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 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…
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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