Awareness

Anthony De Mello’s book “Awareness” includes some interesting, and helpful, reflections around the theme of the theme of the present moment and being aware. He points out the limits of words and how are attempts to ‘capture’ things so often just do not work. For example, “if I want you to get the feel of what the flow of a river is like and I bring it to you in a bucket. The moment I put it into a bucket it has stopped flowing. The moment you put things into a concept, they stop flowing; they become static, dead. … Concepts are always frozen. Reality flows. ….. it is so difficult to translate from one language to another, because each language cuts reality up differently. The English word “home” is impossible to translate into French or Spanish. “Casa” is not quite “home”; “home” has associations that are peculiar to the English language. Every language has untranslatable words and expressions, because we’re cutting reality up and adding something or subtracting something and usage keeps changing.” (p. 122). Some interesting – and challenging – ideas!