Awareness
I first read Anthony de Mello’s Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality in 2013, while living in Tucson, Arizona, and it cracked something open inside of me. It created a space that no amount of subsequent studies or practices have even come close to filling. But it sure has been enlivening to try!
Anthony de Mello was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on September 4th, 1931, and died in New York City on June 2, 1987, at the tender age of 55, of a heart attack. He was a Jesuit priest, a psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker. Raised in a Catholic family, he entered the Society of Jesus at the seminary of Vinalaya at the age of 16, and at 20 he went to Barcelona to study philosophy before undertaking ministry work. He returned to India to study theology at De Nobili College, and in March of 1961, at the age of 29, he was ordained to the priesthood. In 1972, de Mello founded the Institute of Pastoral Counselling, later renamed the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counselling, in Poona, India. His first published book, Sadhana – A Way to God, was released in 1978.
In 1998, 11 years after de Mello's death, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under the leadership of its Cardinal-Prefect, Joseph Ratzinger (who later became Pope Benedict XVI) conducted a review of de Mello's work and released a lengthy comment expressing concern that his books “[were] incompatible with the Catholic faith and [could] cause grave harm.” De Mello's books are available in many Catholic bookshops in the West, but include the advisory that they were written in a multi-religious context and are not intended to be manuals on Christian doctrine. A number of these books were published posthumously as collections, or based on notes or recordings of de Mello’s conferences.
Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality was among these posthumous volumes. It was first published in 1990, three years after his death. Its conversational style makes it an accessible, rich resource for anyone craving a down-and-dirty take on some truly profound, potentially life-changing ideas. I like to call it a spiritual ass-kicker.
The book begins with de Mello’s definition of spirituality: “Spirituality means waking up.” The rest of the book’s 184 pages proceed to elucidate the many ways in which most of us are asleep. And we’re basically content to stay that way, because waking up is painful.
What does “waking up” mean, from de Mello’s view? It means dropping false ideas. Our false ideas are what create the nightmare from which most of us could awake at any time, but again and again, choose not to. Not because we fear the unknown, but because we fear losing the known.
We falsely believe, for instance, that other people and external events — activities happening in the world around us — can create negative feelings within us. But de Mello asserts that all human suffering is the result of identifying with “I,” with “me,” and that whenever we have a negative feeling toward anyone, it’s a sign that we’re not seeing reality for what it is. He even goes so far to say that there’s something seriously wrong with us if we’re having a negative feeling toward anyone. Such negative feelings are probably the result of us depending on others to make us happy.
Think about it: When we say to someone, “You make me happy,” we are also inevitably, except in the rarest cases, inserting a comma or dash after that “you,” as in, “You—make me happy.” De Mello asserts that when we need another person emotionally or psychologically in order to be happy, we do not really love that person, because love makes no demands. It wants only for its beloved to be free, to be itself.
You actually don’t love anyone, according to de Mello. You only love your hopeful and prejudiced ideas about them. Nor do you trust anyone. You only trust your judgment of them. So don’t go getting all bent out of shape when they let you down. It’s your own fault for expecting them to be anything other than an ass. “I’m an ass, you’re an ass,” de Mello likes to say. And that’s okay! People — sleeping people, that is, people who lack awareness — are stupid and selfish. And it’s fine! We get into trouble when we start thinking that it isn’t fine.
You might be thinking, So we’re just supposed to let people be stupid and selfish and not do anything about it? No, that’s certainly not what de Mello’s saying. If someone else’s stupidity and selfishness is causing harm to others, we should act to remedy and/or prevent said harm, or at the very least get out of its way. But we can act effectively without all the outrage and bluster and butt-hurt indignation. In other words, we can leave our precious “I” and “me” out of it. They’re illusions, anyway. Just a conglomeration of our past experiences, our conditioning, and what de Mello calls our “programming.”
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De Mello says that identifying with “I” and “me” is the root of all human suffering. Without it, we could easily return love for hate, include the excluded, and admit when we are wrong. We could even be depressed, as Ram Dass says in Be Here Now — a book I’ll definitely explore in a future blog post — but not be bothered by the depression, because we wouldn’t identify with it anymore.
But how do we achieve this blissful state, where nothing — and I mean absolutely nothing — can hurt us? According to de Mello, all we have to do is observe ourselves. Practice awareness. We must be aware of what we say, what we do, what we think, and what our motives are. Without such awareness, we’re not even human. We’re just automatons, totally controlled by our conditioning, our programming. What we are aware of, we can control. What we are not aware of, controls us. It might sound paradoxical, but the best way to “die to the self,” as de Mello puts it, is to get to know the self on a very intimate level, moment by precious moment.
