Nobody was mean to you. Somebody was mean to what he or she thought was you, but not to you. Nobody ever rejects you; they’re only rejecting what they think you are. But that cuts both ways. Nobody ever accepts you either. Until people come awake, they are simply accepting or rejecting their image of you.
“I wish to become a teacher of the Truth.”
“Are you prepared to be ridiculed, ignored and starving till you are forty-five?”
“I am. But tell me: What will happen after I am forty-five?”
“You will have grown accustomed to it.”
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know — all mystics — Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion — are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.
Anthony de Mello, born on 4 September 1931, Sun in Virgo, Moon in Taurus, Indian writer.
Eat an apple,sing a song,
Don’t touch a snake as it wriggles along.
Run for an hour, walk for a day,
Hark to the birds and heed what they say.
(Joan Aiken, born on 4 September 1924, Sun in Virgo, Moon in Scorpio, English writer)
Why do we want to have alternate worlds? It’s a way of making progress. You have to imagine something before you do it.
(Richard Wright, born on September 4, 1908, Sun in Virgo, Moon in Sagittarius, American writer)