Ask Yourself This (#2)

from quotes of Anthony De Mello . . .

How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul?

You have probably been brainwashed into believing that your work only achieves maximum value if it becomes popular and sells, which means you are back again into the arms and control of people. The value of work, according to society, is not in its being loved and done and enjoyed for itself, but in its achieving measurable success.

The royal road to mysticism, to enlightenment, to Reality does not pass through the world of people. It passes through the world of actions that are engaged in for themselves without an eye to success or to gain or its profit potential. They are actions that are engaged in out of love. Increasing love by extending it is the ultimate success in life. Love is gratuitousness. Like the tree, the rose, the lamp, the stars, it gives everything of enormous worth and asks for nothing in return.

Think of the kind of feeling that came upon you when you saw an eagle fly over a lake or observed a flower peeping out of a crack in the wall or heard a baby laugh or witnessed a love one die. In your heart, you know that no one will ever comprehend exactly what you felt. That is exactly how a Master feels when you ask him or her to teach you about life or God or reality.

You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself. Think of something that you love to do for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. Then make time to do them.

Find the activities that grip your soul and cultivate them, for it is your passport to freedom and to love.