The Way to Love
The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello
This is a tiny little pocket book featuring thirty-one inspiring, challenging meditations on how to love by Anthony de Mello, a mystical Jesuit priest who also wrote the great book Awareness that we cover. The book is a powerful, challenging look at how to break free from our conditioning, reprogram our minds and truly love. Big Ideas we explore include what it means to love, enjoying the symphony of life (by no longer clinging or renouncing), the art of looking (How are you THAT?), how to create freedom to make a fool of yourself, plus effort, effortlessness and fun.
Big Ideas
- What Does it Mean to Love?What does it mean to love?
- The Symphony of LifeEmbrace all the notes.
- The Art of Looking (Challenging But Good!)Challenging but good.
- The Freedom to Make a Fool of YourselfTo make a fool of yourself.
- Effort and Effortlessness and Fun+ Fun.
“And here is a parable of life for you to ponder on: A group of tourists sits in a bus that is passing through gorgeously beautiful country; lakes and mountains and green fields and rivers. But the shades of the bus are pulled down. They do not have the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus. And all the time of their journey is spent in squabbling over who will have the seat of honor in the bus, who will be applauded, who will be well considered. And so they remain till the journey’s end.”
~ Anthony de Mello from The Way to Love
This is the second Note we’ve done on Anthony de Mello. (The first was on his great book Awareness.)
I’m pretty sure I picked this one up after Ryan Holiday referenced him in The Daily Stoic.
It’s a tiny little pocket book featuring thirty-one inspiring, challenging meditations on how to love. As we’ll see, de Mello’s #1 rule is to drop your attachment—which is a very Stoic perspective. :)
The Daily Stoic and this one are similar in another way as well. While Ryan is a modern-day Stoic who reflects on wisdom from ancient Stoic sages in his book, Anthony de Mello was a mystical Jesuit priest who reflects on wisdom from Jesus/the Bible in his meditations.
The book is a powerful, challenging look at how to break free from our conditioning, reprogram our minds and truly love. (Get a copy here and check out Love 101 + our other Notes on Love.)
It’s packed with poetic wisdom and I’m excited to share some of my favorite Ideas so let’s jump straight in!
Download MP3
Download PDFFor what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?
Get the BookWhat Does it Mean to Love?
“God’s kingdom is love. What does it mean to love? It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one. For exclusion can only be achieved through a hardening of oneself, through closing one’s doors. And the moment there is a hardening, sensitivity dies. It won’t be hard for you to find examples of this kind of sensitivity in your life. Have you ever stopped to remove a stone or a nail from the road lest someone came to harm? It does not matter that you will never know the person who will benefit from this gesture and you will receive no reward or recognition. You just do it from a feeling of benevolence and kindness. Or have you felt pained at the wanton destruction in another part of the world, of a forest that you will never see and never benefit from? Have you gone to some trouble to help a stranger find his way though you do not know and will never meet this person again, purely from a good-heartedness that you feel within you? In these and so many other moments, love came to the surface of your life signaling that it was there within you waiting to be released.
How can you come to possess this kind of love? You cannot, because it is already there within you. All you have to do is remove the blocks you place to sensitivity and it would surface.”
What does it mean to love?
Recall those times in your life when you picked up a nail from the road so someone wouldn’t get hurt. Or maybe the time you supported people in distant lands after a disaster. Or maybe the time you helped a stranger find their way.
We do those things from a pure sense of kindness—with no anticipation of reward or recognition.
THAT is the kind of love de Mello says is at the core of our being.
Helping us remove the things that get in the way of that type of love bubbling up every moment of our lives is the focus of the book.
Let’s explore some ways to go about doing that!
The thing that is blind is not love but attachment. An attachment is the state of clinging that comes from the false belief that something or someone is necessary for your happiness.
The Symphony of Life
“The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music, thereby producing disharmony and conflict between what life is offering you and what you are clinging to. Then comes the tension and anxiety which are the very death of love and the joyful freedom that love brings. For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow.
How does one drop an attachment? People try to do this through renunciation. But to renounce some bars of the music, to blot them out of one’s consciousness creates exactly the type of violence, conflict and insensitivity that clinging does. Once again you have hardened yourself. The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow.”
The symphony of life is playing. Are you enjoying it?
De Mello uses the same metaphor in Awareness where he tells us: “As the great Confucius said, ‘The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.’ Flow. But we keep looking back, don’t we? We cling to things in the past and cling to things in the present… Do you want to enjoy a symphony? Don’t hold on to a few bars of the music. Don’t hold on to a couple of notes. Let them pass, let them flow. The whole enjoyment of a symphony lies in your readiness to allow the notes to pass.”
If we cling to any given note in a symphony we will miss the beauty.
AND…
If we try to blot out any given note in a symphony, we will also miss the beauty.
As with the symphony so it is with life. The trick is to enjoy it all without clinging to or rejecting any of it.
As Joseph Campbell says, we say “YES!!” to it all.
The “good” the “bad.” It is all just part of the symphony of life. The wise say yes to it all.
Suffering comes when we try to reject this or cling to that.
How’re you doing with that symphony enjoyment? Clinging to anything? Trying to reject anything?
Let’s say YES!
The Art of Looking (Challenging But Good!)
