STOP IT
Mark Twain put it very nicely when he said, “It was so cold that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death.”
We do freeze to death on words. It’s not the cold outside that matters, but the thermometer. It’s not reality that matters, but what you’re saying to yourself about it. I was told a lovely story about a farmer in Finland. When they were drawing up the Russian-Finnish border, the farmer had to decide whether he wanted to be in Russia or Finland. After a long time he said he wanted to be in Finland, but he didn’t want to offend the Russian officials. These came to him and wanted to know why he wanted to be in Finland. The farmer replied, “It has always been my desire to live in Mother Russia, but at my age I wouldn’t be able to survive another Russian winter.”
Russia and Finland are only words, concepts, but not for human beings, not for crazy human beings. We’re almost never looking at reality. A guru was once attempting to explain to a crowd how human beings react to words, feed on words, live on words, rather than on reality. One of the men stood up and protested; he said, “I don’t agree that words have all that much effect on us.” The guru said, “Sit down, you son of a bitch.” The man went livid with rage and said, “You call yourself an enlightened person, a guru, a master, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
The guru then said, “Pardon me, sir, I was carried away. I really beg your pardon; that was a lapse; I’m sorry.” The man finally calmed down. Then the guru said, “It took just a few words to get a whole tempest going within you; and it took just a few words to calm you down, didn’t it?” Words, words, words, words, how imprisoning they are if they’re not used properly.
– Excerpt from Awareness by Anthony De Mello
Let each person find peace within. When you find peace within, you also find that you can do without. This means simply that you no longer need the things of your outside world. “Not needing” is a great freedom. It frees you, first, from fear: fear that there is something you won’t have; fear that there is something you have that you wil lose; and fear that without a certain thing, you won’t be happy.
Secondly, “not needing” frees you from anger. Anger is fear announced. When you have nothing to fear, you have nothing over which to be angry.
You are not angry when you don’t get what you want, because your wanting it was simply a preference, not a necessity. You therefore have no fear associated with the possibility of not getting it. Hence, no anger.
You are not angry when you see others doing what you don’t want them to do, because you don’t need them to do or not do any particular thing. Hence, no anger.
You are not angry when someone is unkind, because you have no need for them to be kind. You have no anger when someone is unloving, because you have no need for them to love you. You have no anger when someone is cruel, or hurtful, or seeks to damage you, for you have no need for them to behave any other way, and you are clear that you cannot be damaged.
You do not even have anger should someone seek to take your life, because you do not fear death. When fear is taken from you, all else can be taken from you and you wil not be angry.
You know inwardly, intuitively, that everything you’ve created can be created again, or—more importantly—that it doesn’t matter.
When you find Inner Peace, neither the presence nor the absence of any person, place or thing, condition, circumstance, or situation can be the Creator of your state of mind or the cause of your experience of being
– Excerpt from Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch
Bob Newhart – STOP IT!
