7 daagse cursus

Anthony De Mello's Spirituality Means Waking Up - Part One, How To Wake Up

Door Anthony De Mello Legacy

Wat je zal leren

This course, taught by Anthony De Mello, is titled "Spirituality Means Waking Up." This is Part 1, called Awakening. The first part of each session is a lecture by Anthony De Mello. The second part, signaled by a chime, is a short practice that relates to the session. If you're familiar with Anthony De Mello, you already know his loving and compassionate heart. But you also know he goes straight to the point. He intends to wake us up, and at times, he shakes us like an alarm clock. He tells us something we may not want to hear, or may not yet be ready to hear: that we move through life asleep, never truly waking up. And because of this, we fail to recognize the loveliness and beauty of what it means to be human. This is not our fault. We were programmed to believe that happiness depends on external conditions. "I'll be happy provided I have this, and that, and the other thing." But that is not how happiness works. It is not earned or acquired through things. It is part of our natural state. We were born happy—filled with loving kindness, wonder, and a natural creativity. That is our essence. Yet as we grew up, much of it became obscured beneath fear-conditioning and the pressure to conform to what society expects of us. In classical terms, tragedy is when something powerful is brought from a high place to a low one. That is what happened to us. And that is what the course invites us to see for ourselves: that our essence is still here, alive, intact, and available, but it is being blocked. The essential step in waking up to this truth is awareness. Tragically, it rarely occurs to us that there might be a better way to live. Detachment is the better way, and this course offers a path to it.

Anthony De Mello Legacy

San Francisco, CA, USA

Anthony De Mello (1931–1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and spiritual teacher, regarded as one of the foremost spiritual teachers of the 20th century. Blending Christian mysticism, Eastern philosophy, and psychological insight, his teachings invite people to awaken from conditioned patterns of fear and illusion into a life of...

Les 1

The Ability To Listen

Listening is not as easy as you might think. Why? Because we’re always listening from fixed concepts, fixed positions, fixed prejudices. The kind of listening I am referring to means holding the intention to listen with a fresh mind, without prejudices, without judging, without fixed formulas. When you do that, you’ve taken another major step toward awakening.

Les 2

Rejoice Always

Mystics tell people that life is extraordinary, life is delightful: “You could enjoy it,” they say. “You wouldn’t have a minute of tension, not one. No pressure. No anxiety. Would you want that?” the mystics ask. The usual response is: “Not possible. Never been done. Can not be done.” That’s the condition of people everywhere. They don’t hear it. They won’t listen.

Les 3

The Mess

People don’t want to get out of the mess. They don’t want happiness; they want money, they want fame, they want power, they want approval, they want their comforts. They want the little things that society has falsely taught them are essential for happiness. Those are the things that are creating the mess.

Les 4

Seeing What Is Not There, Missing What Is

Look inside and then at what surrounds you. Love is there; Joy is there; God is there. It’s all there. But we’re like the poor little fish in the ocean that says, “Excuse me, I’m looking for the ocean. Can you tell me where I can find it?” That’s most of us. If we would just open our eyes and see, then we would understand that all is well. It’s like a stage magician who hypnotizes someone so that the person sees what is not there and does not see what is there.

Les 5

More And More Aware

The trouble with people is that they’re busy fixing things they don’t even understand. It never strikes us that things don’t need to be fixed. They really don’t. This is a great illumination. Do you know what they need? They need to be understood. If they understood them, they’d change.

Les 6

Trained To Upset Yourself

When things are not under your control, or the future is uncertain, your brain insists that you experience anxiety, tension, or worry. Then you expend a lot of energy coping with these negative emotions by expending even more energy trying to rearrange the world around you so that the demands of your brain will be met. If that happens, you will be granted a measure of precarious peace; it’s precarious because at any moment, some trifle—a plane delay, a device that doesn’t work, a document that hasn’t arrived, a spot on your tie or blouse. Who is responsible for the programming? Not you. A Year with Anthony De Mello You name it—it's going to be out of conformity with your computer’s programming, and the computer will insist that you become upset again. Who is responsible for the programming? Not you.

Les 7

The Light Of Awareness

Holiness is the essence of what you are and are becoming increasingly. That’s what matters. Holiness is not an achievement; it is a grace. A grace called awareness, a grace called looking, observing, understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes coming about in you.

Anthony De Mello's Spirituality Means Waking Up - Part One, How To Wake Up

Anthony De Mello Legacy

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