The way to love is one of those profound books that keep you coming back to read. My son Samuel introduced it to me early in the new millennium. I’ve read it many times. I’ve given many a copy to friends. It is especially good at grounding you in beliefs that liberate from despair and depression by giving you a good dose of the truth that sets you free.
Anthony de Mello is the Jesuit Priest known
throughout the world for his writings and spiritual insights. He was director of the Sadhana Institute of Pastoral Counseling in Poona, India until his death in 1987. Among his many books are Sadhana and The Song of the Bird. The way to Love was his last and shows that the wisdom of a master does not diminish with age.
In reading or listening, you will realize enjoyment of his best.
– BelieveIt 2 RealizeIt
Most people, he maintained, are asleep. They need to wake up, open up their eyes, see what is real, both inside and outside of themselves.
The greatest human gift is to be aware, to be in touch with oneself, one’s body, mind, feelings, thoughts, sensations. Here are some of his typical challenges:
“Come home yourself! Come back to your senses!
Do you hear that bird sing?
How can you hear the song and not hear the singer?
How can you see the wave and not see the ocean?
How can you see the dance and not see the dancer?”
From the Inside Flap
Introduction by Francis Stroud
Years ago, when I first heard of Tony de Mello, S.J., I didn’t believe what I heard. The story I am about to tell has bearing on the book you are about to read.
I was told that Tony gave a retreat to sixty fellow Jesuit priests and spoke to them six hours a day for eight days. I remember saying, “No Jesuit listens to another Jesuit six hours a day for eight days.” When the fact was insisted on, I remember asking, “Who made that retreat?” The names of some very impressive Jesuits (impressive, at least, to me) were mentioned. It was then, like doubting Thomas in the Scriptures, I said, “This I have to see and hear for myself.”
Thus began the journey with the man who would affect my life so profoundly that, years later, I wouldn’t even recognize the person I was those years past. And not I alone, but thousands of others like me. …
Audio Book Recordings
I so love the way Anthony DeMello communicates the key role played by our beliefs, that I have recorded this little book so I can listen to it time and time again.
As with my writings, so with my recordings; they are created first of all for myself. I do realize however, they can be valuable to others. And so, it is with most grateful appreciation to Anthony DeMello that I share my recordings freely.
Click the links below to enjoy my audio recordings. Feel free to distribute without charge.
The way to love – Anthony de Mello – Intro & Pgs. 1-41
The way to love – Anthony de Mello – Pgs. 42-93
The way to love – Anthony de Mello – Pgs. 94-130
The way to love – Anthony de Mello – Pgs. 131-end
Perspective on value, desire, love and existence from the view of a non-physical being
Desire is cause behind expansion of the universe.
Other Videos with Anthony De Mello
10 minute secret to the most important change of your life (covered in a three hour video)
Support
Please, As you realize value in these materials and recognize you want to own authentic books for yourself, If you’re able to share from value you receive, please pay it forward. Purchase your own personal copies directly from the De Mello Spirituality Center.
The following are my thoughts from reading de Mello’s book:
On Suffering and Attachment –
When your zeal and the appeal of your Creative Expressions become so attractive that you can not bear to lose what you have created; When you can not even consider that they might be lost without suffering anxiety from the thought; when you find yourself suffering at the threat to or at the actual experience of loss, you have formed an attachment to your “Precious” and that is the cause of your suffering.
Yet know this! It is not the attachment or possession of the attachment that causes suffering.
It is not your “precious” that makes you suffer. It is not your relationship or its’ objective possession that holds you to suffer at the thought of loss. Rather as with all of the emotions and the experiences we call reality, it is belief and it is only our beliefs that can cause us to “feel” the emotions or feelings we experience as suffering.
As with all experiences, beliefs are beneath the emotions we feel. A certain genre of belief is always beneath the experience of suffering no matter what reality you explore or what you discover within the reality you explore. Suffering is ALWAYS realized according to a belief of limitation; a belief that without our precious (what ever it is) we can not be happy!
The way to Love
For many, the mere recognition that suffering results from holding a limiting belief is enough for them to realize they can stop the suffering by simply rejecting the limiting belief as an invalid rule to live by and replacing it with more empowering beliefs as suggested by De Mello:
- Suffering is a temporary state of being, a temporary state of mind.
- Happiness is not conditional or a dependant tenant of reality. It does NOT depend upon possessing attachments or upon avoiding the loss of attachments.
- Happiness results from appreciation, it is the natural state of being aware and free to observe appreciatively.
- I am happy and will always be happy as I already possess the attitude required for observing appreciatively, it can never be taken away by another although we can choose focus our awareness else where and ignore it.
