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 . . . 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,…
The philosopher Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king. Said Aristippus, “If you would learn to be subservient to the king, you would not have to live on lentils.” Said Diogenes, “Learn to live on lentils, and you will not have to cultivate the king.”
A rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe. “Why aren’t you out fishing?” said the industrialist. “Because I have caught enough fish for the day,” said the fisherman. “Why don’t you catch some more?” “What would I do with it?” “You could earn more money,” was the reply. “With that, you could have a motor fixed to your boat and go into…
It is a sobering thought that the finest act of love you can perform is not an act of service but an act of contemplation, of seeing. When you serve people, you help, support, comfort, and alleviate pain. When you see them in their inner beauty and goodness, you transform and create. Think of some of the people you like and who are drawn to you. Now attempt to look at each of them as…
Love, like sensitivity, either is in all its fullness or it simply is not. You either have it whole or you have it not. So, it is only when attachments disappear that one enters the boundless realm of spiritual freedom called “love.” You can hardly be said to love what you do not even notice. And, if you notice only a few beings to the exclusion of others, that is not love at all. For…
What is love? God’s kingdom is love. It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without along with a wholehearted response to that reality. It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons; it means to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one. Sometimes you will embrace that reality, sometimes you will attack it, sometimes you will ignore it, and other times, you…
Away to Approach Thanksgiving Day Set out in search of the source of happiness. Look closely at the life of a happy person who is poor, then talk with him, attempting to discover what makes this person happy. Think of a joyful person in poor health, in physical pain, and talk to them, searching for what it is that makes them joyful. Do the same with a happy person who has lost his reputation. Then…
Stop for a moment and contemplate in horror the endless list of attachments that you have become a prisoner to. Think of concrete things and persons, not abstractions. Once your attachment had you in its grip, you began to strive with every waking minute of your life to rearrange the world around you so that you could attain and maintain the objects of your attachment. This is an exhausting task. It leaves you little energy…
Has it ever struck you that you have been programmed by society to be unhappy, and so, no matter what you do to become happy, you are bound to fail? Most people are so brainwashed that they do not even realize how unhappy they are. It’s only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they had been. If you wish to be happy, the first thing you need isn’t effort or…
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