"Awareness" : 2014 Books

Thanks to the weekly book study, Wisdom Class, I recently read Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello for the second time. I probably need to re-read it several more times to learn and practice "awareness" more often. These essays seem to be from transcripts of retreats he gave, so reading them aloud enhances understanding. We did not do that very often in our meetings, but needed to be reminded that that was the form of writing. He keeps saying, "Wake up!"

"Put this program into action, a thousand times: (a) identify the negative feelings in you; (b) undertand 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." (89)


It helped to watch videos of Anthony de Mello; we were fortunate to have these loaned to us to watch. But his talks are available on the internet via U-tube--go here! It is definitely worth the time to look at one or more of these. Here is a 4-minute glimpse:



And about God:

"The fact is that you're surrounded by God and you don't see God, because you 'know' about God. The final barrier to the vision of God is your God concept. You miss God because you think you know. That's the terrible thing about religion. That's what the gospels were saying, that religious people 'knew,' so they got rid of Jesus. The highest knowledge of God is to know God as unknowable. There is far too much God talk; the world is sick of it. There is too little awareness, too little love, too little happiness, but let's not use those words either. There's too little dropping of illusions, dropping of errors, dropping of attachments and cruelty, too little awareness...." (102)

I highly recommend this book and will be reading it again.