‘If you are attached to wealth and to the comforts of this life you will never know the Kingdom within you.’ Photo: Volkan Olmerz / Unsplash.
‘When you did that, that was you, that was the real you.’
Tony D’Souza says that doing the right thing might mean doing away with judgement and attachment
When was the last time you did something good? Something good just because you could? Maybe it was giving your place in the queue to someone unable to wait, or donating money to a charity on the spur of the moment, just because you felt like it.
I am not talking about doing something good out of a sense of duty. I am talking about doing something automatically. Doing something good because that was all there was. In particular, doing good without knowing who might benefit and without hope of return. When you did that, that was you, that was the real you. That was your inner self, your inner goodness expressing itself through you. It is there all the time, only it is covered up by thought. The good news is that the less you cover it up, the more it shines through. But how does it get covered up, and how do we uncover it? Let me explain.
What covers up your inner goodness the most is your making presumptions about other people, and how things should be. Whenever you look at someone, you do not see them as they really are, you see them as you would have them be. You only see what you have projected upon them from your own conditioning. For example, ‘I don’t like Jane, she bores me’ is a terrible statement to make. Jane may bore you, but somebody else might find her fascinating. Your judgement is purely subjective, based solely upon your own experience, and is therefore wholly unreliable.
What is worse, when you make a judgement on someone you are robbing them of their humanity. Your mind is putting a label on them so you don’t have to be disturbed by uncertainty. You do exactly the same thing when you use any stereotype, like those based on race, class or sexual preference. When you reduce anyone to a formulaic epithet you not only do them an injustice, you do them actual violence. Whatever image or words you use to judge them are going to be wrong. You do not know them at all, you just prefer to know your interpretation of them so that you can put a label on them and get on with the rest of your life. The problem is that when you label someone all you will ever see is the label, you will never see the person beneath the label. And you will spend the rest of your life as blind as a bat until you drop your labels, drop your judgements. This is what Jesus meant when he said: ‘Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.’
What also covers up your inner goodness is all the rotten deals you have made with life. All the false attachments you have made to people, places and things. Anything you have made a pact with will cover up your inner goodness because it cuts you off from the great totality, from the great symphony of Life itself.
If you know yourself at all you will know the trajectory of attachment by now. It starts off with a sense of longing, then there is the joy of consummation. This is swiftly replaced by sadness when you cannot have the thing you crave, and then fulfilment when you have it again. This is all accompanied by a sickening possessiveness, fuelled by the fear of loss. Finally, there is satiety and boredom, which is often followed by a longing to break free, like a drug addict wanting to get clean. That is attachment. And all the time you are in thrall to it you will behave like a gibbering idiot because you will have surrendered your power to choose your own happiness to the object of your attachment.
Now look at people who are attached to something (it is far easier to observe this in others than yourself). You know who they are, many of them are famous. They have forsaken their humanity and hardened their hearts by becoming attached to money, power or position. As soon as they became attached to something outside of themselves, they become desensitised to their hearts. They cease to see other people as they are and see them only as a means of getting something or as a threat. People become either a means of gaining advantage or approval, or else a threat to their fragile self-image or prestige.
What a precarious thing is worldly fame, wealth or position. How like a soap bubble it is. Yet our corrupt and sick society celebrates hardly anything else. If you become rich and successful, and in the process become shallow and mercenary, society will congratulate you. If you cover up the goodness within you by being attached to an illusion of wealth, power or reputation, people will call you a success. Society will love you and hold you up as an example to others. You will be invited to all the best parties and your picture will be in the papers.
When you accept an illusion as your own particular truth, you can never see the totality of life because you cling only to one part of it. It is as though you reject the ocean and the stars and settle for a cup of mud instead. Jesus said: ‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’ And he meant exactly that. If you are attached to wealth and to the comforts of this life you will never know the Kingdom within you. Why should you? You will not bother to look for it because you have no need. You ‘have received your reward already’. In other words, if you put all your hopes in the rewards of this earthly life you will get them. But watch out, because that is all you will get. You won’t get anything else, and your heart will be where your treasure is.
If you want to be free, really free, but most of all if you really want to know what love is, give up your judgements and attachments. There is no other way. All of your judgements are made through your eyes and confirmed by your mind. They are all going to be wrong, but only 100 per cent of the time. You grasp attachments with your hands, and they will poison your life. You choose them, and you can let them go. You will never know the Kingdom if your mind is filled with judgement and attachment. Jesus said: ‘If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. And if your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell.’ He may have been exaggerating to make a point, but that point is well made nonetheless.
