Anthony de Mello, an Indian Jesuit Priest, and psychotherapist has such eye-opening takes on the human condition that I had to listen to this book several times to grasp his teachings. This book is firmly in my top 3 of all time and something I return to over and over. I have gifted this to others so often because it is such a profound read and offers many ways to liberate our confined, stodgy, rigid way of thinking about ourselves, each other, and life itself.
The contents are from a live recording at a concert where he speaks to an audience. The print version is fine, but you’ll get much better context by listening to the audio version. Plus, he’s really, really funny, and you can tell when he’s teasing the crowd or making fun of himself. Kind of like Rule Number 6 from Art of Possibility, “Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously.” Anthony rightly mocks human beings for being overly serious about rules and life.
Find more information about Anthony de Mello’s work on the de Mello Spirituality Center website.
My 7 Favorite Quotes
“In order to wake up, in order to awake, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or even great intelligence. The one thing you need the most of all is the readiness to learn something new.”
Anthony de Mello
“The most difficult thing in the world – to listen, to see. We don’t want to see. You think a capitalist wants to see what’s good in the communism system? Do you think a communist wants to see what’s good and healthy in the capitalist system? Do you think a rich man wants to look at poor people? You don’t want to look, because if you look you, may change.”
Anthony de Mello
“Awareness heals. Awareness transforms. Awareness puts us in touch with reality. That goes with understanding – understanding how our mind functions, and how we are being deceived by words and concepts.”
Anthony de Mello
“Ideals do a lot of damage. You’re the whole time focusing on what ‘should be’, instead of understanding what is. And so you’re imposing what ‘should be’ on present reality, never having understood what present reality is.”
Anthony de Mello
“Examples of illusions, they abound, but as you begin to move ahead along this path you will discover them for yourself. For instance, the illusion, the error of thinking, that by changing the exterior world, you change. 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 doesn’t change you. It’s like imagining that you change your handwriting by changing your pen. Or that you change your capacity to think by changing your hat.”
Anthony de Mello
“Another illusion, you are all those labels that people have put onto you, or that you have put onto yourself.”
Anthony de Mello
BONUS! If you’d like to see my technique for fully digesting the books, podcasts, and videos that impacted me, check out My Learning Process in the Toolshed.
If you haven’t already, subscribe to the email list to stay up to date on new content and see what I’m personally working on each month. Plus! I’ll send you a great tool I developed to create momentum when I am feeling stuck.