The Canon / Living / Contemporary Nonduality
Living · 1990
Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality
Contemplative Christianity / Awareness TeachingAwareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality distils Anthony de Mello's teaching of "waking up." Its central claim is that most human suffering arises from being mechanically asleep in one's conditioning, the automatic beliefs, attachments, and programming through which people filter reality, and that awareness itself, simple waking observation, is liberating.
A Jesuit priest and psychotherapist, de Mello blends Ignatian Christian spirituality with the meditation methods and teaching-stories of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Zen traditions. The argument advances less through system than through parable and pointed challenge, short stories that bypass the analytic mind and expose the reader's own sleep, urging a direct seeing of reality rather than reaction to one's mental picture of it.
The book exemplifies awareness teaching delivered through story, paralleling the nondual recognition of Tolle and Krishnamurti and the cognitive inquiry of Byron Katie. As a Jesuit drawing freely on Eastern method, de Mello is a notable East-West bridge, oriented toward liberation through seeing rather than the acquisition of outcomes.
In its words
Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don't know it, are asleep. They're born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up.
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.
You will never understand yourself if you seek to change yourself. The harder you try to change yourself the worse it gets. You are called upon to be aware.
Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you.
Practices it teaches
Awareness / 'Waking Up' — de Mello's Self-Observation
This is the central practice of Anthony de Mello (1931–1987), the Jesuit priest and spiritual teacher from India whose talks became the book Awareness. De Mello's premise: "Most people… are asleep.
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The author
Anthony de MelloAwareness & waking from illusion
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