from Awareness by Anthony De Mello . . .

The reason you suffer from your depression and your anxieties is that you identify with them.

You say, “I’m depressed.” But that is false. You are not your depression.

If you want to be accurate, you might say, “I am experiencing a depression right now.” But you can hardly say, “I am depressed.”

That is but a strange kind of trick of the mind, a strange kind of illusion. You have deluded yourself into thinking—though you are not aware of it—that you are your depression, that you are your anxiety, that you are your the delights and the thrills that you have. “I am delighted!”

You certainly are not delighted. Delight may be your experience right now, but just wait, it will change; it won’t last: it never lasts; it keeps changing.

Clouds come and go: some of them are dark and some white, some of them are large, others small.

You’re the sky, observing the clouds; a passive, detached observer. You’re not interfering. Don’t interfere. Don’t “fix” anything.

Watch! Observe!

It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be brought into awareness so they can be understood.

If you understood them, they’d change. This is a great illumination.

Your essential identity, your essential Self is like the air when black paint is thrown into the air; the air remains uncontaminated. The air is never tainted black.

No matter what happens to you, no matter the ups and downs; no matter what mistakes you make or wrongs you commit, your essential Self remains uncontaminated. Your essential Self remains at peace.

Can you imagine that?

In the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred book of the Hindus, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, “Plunge into the heat of battle and keep your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord.” Can you imagine that?

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