Another idea that de Mello explores, which I’ve also come across in my studies of yoga, is the idea that suffering is a symptom of not seeing reality clearly, or to use de Mello’s phrase, of being asleep. Suffering is a helpful clue that there’s falsehood afoot, that you’ve lost touch with the truth. You can take this idea for a spin by telling yourself, the next time you’re feeling anxious or depressed or whatever brand of suffering you tend to gravitate towards, that you’re simply not seeing things as they really are. De Mello says that when we see things clearly, we’ll never have a negative emotion again.
That’s quite the proclamation! But he really does say it. His exact words in Awareness are: “There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person.” And yet we expend so much energy on trying to change events, conditions, situations, and people. But even the condition we hope to avoid or postpone more than any other — death — is one that people who’ve come close to death, or who’ve even died and then been resuscitated, tend to agree is nothing to fear. Again and again they report that death is safe. De Mello himself says that “you’re not living until it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn to you whether you live or die.” If you’re protecting your life, he says, you’re already dead. But when you’re ready to lose your life? That’s when you can really live it.
I digress. I will definitely write some posts about death and, but for now, let it suffice to say that, according to de Mello, there is nothing problematic about reality. Not even death. Any problems we have are of our own creation. They exist only in the stupid, sleeping human mind.
I’m writing this at what I hope is the peak of panic-buying and gas-hoarding hysteria in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. Sixty-five percent of gas stations are totally dry, and the reason? Not because of anything that’s actually happened. Yes, there was a cyberattack that has compromised a major gas company’s ability to distribute fuel to the southeast, but that attack did not directly result in gas stations running out of gasoline. People’s fear-based reaction to the attack and to what might eventually result from it (more expensive, less plentiful gasoline) is what created this situation. It’s the perfect, if absurdly concretized, example of how our response to things is the problem, not the things themselves. There’s no doubt in my mind that this Colonial Pipeline issue wouldn’t have been a big problem at all if people had just gone about their business as usual instead of flocking to the pumps and creating long lines of traffic down Patton Avenue, Merrimon Avenue, New Leicester Highway, etc. Total insanity! We gotta get a grip! Or as de Mello would say, wake up!
When the human mind is awake, all is well. No problems. We can access our natural state, which is happiness — which is different from pleasure, I should point out. And which leads me to another major tenet of de Mello’s spiritual philosophy: You have everything you need in order to be happy. If you catch yourself thinking that you need a certain thing, person, or situation in order to be happy, then you are deluding yourself. You’re falling prey to your conditioning. In fact, trying to acquire happiness at all is insane, because you already have it! It’s like looking for your glasses when they’re already on your head. Wherever you look, you’ll never find them, and the more you look the more stressed-out you’ll get. You cannot acquire what you already have. You just have to realize that you already have it, which means you have to put down whatever it is you’re carrying that’s preventing you from contacting your true nature.
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I can’t talk about Anthony de Mello without talking about attachment. His definition of this concept differs from the more contemporary interpretations around attachment theory, which refers to secure and insecure attachments to one’s caregivers and how those affect one’s resiliency in the wake of adverse or traumatic experiences, not to mention one’s ability to form secure attachments with others. I imagine de Mello would agree that a secure attachment is preferable to an insecure (avoidant, anxious, disorganized) one. But that’s not exactly what he’s referring to when he talks about attachment. His is more of a Buddhist definition. He defines an attachment as “a belief that without something you are not going to be happy.” I imagine he’d argue that if I believe I couldn’t be happy without my spouse, then I’m actually not securely attached to him. I’m very much insecurely (anxiously) attached if I need him in order to be happy.
The thought exercise that de Mello offers around attachment as he defines it, is to imagine yourself saying to the person you hold most dear, “I don’t need you in order to be happy. My joy is not dependent on your existence.” Or you could actually say those words to the person in question, as de Mello once did with his closest friend. Apparently the moment he said it, he was instantly able to enjoy that friend’s company even more, because there was no anxiety present, no clinging, no need for that friend to approve of him, to laugh at all his jokes, to validate his sadness, etc., and no pressure to do the same for that friend.
You can also try this thought experiment with your favorite possessions, your home, your pets, your job, your hobbies, your health, your money, and even, as de Mello did, your notion of God. Imagine, a Jesuit priest saying to God, “I don’t need you in order to be happy”! Such blasphemy! But why should God care if you need Him (or Her, or It, or Whatever)? According to de Mello, if God — or anyone — really loves you, they’ll make no such demands on you. They will not want you to need anything but what you already possess within yourself.
