I CAME TO CAST FIRE UPON THE EARTH; AND WOULD THAT IT WERE ALREADY KINDLED! —LUKE 12:49
Now is the time to see that absolutely nothing outside of you can bring you lasting joy. But the moment you do that you will notice that a fear arises in your heart. That fear that if you allow the discontent to be, it will turn into a raging passion that will grip you and cause you to revolt against everything that your culture and your religion hold dear; against a whole way of thinking and feeling and perceiving the world that they have brainwashed you into accepting. This devouring flame will cause you not just to rock the boat but to burn the boat to ashes. Suddenly you will find yourself living in an altogether different world, infinitely removed from the world of the people around you, for everything that others hold dear, everything they are crying their hearts out for, honor, power, acceptance, approval, security, wealth, is seen for the stinking garbage that it is. It disgusts and nauseates. And everything others are forever running away from holds no terrors for you anymore. You have become serene and fearless and free, for you have stepped out of your illusory world and into the kingdom.
Do not confound this divine discontent with the hopelessness and despair that sometimes drive people to madness and to suicide. That is not the mystical drive to life but the neurotic drive to self-destruction. Do not confound it with the whining of people who are forever complaining about everything. These people are not mystics but bores merely agitating for improvement of prison conditions whereas what they need to do is burst out of prison into freedom.
Most people when they feel the stirring of this discontent within their hearts either run away from it and drug themselves with the fevered pursuit of work and social life and friendship; or they channelize the discontent into social work, literature, music, the so-called creative pursuits that make them settle for reform, when what is needed is revolt. These people even though they are full of activity are not really alive at all: They are dead, content to live in the land of the dead. The test that your discontent is divine is the fact that it has no trace of sadness or bitterness to it at all. On the contrary even though it often arouses fear within your heart, it is always accompanied by joy, the joy of the kingdom.
And here is a parable of that kingdom: It is like a treasure lying buried in a field. The man who found it buried it again, and for sheer joy went and sold everything he had and bought that field. If you haven’t found the treasure as yet, don’t waste your time searching for it. It can be found but it may not be searched for. You don’t have the slightest notion what the treasure is. All you are familiar with is the drugged happiness of your present existence. So what would you search for? And where? No, search rather in your heart for the spark of discontent and tend the flame till it becomes a conflagration and your world is burned down to a heap of rubble.
Young or old, most of us are discontented merely because we want something—more knowledge, a better job, a finer car, a bigger salary. Our discontent is based upon our desire for “the more.” It is only because we want something more that most of us are discontented. But I am not talking about that kind of discontent. It is the desire for “the more” that prevents clear thinking, whereas if we are discontented, not because we want something, but without knowing what we want; if we are dissatisfied with our jobs, with making money, with seeking position and power, with tradition, with what we have and with what we might have; if we are dissatisfied, not with anything in particular but with everything, then I think we shall find that our discontent brings clarity. When we don’t accept or follow, but question, investigate, penetrate, there is an insight out of which comes creativity, joy.
Mostly the discontent that you feel comes from not having enough of something—you are dissatisfied because you think you do not have enough money or power or success or fame or virtue or love, or holiness. This is not the discontent that leads to the joy of the kingdom. Its source is greed and ambition and its fruit is restlessness and frustration. The day you are discontented not because you want more of something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart of everything that you have been pursuing so far and you are sick of the pursuit itself, then your heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that will cause you mysteriously to delight in everything and in nothing.
~From Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony De Mello
