason why you fail to find God.”(De Mello, 1988, pp 45-46)

For those who don’t know who Anthony De Mello is, he was a Jesuit priest from India and the director of the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counselling in Poona, India, as well as a member of the Jesuit province of Bombay. In the words of his friend, Francis Stroud, his work was about "waking people up to the reality of their greatness, proclaiming the message of 'awareness' - seeing the light we are to ourselves and to others, recognising we are better than we knew." He challenged people to encounter the God behind all the words, concepts and religious formulas. Though he was a Jesuit, he even went so far as to point out the capacity of 'religion' to interfere with our relationship with God. This brought him considerable criticism from various quarters, including the Vatican.

His retreats, workshops, seminars on prayer and therapy courses and work which he was involved with globally for 18 years is widely known in many English and Spanish speaking countries. He died suddenly in 1987, in New York, where he was giving one of his Sadhana Courses.

This thought is, again, about awareness.

"Is salvation obtained through action or through meditation?"

"Through neither. Salvation comes from seeing."

"Seeing what?"

"That the gold necklace you wish to acquire is hanging round your neck. That the snake you are so frightened of is only a rope on the ground."