Quotes from Anthony de Mello

Has it ever struck you that you have been programmed by society to be unhappy, and so, no matter what you do to become happy, you are bound to fail? Most people are so brainwashed that they do not even realize how unhappy they are. It's only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they have been.

Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts—generally somebody else's—mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself, and you begin to understand yourself.

For in the death of the ego is freedom, peace, serenity, joy.

The moment you say so-and-so is wise or is cruel or defensive or loving or whatever, you have hardened your perception and become prejudiced and ceased to perceive this person moment by moment, somewhat like a pilot who operates today with last week's weather report.

Take a look at the society we live in. It is rotten to the core, infected with attachments. What is an attachment? An attachment is an emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.

When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you are giving it power. You give it as much power as you are using to fight it.

If you aren't consciously aware, you're vulnerable to either being brainwashed or being influenced by forces within you that you have no awareness of at all.

Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.

To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already.

Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

An attachment, by its very nature, makes you vulnerable to emotional turmoil and is always threatening to shatter your peace.

To come to the land of love, you must pass through the pains of death, for to love persons means to die to the need for persons and to be utterly alone.

An attachment is not a fact. It is a belief, a fantasy, in your head, acquired through programming. If that fantasy did not exist inside your head, you would not be attached. You would love things and people, and you would enjoy them thoroughly, but on a nonattachment basis. As a matter of fact, is there any other way to really enjoy something?

To be in the state called love you must be sensitive to the uniqueness and beauty of every single thing and person around you.

We see things and people not as they are, but as we are.

love excludes no one at all; it embraces the whole of life; it listens to the symphony as a whole, not to just one or the other of the musical instruments.

but God would be much happier, according to Jesus Christ, if you were transformed than if you worshipped. He would be much more pleased by your loving than by your adoration.

God is going to be much more pleased by your being transformed into a loving person than by saying, "Lord, Lord.

Look at it this way: You see persons and things not as they are but as you are. If you wish to see them as they are you must attend to your attachments and the fears that your attachments generate.

Thus, any change you achieve is inevitably accompanied by inner conflict.

If you wish to be fully alive you must develop a sense of perspective. Life is infinitely greater than this trifle your heart is attached to and which you have given the power to so upset you. Trifle, yes, because if you live long enough a day will easily come when it will cease to matter

Repentance, the refashioning of the heart has begun and the kingdom of God—the gratefully carefree life of children—has come within your grasp at last and you are about to reach out and take possession of it.

Thomas Aquinas puts it nicely when he says, "Every time someone sins, they're sinning under the guise of good.