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…
Each time you are anxious and afraid, it is because you may lose or fail to get the object of your attachment, isn’t it? And each time you feel jealous, isn’t it because someone may make off with what you are attached to? And almost all your anger comes from someone standing in the way of your attachment, doesn’t it? And see how paranoid you become when your attachment is threatened – you cannot think…
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 were. If you wish to be happy the first thing you need is not effort or…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth. Suffering points up an area in you where you have not yet grown, where you need to grow and be transformed and change. If you knew how to use that suffering, oh, how you would grow. Let’s limit ourselves, for the time being, to psychological suffering, to all those negative emotions we have. I’ve told you what you could…
from Awareness by Anthony DeMello . . . Ask yourself this: How would it be if God gave me the grace not to call anything mine? You’d be detached, wouldn’t you? You’d be dis-identified from things. That’s what it means to lose the self, to deny the self, to die to self. I’ve got different themes, but they are all about the same thing. Call it awareness, call it love, call it spirituality or freedom or awakening…
From The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . Everywhere in the world people are in search of love, for everyone is convinced that love alone can save the world, love alone can make life meaningful and worth living. But how very few understand what love really is, and how it arises in the human heart. It is so frequently equated with good feelings toward others, with benevolence or nonviolence or service. But these things…
from Wellspring by Anthony DeMello . . . I set out in search of the source of happiness. I look minutely at the life of a happy person who is poor, then talk with him, attempting to discover what makes this person happy. I think of a joyful person in poor health, in physical pain, and talk again, searching for what it is that makes her joyful. I do the same with a happy person…
from A Way to God for Today by Anthony DeMello . . . If you ever come to union with God, you must pass through silence. Any way to God must be a way through silence. Silence means going beyond words and thoughts. The first thing you need to do to attain the silence that reaches God is to realize that your ideas of God are all inadequate. God isn’t anything like you think or…
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 The Way to Love by Anthony DeMello . . . Sooner or later there arises in every human heart the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears mystics speak of a divinity all around them that is within our grasp, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. People have some sort of a vague idea as to what this thing…
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