Change is only brought about by awareness and understanding. Understand your unhappiness and it will disappear–what results is the state of happiness. Understand your pride and it will drop–what results will be humility. Understand your fears and they will melt–the resultant state is love. Understand your attachments and they will vanish–the consequence is freedom. Love and freedom and happiness are not things that you can cultivate and produce. You cannot even know what they are. All you can do is observe their opposites and, through your observation, cause these opposites to die. — Anthony De Mello, The Way to Love
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3 Responses
Do you think it’s so?
I think it’s easier to see from the other side. ;^)
De Mello, in the two books I’ve been reading, can be rather in your face about this point. I’m not entirely sure that it’s so, but I find it makes a certain amount of intuitive sense–even more so, if by “understand” we mean REALLY understand on a level that’s deeper than mere intellectual assent.