From Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . Let’s talk about effortlessness in change. I thought of a nice image for that, a sailboat. When a sailboat has a mighty wind in its sail, it glides along so effortlessly that the boatman has nothing to do but steer. He makes no effort; he doesn’t push the boat. That’s an image of what happens when change comes about through awareness, through understanding. I was going through some of…
From Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . Selfishness seems to come out of an instinct for self-preservation, which is our deepest and first instinct. How can we opt for selflessness? It would be almost like opting for non-being. So, stop feeling bad about being selfish; we’re all the same. Someone once had a terribly beautiful thing to say about Jesus. This person wasn’t even Christian. He said, “The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was…
from The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . To find the kingdom of joy is the easiest thing in the world but also the most difficult. Easy because it is all around you and within you, and all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. Difficult because if you wish to possess the kingdom you may possess nothing else. That is, you must drop all inward leaning…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . I’ve often said to people that the way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine that you’re lying flat in your coffin and you’re dead. See the body decomposing, then the bones, then it all turning to dust. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn’t it? Do this for a minute or so every day…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello Self- observation—watching yourself—is the most important thing of all. What is that? It is not the same as self-absorption. Self- absorption is self-preoccupation, where you’re concerned about yourself, worried about yourself. Self- observation means to watch everything in you and around you as far as possible and watch it as if it were happening to someone else. What does that last sentence mean? It means that you do not personalize what is…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . The great masters tell us that the most important question in the world is: “Who am I?” Or rather: “What is ‘I’?” What is this thing I call “I”? What is this thing I call self? So, let’s try to get at it. Write down on a piece of paper any number of brief ways you would describe yourself—for example, businessman, doctor, parent, spouse, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, Black,…
from The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . Recall the kind of feeling you have when someone praises you, when you are approved, accepted, applauded. Now contrast that with the kind of feeling that arises within you when you look at the sunset or the sunrise or Nature in general, or when you read a book or watch a movie that you thoroughly enjoy. Get the sense of this feeling and contrast…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think? Or are you listening in order to discover something new? That is important. It really doesn’t matter whether you agree with what I’m saying or you don’t. Agreement and disagreement have to do with words and concepts and theories. They don’t have anything to do with truth. Truth is never expressed in…
from The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . Bring to mind someone towards who you hold negative feelings. Consider that you are, quite conceivably, in the presence of someone who is poor, homeless, crippled, blind or lame, metaphorically if not literally. Open to the possibility that this person is going to reveal yourself to you through a series of revelations that will bring you closer to your true nature, opening your heart…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . The first thing I want you to understand (if you really want to wake up) is that you don’t want to wake up. No one does. The first step to waking up is to be honest, to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. You don’t want to be happy. You don’t want to make happiness first and foremost in your life. We want other things…
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