It’s incredibly freeing to think this way! I realize that for many people, myself included, it’s impossible to imagine being happy if, say, our spouse were to suddenly vanish from our lives. Or even worse, perhaps, our children. But we can start small. For example, a house near mine just went on the market. It’s a charming old mill house situated on seven acres of rich farmland. Every day I admire that plot from my own house on the hill. There’s a lovely stream that cuts across it, with one Bradford Pear tree on its bank, and a willow tree farther down, next to an old red barn. Perfection. When I saw the For Sale sign in the front yard, I instantly worried that whoever bought the place would somehow ruin its pastoral beauty, perhaps by building multiple new houses on it, destroying my view. This thought created anxiety in me. So I said to myself, “I don’t need this view in order to be happy.” And just like that, no more anxiety.
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You know that adage, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are”? It’s been attributed to Anaïs Nin, H.M. Tomlinson, Steven Covey, and others, and it was spoken by Zoë Kravitz on the show Big Little Lies. The first time I came across it, though, was in Anthony de Mello’s Awareness. He repeats it a few times throughout the book, as a way of emphasizing how everything else changes when we change. You need not try to change the whole world when you can just change yourself and get the result you desire. And de Mello adds that until you remove the obstruction from your own eye, you have no right to try and change anyone or anything else. The world is not responsible for making your negative feelings or perspectives go away. It never could, anyway. You are the only entity for that job.
And all you have to do is practice self-awareness. That, and go about living your life as you see fit. According to de Mello, it is not selfish to do as you please, assuming you’re not encroaching on the freedom of those around you. What’s selfish is to demand that others do as you please, that they live their lives as you see fit. When we have such expectations, we’re not even seeing people for who they are, but for who they are not, which essentially means we’re not seeing them at all. De Mello says that to love means “to see a person, a situation, a thing as it really is, not as you imagine it to be. And to give it the response it deserves.” This is the state he calls wakefulness, which is synonymous with happiness, or contacting God, or accessing our natural state—something we cannot do when mired in negative reactions to a problem-free reality.
There it is again, the notion that we should never have negative emotions about anything. It’s the idea that likely sticks in most people’s craws — my own craw included — more than any other that de Mello presents in Awareness and other books. “There is no event on earth that has the power to disturb you or hurt you.” Really? But countless awful, terrible things happen every day. So how can de Mello so confidently assert, again and again, that we shouldn’t ever feel disturbed or hurt? To be honest, I don’t know. I tend to think that if we weren’t supposed to feel sadness, anger, and other emotions typically described as negative, then they wouldn’t exist. I think these emotions are our birthright, and I think a lot of suffering can result from believing that we shouldn’t ever feel them. But I trust that de Mello whole-heartedly believes that nothing has the power to make us feel disturbed or hurt, and it gives me hope in the possibility that I can achieve at least a fraction of his blissful equanimity when it comes to life’s slings and arrows. I might not agree, in my comparable weak-mindedness, with the absolutist nature of his assertion, but again, I needn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can most definitely get on board, for instance, with the idea that not nearly as many things have the power to hurt me as I’ve been assuming.
And when something does hurt me, my primary task is to be present with that hurt. What we resists persists. What we judge, or try to get rid of or change, we can never understand. De Mello says that in times of difficulty (and all other times, for that matter), we are called upon to be aware. That is all. Our only task is to come to reality, and then the pain will take care of itself. De Mello puts it beautifully when he says, “Awareness releases reality to change you.”
There’s a paradox, though, that we must be mindful of: If we turn awareness into a goal, into something we’re trying to achieve, then we are seeking ego glorification. In other words, our ego — that sense of “I” or “me” that we identify so strongly with and that creates so many problems — is still in charge. De Mello says that your attitude should be, “I want to be in touch with whatever is and let whatever happens happen; if I’m awake, fine, and if I’m asleep, fine.” So, we have the intention to practice awareness, but there’s no end-point in mind. Because the other paradox is — according to de Mello — that when you do actually “make it,” and become aware, you won’t know that it’s happened. You’ll just be aware, going about your business of really living. You’ll be helpful to others without even realizing it. You’ll practice charity without consciousness, because it will just be the natural consequence of enjoying yourself, of “doing your dance.” And you won’t take any credit for it, or feel any pride about it.
De Mello ends Awareness by referencing a book called Summerhill, which he calls a “holy book,” by A.S. Neill, whom he describes as a “a great man.” He says that this book revolutionized his life and his dealings with people, that he started seeing miracles after reading it. So of course I had to get my hands on that book! And upon reading it, Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing instantly became one of my all-time favorites. And I don’t have any kids! A.S. Neill’s philosophy of child rearing is rooted in one fundamental idea, which de Mello quotes in Awareness. “Every child has a god in him,” Neill says. “Our attempts to mold the child will turn the god into a devil.”
Check out my next blog post for some thoughts on the book Summerhill. I hope you enjoyed learning about Anthony de Mello’s spiritual philosophy, as explicated in his book Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.
