from Rediscovering Life by Anthony De Mello . . .

John Lennon wrote the famous lyric, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

It’s even worse than that: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy suffering over other things.

Here is a perfect image for this. You are at a concert hall and the orchestra is about to play a symphony you love. You’ve settled in your seat, the lights dim, the conductor strikes the music stand with his baton, and the audience becomes quiet, awaiting the music. Suddenly you realize that you forgot to lock your car.

Oh no! you think. How stupid of me! What can I do now?

There is nothing you can do. You can’t get up and leave—it’ll be too disturbing. But neither can you enjoy the music because you’re upset and worried about your car.

That is the image of life for most people. Constant anxiety, fretting over thoughts like, what do I do now? What’s going to happen next? How do I cope with this? How do I deal with that?

What is it that upset you recently? Did somebody die? Did someone betrayed you or someone rejected you? Did you lost something? Did your plans went awry?.

Think of something that has upset you recently or is upsetting you right now.

Now get ready for a shock.

I’m going to lob a bomb into the middle of your upset. Listen to this:

Nothing in reality, nothing in life, nothing in the world, upsets you. Nothing has the power to upset you.

Did anyone tell you that?

All upset exists in you, not in reality, not in life. Not in the world. It’s in you.

Reality is not upsetting. Reality is not problematic.

If there were no human mind, there would be no problems. All problems exist in the human mind.

All problems are created by the mind.

Someone once said to me, “Wouldn’t there be some problems that exist in reality and not in me?” I said to him, “If we take you out of there, where’s the problem?” No problem.

Just understanding this can changed your life entirely.  Just this and nothing more.

Tags: