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There's the story of the disciple who went to the master and said, "Could you give me a word of wisdom? Could you tell me something that would guide me through my days?" It was the master's day of silence, so he picked up a pad. It said, "Awareness." When the disciple saw it, he said, "This is too brief. Can you expand on it a bit?" So the master took back the pad and wrote, "Awareness, awareness, awareness." The disciple said, "Yes, but what does it mean?" The master took back the pad and wrote, "Awareness, awareness, awareness means -- awareness."
*Anthony de Mello, S. J.
When a teenager I was returning home late one night. I fell asleep. I awoke to find myself driving on the opposite side of the highway. Fortunately, this was a little traveled rural highway. I veered back onto my side of the pavement. Immediately, a car passed in the lane I had driven into while asleep.
To speak of being awake or aware may sound mundane, not spiritual enough. However, being awake is a sacred experience. Buddhists often call it mindfulness. We Christians speak of the Practice of the Presence of God.
Awareness, as spiritual practice, is not simply being alert in a physical sense. Many persons are alert and spiritually asleep. A jack ass can be alert, but that does not make the jack ass enlightened; a person can alertly commit a felony, but that does not mean he was being spiritual when he alertly committed the crime.
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Awareness spiritually is an openness and spontaneous intuition of the Sacredness of life. Our ordinary awareness which may, if at all, experience very brief moments of wakefulness, is transformed slowly into spiritual consciousness. This is like moving from getting a brief glimpse of Light once in a while, with it quickly passing, to living under a constant shower of the Light. Most persons live most of their lives asleep, and some go to sleep and never wake up, never experience the Light or a moment touched by Sacredness.
When we begin on the path toward this awareness, we have been asleep so long that waking up seems unnatural. We resist it, for it seems easier just to keep snoozing. Gradually, however, it becomes easier to be awake and more difficult to be asleep. Finally, we might forget what it was like to have been asleep all the time, and we may grieve some that we spent so many years sleeping. We are led by Grace toward a state in which being wakeful is as natural to us as being asleep was once. Being awake, then, we understand as a deeply spiritual experience.
For information on the author, purpose of OneLife ministry, data on the author's book of mystical poetry, and source of quotations in writings, turn to page 2.
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