Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Join here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life. (A space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living!)
This Friday continues our exploration of Anthony de Mello’s book Awareness: Conversations with the Masters. Learn more about the life and teachings of Anthony de Mello here. I’ll be out of town for the next couple of weeks, but thankfully, my friend Simon Drew from The Walled Garden is stepping in to facilitate!
Check out our bookshelf below for previous and future reading.
Dropping Our Illusions
Anthony de Mello (1931 – 1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. A spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker, de Mello wrote several books on spirituality and hosted numerous spiritual retreats and conferences.
In a chapter titled Our Illusions About Others, de Mello explains,
Can you imagine how liberating it is that you’ll never be disillusioned again, never be disappointed again? You’ll never feel let down again. Never feel rejected. Want to wake up? You want happiness? You want freedom? Here it is: 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.
“When you’re ready to exchange your illusions for reality,” stressed de Mello, “when you’re ready to exchange your dreams for facts, that’s the way you find it all. That’s where life finally becomes meaningful. Life becomes beautiful.”
Selected Passages
The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you’re ready to listen and if you’re ready to be challenged, there’s one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It’s called self-observation. No one can help you there. No one can give you a method. No one can show you a technique. The moment you pick up a technique, you’re programmed again. But self-observation—watching yourself—is important. It is not the same as self-absorption. Self-absorption is self-preoccupation, where you’re concerned about yourself, worried about yourself. I’m talking about self-observation. […]
— Anthony de Mello, Awareness
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The trouble with people is that they’re busy fixing things they don’t even understand. We’re always fixing things, aren’t we? It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They really don’t. This is a great illumination. They need to be understood. If you understood them, they’d change. […]
— Anthony de Mello, Awareness
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When you say of someone, “He’s a communist,” understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on him. “She’s a capitalist.” Understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on her, and if the label carries undertones of approval or disapproval, so much the worse! How are you going to understand what you disapprove of, or what you approve of, for that matter? All of this sounds like a new world, doesn’t it? No judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change what is. Because if you desire to change what is into what you think should be, you no longer understand. […]
— Anthony de Mello, Awareness
If you are available on a Friday (at Noon EST), feel free to drop into one of our Reading & the Good Life meetups (Join here). It’s a casual space for connection and conversations on the art of living.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. As always, feel free to comment, ask questions, or suggest future reads!