If there is one thing that stops Anthony De Mello’s work being accessible to others it is the oh-so-slow speed at which he presents it. Don’t get me wrong, for many it needs to be that way, just listen to questions he gets from the audience about things he has explained half a dozen times!
People are listening, but they are not hearing.
So I’ve tried to pull together the key points from Rediscovering Life and Enlightenment. If any of these go over your head then you’ll need to make time for the full books or audios!
As I read and explore further and increasingly realise many of these concepts are not his but he does package them up quite well.
- You will attack this philosophy – people often attack what they fear. Try instead to analyse and debate it.
- Your life is in a mess – even if things appear to be going great take this on the chin until you’ve understood his message
- You don’t want to change it (the mess that is your life) – when you understand his philosophy you might agree with it but you’ll try to look for something easier or find some other excuse for avoiding it.
- Happiness is your default state – you do not need to seek happiness, you are happy in your natural state but you block this happiness in various ways such as thinking you need a particular object or person to be happy.
- You are not happy because of attachments – you attach happiness to things, situations or people, without which (you persuade yourself) you cannot be happy. Stop attaching happiness to things or people and you will be happy because it is your default state.
- Take action – not relying on things or people for your happiness does not mean doing nothing. Pursue whatever you want to pursue with passion, love whoever you want to love with passion, but do not make your happiness reliant on the outcomes of these things.
- Anger and aggression is really just fear. When someone is being aggressive do not be aggressive back, look for the fear and the opportunity to address that.
- Me and I – imagine yourself as if you were watching you in a film. The observer is I and the observed is me – “I is observing me”. I makes no judgements about me. This helps you step outside your emotions in any given situation and also makes you highly aware of your surroundings, other people, you and your own reactions.
- The biggest barrier to God is the word God – if you are of religious leanings think: Are you worshiping God/Allah/Whoever or are you worshiping a concept of it – be it the word ‘God’ or an icon of it. The reality of a deity is hard, if not impossible, to understand. The reality is like trying to explain the colour green to someone who was born blind. “Sometimes you have to get rid of God in order to find God” are De Mello’s words but he uses the word ‘God’ in a vague way to mean any belief in something other than the world we perceive. His conclusion is only “To really know God is to know God is unknowable” and therefore all this stuff about God wants you to do this or be like that is pretty much nonsense
- Nothing changes except you – in becoming ‘Aware’ the world does not change, how you feel does not change, only your perception changes. Nature is still brutal but you do not let it upset you. You do not stop being depressed but being depressed does not upset you.
- Only a person who does not fear death can be alive – stop being obsessed with not dying. It is going to happen to get on with enjoying today.
- Happiness is hard to find because our society conditions us in a different way. It educates us to be unhappy until we have things, have achieved things or have been accepted by others. This is hard to shake because we have been pushed this propaganda all our lives.