From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . Compare the serene and simple splendor of a rose in bloom with the tensions and restlessness of your life. The rose has a gift that you lack: It is perfectly content to be itself. It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it has not the slightest urge to be anything other than it is. That is…
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 quotes of Anthony DeMello . . . In order to be genuinely happy there is one and only one thing you need to do: get rid of your attachments. So, let’s start by defining what I mean by attachments. An attachment is a state of clinging to something or someone that you believe is necessary for your happiness. Thus, attachments have you thinking, “Unless or until I get or can keep [fill in the…
from quotes of Anthony DeMello . . . How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? You have probably been brainwashed into believing that your work only achieves maximum value if it becomes popular and sells, which means you are back again into the arms and control of people. The value of work, according to society, is not in its being…
from quotes of Anthony DeMello . . . How far can transformation go when it is attempted from a state of inner conflict? Take a look at the sad condition when you are often dissatisfied with yourself, often wanting to change yourself. Think of the sad history of your efforts at self-improvement, that either ended in failure or succeeded only at the cost of struggle and pain. Consider how you suffer when you see others…
from The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . It is not what you do that brings you the holiness that makes you whole. Holiness is not a prize that you can win or a change you can acquire by practicing some technique or a commodity that you can purchase from someone selling it. What matters is not what you do, but what you are and what you become. Holiness comes from within;…
From Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . The great Scottish educator, A. S. Neill (1883-1973), founded an experimental school called Summerhill which, a hundred years later, is still thriving. Summerhill is an independent British boarding school run as a democratic community based on the principle that school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. Here is a powerful quote from A.S. Neill: “Every child has a god in him or…
From Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . People keep bumping into life again and again. They still go on sleepwalking. They don’t wake up. Tragically, it doesn’t occurs to them that there may be another way. It doesn’t yet occur to them that there may be a better way. Even if you haven’t been bumped sufficiently by life, even if you haven’t suffered enough, still there is another way to enlightenment for you: It’s…
from Awareness by Anthony De Mello . . . Be aware of your presence wherever you are at the moment. Say to yourself, “I am in this room, or I am in this car, or on this train … wherever you are.” Look as if you were outside yourself looking at yourself. Notice a slightly different feeling than if you were focusing on a particular object in the space you now occupy. Ask, “Who is…
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