Awareness

by Anthony de Mello

When you fight something, you’re tied to it forever. As long as you’re fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.

straight to the bedroom, puts his hand inside his cloak, and pulls

The reason you suffer from your depression and your anxieties is that you identify with them. You say, “I’m depressed.” But that is false. You are not depressed. If you want to be accurate, you might say, “I am experiencing a depression right now.” But you can hardly say, “I am depressed.” You are not your depression.

There’s only one reason why you’re not experiencing bliss at this present moment, and it’s because you’re thinking or focusing on what you don’t have.

Suffering is a sign that you’re out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth,

They identified with some label. They identified the “I” with their money or their job or their profession. That was their error.

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. That is why when two people look at something or someone, you get two different reactions. We see things and people not as they are, but as we are.

So begin to be aware of your present condition whatever that condition is. Stop being a dictator. Stop trying to push yourself somewhere. Then someday you will understand that simply by awareness you have already attained what you were pushing yourself toward.

Happiness releases you from self. It is suffering and pain and misery and depression that tie you to the self.

You’re not a dancer at all. You are being danced! Did you ever experience that? So when the man comes to his senses and realizes that he is not Napoleon, he does not cease to be. He continues to be, but he suddenly realizes that he is something other than what he thought he was.

To lose the self is to suddenly realize that you are something other than what you thought you were. You thought you were at the center; now you experience yourself as satellite. You thought you were the dancer; you now experience yourself as the dance.

Every time you are unhappy, you have added something to reality. It is that addition that makes you unhappy.

You have added something by your reaction. And if you examine what you have added, there is always an illusion there, there’s a demand, an expectation, a craving. Always.

You do not change if you merely change your exterior world. If you get yourself a new job or a new spouse or a new home or a new guru or a new spirituality, that does not change you.

As the great Confucius said, “The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.”

symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass.

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live.

Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness.

Until everyone started getting transistors, they were perfectly happy without one. That’s the way it is with you.

by contact with reality. That’s what brings happiness, a moment-by-moment contact with reality. That’s where you’ll find God;

Another illusion: You are all those labels that people have put on you, or that you have put on yourself. You’re not, you’re not! So you don’t have to cling to them.

If you don’t look at things through your concepts, you’ll never be bored.

thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other sparrow despite the similarities.

An attachment is a belief that without something you are not going to be happy.

Reality is lovely; it is an absolute delight. Eternal life is now.

Happiness is a state of nonillusion, of dropping the illusion.

But the moment you become attached in my sense of the word, then you’re blocking out many other things. You’ve got eyes only for the object of your attachment; you’ve got ears only for the drums; the heart has hardened. Moreover, it’s blinded, because it no longer sees the object of its attachment objectively. Love entails clarity of perception, objectivity; there is nothing so clear-sighted as love.

I’m right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a while, you’ll suddenly discover that it isn’t lonely at all. It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower. Then at last you’ll know what love is, what God is, what reality is.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance;

If a person is trying to change external reality by being out of prison in order to be free, he is a prisoner indeed. Freedom lies not in external circumstances; freedom resides in the heart.

We’ve lost that. We’re lost in our minds, in our ideas and ideals and so on, and its always go, go, go. And we’ve got an inner self-conflict which animals don’t have.

Before, he knew it would kill him; now, he was aware it could kill him. That’s the difference.

tasting and feeling the truth—not knowing it, but tasting and feeling it, getting a feel for it. When you get a feel for it you change. When you know it in your head, you don’t.

So imagine you’re lying flat and you’re dead. Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn’t it?

if you wish to see, you must learn to give up your drug. It’s as simple as that. Give up your dependency.

But to come to the land of love, you must pass through the pains of death, for to

love persons means to die to the need for persons, and to be utterly alone.

Hopefully, the words will drop, the concepts will drop, and you will see, you will make contact with reality. That is the cure for loneliness.

letter, not in the exterior world; it’s

why

A. S. Neill’s book Summerhill

The religion that makes people good makes people bad, but the religion known as freedom makes all people good, for it destroys the inner conflict [I’ve added the word “inner”] that makes people devils.”

The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand. Nourish yourself on wholesome food, good wholesome food. I’m not talking about actual food, I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.

Lots of people live empty, soulless lives because they’re feeding themselves on popularity, appreciation, and praise, on “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.,” look at me, attend to me, support me, value me, on being the boss, on having power, on winning the race. Do you feed yourself on that? If you do, you’re dead. You’ve lost your soul. Feed yourself on other, more nourishing material. Then you’ll see the transformation.