- I can recognize and appreciate attachments as such and do not necessarily need to eliminate them in order to bring about the elimination of suffering, and
- While I have attachments, I can appreciate and enjoy them all as “my precious” creative expressions, knowing and accepting that
- When I lose what I once created, I will always appreciate the value I enjoyed in them and find value and joy in the discovery of the others also worthy of appreciation that will follow.
This is certainly true, and we can absolutely enjoy many life times appreciating all that we can imagine, express creatively, physically observe and release like catch and release fishing. For within the fuller reality of our eternal souls, all experiences are psychological actions that, like thoughts and memories, can never truly be lost once experienced.
Beliefs are only thoughts we hold true of reality
Like lego building blocks, we find value in changing beliefs and seeing all that can be created and experienced in the process. We can change and manipulate our beliefs like De Mello suggests and experience life to a greater degree of well being. We can overcome suffering and enjoy a life richer than we know.
Emotions show agreement and dis-agreement
Our emotions always reflect the resonance of our beliefs. They only reveal accord or discord between beliefs. To experience emotion, we merely need to contrast one belief with another. If they are supportive of each other, they resonate and we feel the harmony of their agreement. When two consciously contemplated beliefs are opposed to each other and not in agreement, we feel the disharmony of their discord, we feel their conflict as the unpleasant emotions.
If one of our contrasted beliefs is that we value something desired, a contrasting belief that the “valued something” is threatened is felt as discordant emotion when we focus our awareness upon them. A belief that our desired “precious” is threatened is always sensed as the discord we call the emotion of suffering, agony, and despair. One or the other are experienced according to the degree or intensity we believe the threat certain and the degree or intensity we believe we desire the “valued something” that is threatened.
Limitations provide contrast
We all loath limitations and we find great fulfillment in going beyond and overcoming them. We’ve programmed our personalities to be driven by desires. We’ve done this through the adoption of beliefs that regard or perceive that which we give preference to as desired and highly prized while we hold the belief the undesired or absence of the desired is perceived as despised. Our beliefs that things desired are valued and that it is important for us to pursue them is a fundamental, key, and core belief required for us to experience physical reality as it was intended to be experienced. These core beliefs provide the mental constructs that give form and structure to our perceptive observations so that our observations provide the kind of reality experience we expect of physical life.
In fact, all life quests and the sake behind all of life’s pursuits is to acquire and expand our being with value fulfilling increase. In this physical reality, those are identified as valued and desired. We are driven to identify or discern the preferences of desire so that in so doing we can appreciate the contrast between the preferred and the not.
So, even suffering is good. Maybe I can say it is essential when we consider the role it plays in helping us appreciate that which we discern preference toward. Suffering provides the contrast required for us to clearly see the value appreciated that resides with our creative expressions and NOT within that which is to be avoided.
A belief that suffering should be experienced when a discerned preference is threatened or lost may be as important a basic belief to enjoyment and appreciation as the belief that something is desired. Certainly without contrast, no discernment of preference is possible.
Therefore, and for the purpose that we might enjoy value fulfilling increase, we have learned (acquired a belief) to associate the lack of value fulfilling increase as loathsome and that we should avoid and even recoil at the very thought we might lose a value fulfillment once acquired. It is so important that we percept value in the desired that its opposite is perceived as painful and suffering. The very core of our nature and I might add the very foundation to which we able to associate value with any experience, mandates association of the lower painful emotions with the loss of value fulfillment acquired or even the failure to obtain what was perceived as within grasp of possession.
We feel the emotion of suffering when we view ourselves as about to lose that which we desire. Yet we only suffer because of a belief that loss must produce suffering or we have a belief that we want loss of things valued to produce an emotion of suffering. There is NO other rule; you create your own realities according to your beliefs! We’ve created suffering for the purpose that we might have the contrast it provides to enjoyment and appreciation of lifes greatest value fulfilling experiences.
Ultimately the key to experiencing true value fulfillment from De Mello’s The Way to Love lies in our ability to recognize the interplay of beliefs and to hold them consciously in such balance that our desired experiences are realized to their fullest. It’s all then about our conscious awareness and discriminating a biased perspective to live within the beliefs that empower us to the experiences we prefer.
Of such is the nature of our true reality. We possess the vehicle and are in possession of the controls. The experience of a value fulfilling reality waits for nothing but a biased focus of our consciousness awareness fixing our gaze upon those of our beliefs that empower and perceive us as being in possession of that which we most desire.
If you believe, all things are possible – Mark 9;23
You need only – BelieveIt 2 RealizeIt!