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Spiritual Quotes from Anthony de Mello

About Anthony de Mello

Anthony de Mello Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931—1987) was a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who became widely known for his books on spirituality. He hosted many spiritual retreats and was considered by some a gifted public speaker. Father de Mello was born in Santa Cruz, a suburb of Mumbai in India. He traveled to many countries to study and later to teach, most notably Spain and the United States. De Mello established a prayer center in India. He died suddenly in 1987. His works are still in print and additional writings were published after his death. In 1998, after his death, some of his opinions were condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Regardless of the ban and the later caution, his writings are available in many Catholic book shops and he is read and respected by many Catholics and other Christians.

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Spiritual Quotes

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life… Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth, in which alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear!

There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.

As you identify less and less with the "me", you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything. Do you know why? Because you are no longer afraid of being hurt or not liked. You no longer desire to impress anyone. Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last!

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one's awareness of one's ignorance.

Suffering points out that there is falsehood somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality when your falsehoods clash with the truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

People who want a cure, provided they can have it without pain, are like those who favor progress, provided they can have it without change.

People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.

Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them.

Obedience keeps the rules. Love knows when to break them.

You've got to drop something. You've got to drop illusions. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is easy, life is delightful. It's only hard on your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings.

My experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life.

Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you.

When you come to see you are not as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you are wiser today.

If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.

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