Awareness Quotes

“Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children, to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture. To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Then why don't you experience it? Because you've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings. Do you know where these things come from? From having identified with all kinds of labels!”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Don't ask the world to change....you change first.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favour progress, provided they can have it without change.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“The one who would be constant in happiness must frequently change.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“As the Arabs say," The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“As one man said," I got a pretty good education. It took me years to get over it. "That's what spirituality is all about, you know: unlearning. Unlearning all the rubbish they taught you.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“If you find me charming, it means that right now you’re in a good mood, nothing more.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause - for what they call success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don't realize that they don't correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Don’t try to make them happy, you’ll only get in trouble. Don’t try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it irritates the pig.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“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.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“Do you think you help people because you are in love with them? Well, I’ve got news for you. You are never in love with anyone. You’re only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person. Take a minute to think about that: You are never in love with anyone, you’re in love with your prejudiced idea of that person.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“People don’t really want to grow up, people don’t really want to change, people don’t really want to be happy. As someone so wisely said to me, “Don’t try to make them happy, you’ll only get in trouble. Don’t try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it irritates the pig.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Put this program into action, a thousand times: (a) identify the negative feelings in you; (b) understand that they are in you, not in the world, not in external reality; (c) do not see them as an essential part of “I”; these things come and go; (d) understand that when you change, everything changes.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“The root of evil is within you. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you understand. Nourish yourself on wholesome food, good wholesome food. I’m not talking about actual food, I’m talking about sunsets, about nature, about a good movie, about a good book, about enjoyable work, about good company, and hopefully you will break your addictions to those other feelings.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of. When you’re aware of it, you’re free from it. It’s there, but you’re not affected by it. You’re not controlled by it; you’re not enslaved by it. That’s the difference.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“When you renounce something, you’re tied to it. The only way to get out of this is to see through it. Don’t renounce it, see through it. Understand its true value and you won’t
need to renounce it; it will just drop from your hands. But of course, if you don’t see that, if you’re hypnotized into thinking that you won’t be happy without this, that, or the other thing, you’re stuck. What we need to do for you is not what so-called spirituality attempts to do—namely, to get you to make sacrifices, to renounce things. That’s useless. You’re still asleep. What we need to do is to help you understand, understand, understand. If you understood, you’d simply drop the desire for it. This is another way of saying: If you woke up, you’d simply drop the desire for it.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“To know reality you have to know beyond knowing.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Happiness is a state of nonillusion, of dropping the illusion.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“How does one cope with evil? Not by fighting it but by understanding it. In understanding, it disappears. How does one cope with darkness? Not with one's fist. You don't chase darkness out of the room with a broom, you turn on a light. The more you fight darkness, the more real it becomes to you, and the more you exhaust yourself. But when you turn on the light of awareness, it melts.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“What’s the earthly use of putting a man on the moon when we cannot live on the earth?”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“So you must “receive” your demons, because when you fight them, you empower them.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

“Neurotičar je osoba koja brine zbog nečega što se nije dogodilo u prošlosti. On nije kao mi, normalni ljudi, koji brinemo zbog nečega što se neće dogoditi u budućnosti.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“When you're on the verge of going insane, raving mad, you're about to become either a psychotic or a mystic.”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

“U krivu sam.
Da me bolje poznajete vidjeli biste kako sam �esto u krivu. Što biste drugo mogli o�ekivati
od jedne budale?”
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality