Hello.
This D'Mello podcast is part of a six-part series.
Each podcast consists of three parts.
The first part is a talk given by Anthony D'Mello that's roughly five minutes long.
The second part invites you to do a five-minute meditation at the end of his talk.
And the third part is a spiritual story of one to two minutes that relates back to the talk that D'Mello just gave.
The exercise that follows will give you a taste of what it means to love God with your whole heart,
Your whole soul,
With all your mind and all your strength.
It is called the absolute.
Imagine that you are standing in the presence of God and you hear him say to you,
Give me your heart.
You are puzzled.
What could he mean?
Then you hear him speak again.
He says,
Your heart is where your treasure is.
Your treasures.
Here they are persons,
Places,
Occupations,
Things that are dear to you.
Places of the past that you hold onto and will not let go of.
The hopes and dreams that you hold for the future.
Pick each treasure up,
Say something to it and place it gently in the presence of the Lord.
How can you give these treasures to him?
By understanding,
Understanding what follows.
In the measure that your heart lies in the past,
In the measure that you hold on to the past,
You are fossilized and dead.
For life is only in the present.
So say goodbye to each of those past treasures,
Those golden yesterdays.
Speak to each of them gently,
Warmly,
Explaining how grateful you are that it came into your life.
Then go on to say,
You must leave now.
You must go away because if you don't,
My heart will never learn to love the present.
So thank you.
Goodbye.
Your heart is in the future too.
How anxious you become for tomorrow.
That anxiety leaves you little energy to fully live what is today.
Make a list of those anxieties and say to each,
Let the will of God be done.
Observe what effect those words have on you.
Especially if you tell your heart that God can only will your good.
Let the will of God be done.
Your heart lies in your dreams,
Your ideals,
Your hopes,
Which make you live in future fiction and rob you from the present moment.
To each of these,
You must say,
Let the will of God be done.
Let him dispose of you as he sees fit.
And as you say those words,
Watch them glide away and disappear.
Your task is to live wholeheartedly in the now,
Leaving whatever is to be in the hands of God.
Having reclaimed that portion of your heart that was captured by the future and the past,
You must now liberate it from your present treasures.
Think of each of the persons you love and treasure.
To each of them say tenderly,
You are so precious to me,
But you are not my life.
I have a life to live.
I have a destiny to follow that is separate from you.
The words may seem hard at first and they may hurt,
But they will also heal for they are the words of truth itself.
You are so precious,
But you are not my life.
I have a life to live,
A destiny to meet that is separate from you.
Now think of each of the places,
The things that you are attached to and say,
Precious you are,
But not my life.
My life and my destiny are separate from you.
You are now ready to take the boldest step of all.
You are ready now to say that sentence to the things that seem to constitute your very being.
Your health,
Your ideologies,
Your good name,
Your reputation,
Your life,
Your destiny,
Your destiny.
Say it even to your life,
Which must someday succumb to death.
Say how desirable you are,
How precious,
But you are not my essence.
You are not my life.
My life,
My destiny are separate from you.
Having passed in review all of the things that you love and treasure,
You stand at last alone before the Lord.
To Him,
You make the offering of your heart.
How do you do that?
You say,
You Lord are my life.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
You are my destiny.
