by Anthony de Mello
Awareness for me was a book the philosophy of one’s relationship with oneself and with the universe. It was about stripping down everything to become aware of who you really are and then observing the universe through those eyes.
Awareness
de Mello states that you should be as the sky observing the clouds. These clouds are the emotions and thoughts that come to you. Instead of identifying with these thoughts and emotions you merely observe them. Instead of saying to yourself “I am depressed”, you observe the feelings of depression and say “I am feeling depressed”. In doing this you are observing these thoughts as clouds passing by. Everything passes. Everything is temporary.
To get to this state of awareness you need to become aware of who you are. You must strip down to the “I”. What is the “I”? de Mello suggests the following activity to help. You must ask “How do I describe myself?”. Examples can range from entrepreneur, husband, sister, railway worker, etc. Who is giving you these labels? The “I” is the one labeling the me. The “I” is constant and does not change. Labels, thoughts, and emotions are always changing. When you realize that you are not defined by these things you will be able to experience happiness. For happiness is the natural state of the “I”. Trouble occurs when one associates the “I” with the labels of society. At this point you measure yourself against society and that brings unhappiness with it.
4 Steps to Wisdom
- Get in touch with negative feelings you aren’t aware of.
- Negative feelings are in you, not reality. For example when you bump your knee on the table the table is fine. The pain is in your knee not the table.
- Never identify with that feeling. Never say I am depressed, instead say I am feeling depressed. Everything passes. Everything is temporary.
- How do you change yourself? Many times we think in the following manner: we go to a doctor for ourselves and to remedy our illness the doctor gives us a prescription for our neighbor. It doesn’t work. We are the ones who must change ourselves.
Additional Notes
Renunciation: when you renounce something you are always fighting that thing and then it becomes all you think about. To overcome something you must see through it instead.
Charity: we are charitable out of self interest through one of the following reasons
- We are getting pleasure out of pleasing others
- We are doing it because it is pleasurable to us
- We are doing it to avoid a bad feeling
There is no explanation for the way the world is with its suffering. Parable of the alligator and boy. Reality is not problematic, inside you is the problem.
We see things and people as we are and not as they are.
“You should not make the goal to become aware. There is no where to go because you have already arrived.”