THE PHARISEES SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES, “WHY DOES YOUR TEACHER EAT WITH TAX COLLECTORS AND SINNERS?” —MATTHEW 9:11
If you wish to get in touch with the reality of a thing, the first thing you must understand is that every idea distorts reality and is a barrier to seeing reality. The idea is not the reality, the idea “wine” is not wine, the idea “woman” is not this woman. If I really want to get in touch with the reality of this woman I must put aside my idea of womanness or Indianness and experience her in her thisness, her concreteness, her uniqueness. Unfortunately most people most of the time do not take the trouble to see things like this in their uniqueness; they just see the words or the ideas, they never look with the eyes of a child at this concrete, unique, fluffy, alive thing that is moving out there in front of them. They only see a sparrow, they never see the wondrous marvel of this unique human being here in front of them. They only see an Indian peasant woman. The idea therefore is a barrier to the perception of reality.
There is yet another barrier to the perception of reality—the judgment. This thing or person is good or bad, ugly or beautiful. It is barrier enough to have the idea of Indian or woman or peasant when I look at this concrete individual. But now I add a judgment and I say, “She is good,” or “She is bad,” or “She is attractive and beautiful,” or “She is unattractive and ugly.” That further prevents me from seeing her because she is neither good nor bad. She is “she” in all her uniqueness. The crocodile and the tiger are neither good nor bad, they are crocodile and tiger. Good and bad are in relation to something outside them. Inasmuch as they suit my purpose or please my eyes, or help me, or threaten me, I call them good or bad.
Now think of yourself when you were called good or attractive or beautiful by someone. Either you hardened yourself because you really thought you were ugly and you said to yourself, “If you really knew me as I am you would not call me beautiful.” Or you opened yourself to the words of that person and you really thought that you were beautiful and you allowed yourself to be thrilled at the compliment. In both cases you were wrong, because you are neither beautiful nor ugly. You are you.
If you get caught up in the judgments of people around you, you are eating the fruit of tension and insecurity and anxiety, because when today they call you beautiful and you are elated, tomorrow they will call you ugly and you will be depressed. Therefore the proper and accurate response when someone calls you beautiful is to say, “This person given his present perception and mood sees me as beautiful, but that does not say anything about me. Someone else in his place and depending on his background and mood and perception will see me as ugly. But that again says nothing about me.”
How easily we are taken in by the judgment of other people and then form an image of ourselves based on this judgment. In order to be truly liberated you need to listen to the so-called good and bad things that they tell you, but to feel no emotion at the feedback any more than a computer does when data is fed into it. Because what they say about you reveals more about them than about you.
As a matter of fact you also have to be aware of the judgments that you make about yourself, because even those are generally based on the value systems that you picked up from the people around you. If you judge, condemn, approve, do you ever see reality? If you look at anything through the eye of judgment or approval or condemnation, is that not the major barrier to understanding and observing things as they are in themselves? Take the time when somebody told you that you are very special to him; if you accepted that compliment then you ate the fruit of tension. Why do you want to be special to someone and to submit to that kind of approval and judgment? Why not just be content to be you?
~From Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony De Mello
