If you wish to be happy the
first thing you need is not effort or even goodwill or good desires but a clear
understanding of how exactly you have been programmed.
(Anthony De Mello)
The
Way to Love
Anthony De Mello wrote The Way to Love which contained profound insights into the way we live and how we interact with one another.
His explorations cut to the very heart of our existence and question the
values by which we live.
Suddenly you will find yourself living in an altogether different world, infinitely removed from the world of the people around you, for everything that others hold dear, everything they are crying their hearts out for - honour, power, acceptance, approval, security, wealth - is seen for the stinking garbage that it is. It disgusts and nauseates.
(Anthony De Mello)
Don't change: Desire to change is the enemy of love.
Don't change yourselves: Love yourselves as you are.
Don't change others: Love all others as they are.
Don't change the world: It is in God's hands and he knows.
And if you do that change will occur
Marvellously in its own way and in its own time
Yield to the current of life unencumbered by baggage.
(Anthony De Mello)
Attempt to understand the true nature of worldly feelings,
namely, the feelings of self-promotion, self-glorification.
They are not natural, they were invented by your society and your culture to
make you productive and to make you controllable.
They were meant to produce thrills, excitement – and emptiness.
Observe yourself in the course of the day or a week and think how many
actions of yours are performed, how many activities engaged in that are
uncontaminated by the desire for these thrills, these excitements that only
produce emptiness, the desire for attention, approval, fame, popularity,
success or power.
(Anthony De Mello)
If you take a look at the way you have been put together
and the way you have been together
and the way you function
you will find that inside your head there is a whole program,
a set of demands about how the world should be,
how you should be and what you should want.
Who is responsible for the programming?
Not you.
It isn't really you who decided even such basics as wants and desires
and so-called needs; your values, your tastes, your attitudes.
It was your parents, your society, your culture, your religion,
your past experiences.
(Anthony De Mello)
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 objectively;
your whole vision becomes distorted, doesn't it?
(Anthony De Mello)
Page created 7 March 2001