So now that I’m finally DONE with finals for this semester, I’m able to pick up DeMello’s book, Awareness. It took me six hours to read 15 pages, not because it was boring, but because it was so chock-full 
of information and I couldn’t stop taking notes! Plus…I was working. To write about what I think about it so far would take pages, so I’ll settle with my biggest disagreement and my biggest agreement with his book so far (the latter will be in a later journal).
In his chapter Our Illusion About Others he talked about a man who came to him to complain about his girlfriend. ”What are you complaining about?” he said, “Did you expect any better? Expect the worst, you’re dealing with selfish people. You’re the idiot – you glorified her, didn’t you?” He went on to say “Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself then you’ll see through everyone. Don’t grapple with your wrong notions of them.”
This rubbed off on me as unnecessarily cold and not quite the way I would handle the situation. I still feel I reserve the right to be angry if affronted. I have the right to express my feelings, as long as I don’t harbor those negative feelings forever. Whatever the offense, it still warrants forgiveness as long as they are sorry, in my opinion.
Example: my former girlfriend broke up with me so it wouldn’t technically be cheating when she went out with somebody later that day. It hurt, of course. Like a motherfucker. Still does when I think about it. So I had wrong notions of her; I thought that she would be faithful to me under all conditions. I misjudged that one aspect of her integrity. Does that mean I got what was coming to me because I was being idealistic? Maybe, but it does not mean I don’t have the right to be hurt and angry.
There is still a legitimate feeling there that needs to be felt. It needs to be communicated across, not intellectualized away. Besides, she didn’t do it to hurt me. She did it because she was selfish, because she was confused, because she had conflicting views on what she wanted and chose one (him) in lieu of another (me). Did that make her a bad person? Maybe to me, at least, but it can be taken from a different perspective and I could end up being portrayed as the selfish one. I would even go so far to say her action didn’t need to be corrected. It needed to be understood and forgiven/forgotten and that’s exactly what I did. We’re still good friends. In fact, I attended her birthday party last month. No ill feelings between us. All was forgotten (the harm, not the action).
The reason I partially disagree with DeMello’s theory is that it’s a cynical view and applied across people as a whole. It doesn’t take into account each person as an individual, particularly the opposing side (the offender). It calls for the same ends, but not via the same means as I do. It doesn’t really allow for the processing, I think. It’s just: “You saw this coming. Just drop it. Move on and get over it.”
Instead of looking through it, passing on through it, you should let it pass through you. That way, you can process it as it comes through. Just passing on through the situation like DeMello suggests doesn’t help you to see everything that went on there. It addresses the issue of my being offended, but it does not take into account why my former girlfriend did what she did. She had her own wants in this situation, her own aspirations. Were those an illusion? What I’m calling for is a true understanding, which takes into account all sides to fully realize. I hope somebody gets what I mean by that, or was I just talking in circles?
