Awareness

by Anthony de Mello

Do you know one sign that you’ve woken up? It’s when you are asking yourself, “Am I crazy, or are all of them crazy?”

It really is. Because we are crazy. The whole world is crazy. Certifiable lunatics!

Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one.

You think you’re being so loving. Ha! Whom are you loving? Even your self-sacrifice gives you a good feeling, doesn’t it?

It’s pretty difficult to wake up when you have been hypnotized into thinking that a scrap of old newspaper is a check for a million dollars. How difficult it is to tear yourself away from that scrap of old newspaper.

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.

Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think?

You know, a good is never so good as when you have no awareness that you’re doing good. You are never so good as when you have no consciousness that you’re good.

Isn’t it wonderful to realize you’re no better than anybody else in this world?

“The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn’t one bit better than they were.”

Drop your false ideas. See through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love them. Otherwise you spend the whole time grappling with your wrong notions of them, with your illusions that are constantly crashing against reality.

If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re O.K., you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not good.

Yet my experience is that it’s precisely the ones who don’t know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life.

Terrific or terrifying, depending on your point of view.

All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something, whether that something is within me or outside of me.

Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.