So I couldn’t see the bone fish. I hadn’t seen one. I looked, strained, focused, but bone fish fins glinting in the sun remained invisible.
Clint and I plopped down on the shoreline near his house and he looked over at me and saidwhat do you think? I shook my head as if to say “think of what? All the invisible fish you saw and pointed out that remained totally hidden from my eyes?” He then looked me in the eyes. This is the guy I met 6 months earlier for the first time. This is the guy I have now been around for a full 18 hours and some of that was sleeping. Clint then said what was proved to be a life changing moment for me…
“Ron I think God wants to teach you something about your own internal awareness and who you are. Because if you can see the clear and obvious glint of hundreds of bone fish fins that are physical and material, then how will you ever be able to be aware of more subtle things going on deep down inside you and all around you.”
A ton of bricks would be an understatement. Clint had no idea about the identity crisis I was surfing just 24 hours earlier on the airplane. Clint had no idea how much I had prided myself on supposedly being aware, but just 24 hours earlier in a crisis show how unaware I really way. Clint had no idea how timely his words were.
They probably seem small to you, unimportant and maybe even a throw away thought. But given my vocational shift and the moment I found myself in developmentally his words were potent.
Clint went on to share some of his journey into awareness and how we often think we are tuned in when we are really actually asleep or hypnotized by what is going on around us. He then asked me if I had ever heard of…
I have given out dozens of copies of this, get your copy.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Best blog post yet!! Love the video embed, such an personal connection…..
“From Invisibile Bine Fine to Enlightening Insight” sounds like your next book title
I love how DeMello goes into the practical fact that if we accept the “ego strokes” and “praise” Nd we let it feed us, then we also make ourselves vulnerable to being crushed by negative feedback of criticism. It’s a two sided coin. If you want the strokes you have to accept the pain and sometimes devestation of the feedback when we don’t meet people’s expectations. To do a little improving with the scriptures, This experience seems to relate what Isaiah was speaking about in his writing in chapter 44:
This lover of emptiness, of nothing, is so out of touch with reality, so far gone, that he can’t even look at what he’s doing, can’t even look at the no-god stick of wood in his hand and say, “This is crazy.”
He is speaking to Israel about their No-gods, but in our world the ego-strokes have become our idols, especially this that are in roles as leaders and speakers. The subject matter of what Isaiah is dealing with “worship of something that is “crazy” or unreal” relates to our interior feeding (worship) by the words of people rather than the word of God. (By word of God I mean Jesus, not “the bible”)
The road to happiness is not feeding the “ego” or “false” self with power, affection and security but letting all of that be met by an interior connection to the creator of the Universe.
Keep up the video posts, they are really an added dimension to your posts. Looking forward to hearing more of your story that happened while I was so close, yet so far from it’s core….
Bone not Bine for your book title (still unhappy with this iPad keyboard and it’s word salad generator)