“How could you go about creating a happy, loving, peaceful world? By learning a simple, beautiful, but painful art called the art of looking. This is how you do it: Every time you find yourself irritated or angry with someone, the one to look at is not that person but yourself. The question to ask is not, ‘What’s wrong with this person?’ but ‘What does this irritation tell me about myself?’ Do this right now. Think of some irritating person you know and say this painful but liberating sentence to yourself. ‘The cause of my irritation is not in this person but in me.’ Having said that, begin the task of finding out how you are causing the irritation. First look into the very real possibility that the reason why this person’s defects annoy you is that you have them yourself. But you have repressed them and so are projecting them unconsciously into the other. This is almost always true but hardly anyone recognizes it. So search for this person’s defects in your own heart and in your unconscious mind, and your annoyance will turn to gratitude that his or her behavior has led you to self-discovery.”
The art of looking.
Reminds me of wisdom from The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr plus The Dark Side of Light Chasersby Debbie Ford. (Check out those Notes!)
Schwartz and Loehr tell us: “Difficult and unpleasant as it may be to accept, we often feel most hostile to those who remind us of aspects of ourselves that we prefer not to see. ‘Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with,’ writes Edward Whitmont, ‘and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics…. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others.’ Think for a moment of someone you actively dislike. What quality in that person do you find most objectionable? Now ask yourself, ‘How am I that?’”
—> “How am I that?” <— One of the most powerful questions ever!
Debbie Ford describes this as our shadow and tells us: “What I discovered was my potential to act like the people I had been most harshly judging. It became clear that I had to be on the lookout for the traits that most bothered me in others.”
Then she shares her awesome finger-counting game: “I realized that I only judged people when they displayed a quality I could not accept in myself. If someone was a show-off, I no longer judged them because I knew that I, too, was a show-off. Only when I had completely convinced myself that I was not capable of a certain behavior would I get upset and point my finger at the other person. Hold your hand straight out in front of you and point at someone. Notice that you have one finger pointing at that them and three fingers pointing back at yourself. This can serve as a reminder that when we are blaming others we are only denying an aspect of ourselves.”
So, back to de Mello. He calls it “the art of looking.” Let’s practice it right now.
Think of some irritating person you know. Think about the particular thing they do that annoys you the most.
Now, ask yourself the question, “How am I that?”
I’ll wait until you’ve identified it.
(I know I share a ton of exercises/opportunities for reflection and I know you don’t do all of them. That’s fine. But take a moment to do this one. It’s big.)
You got it? Awesome.
Now, every.single.time you find yourself getting annoyed, see if you can make it a game and take the few seconds to ask yourself, “How am I that?” Then, simultaneously resolve to purge that annoying behavior from *your* repertoire AND have compassion for yourself and the other person as you honor the fact that neither one of you is perfect and that’s just perfect.
Bonus points for giving the annoying person a virtual high five and a bow for teaching you a valuable lesson about yourself.
P.S. Jesus told us “But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” <— That’s the opening quote in this section that de Mello is riffing on. You may recall that Jesus also told us: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
P.P.S. One of my new favorite things is going out for a sunrise hike/trail run/HIIT workout. I’ve gone for maybe 10 days in a row now. Truly amazing. The other day I was just starting out as the first light was coming up over the mountain. I stood there in sheer Rapt awe of the awesome.
As I turned to start my hike I noticed a couple women who were already finishing their hike—which I found nearly as impressive as the sunrise. As we walked past one another I enthusiastically said, “Isn’t it such a beautiful morning?”
One of the women said, “It would be if your dog was on a leash.”
Record scratch. Full stop.
What? Did she really just say that? (Hah.)
Now, I tend to follow (and pride myself in following) most basic rules in life but keeping my harmless little 12-pound poodle-mutt Zeus on a leash on a sunrise hike with nearly no one else out is not one of the rules I choose to follow closely. Running free is one of the little guy’s great joys and I like to indulge it.
Anyway, back to the story. I was a little shocked that THAT was what the women was thinking at the end of a beautiful sunrise hike and found myself muttering some unpleasantries to myself.
Then, I remembered the magic question.
“How am I that?”
How am that annoying person who finds the worst possible interpretation of a situation and then focuses on and complains about it? Hmmm… Gah. Yep. I AM that woman. :0
What came up for me was my habit of getting annoyed when Emerson acts like, well, a 4-year old. Most of the time I’m pretty good at celebrating how awesome life is and he is and all that. And… There are times when I choose to focus on his little antics that I find less than endearing. Rather than see the beauty in those moments, I’m the annoying party pooper.
Note to self: Another reminder: You’re not perfect. You never will be. But, work on that. And, in the meantime (now and forever), have compassion for yourself and others as we all do our best.
P.P.P.S. Whenever he’s whining, I like to ask myself, “How am I that?” Because I’m that, too. :)
If you wish to be fully alive you must develop a sense of perspective. Life is infinitely greater than this trifle you have given power to upset you.
Hardly anyone has been told the following truth: In order to be genuinely happy there is one and only one thing you need to do: get deprogrammed, get rid of those attachments.
The Freedom to Make a Fool of Yourself
“Apply this now to every image that people have of you and they tell you that you are a genius or wise or good or holy, and you enjoy that compliment and in that minute you lose your freedom; because now you will be constantly striving to retain that opinion. You will fear making mistakes, to be yourself, to do or say anything that will spoil the image. You have lost the freedom to make a fool of yourself, to be laughed at and to be ridiculed, to do and say whatever feels right to you rather than what fits the image of what others have of you.
How does one break this? Through many patient hours of study, awareness, observation, of what this silly image brings you. It gives you a thrill combined with so much insecurity and unfreedom and suffering. If you were to see this clearly you would lose your appetite to be special to anyone, or to be highly regarded by anyone. You would move about with sinners or bad characters and do and say as you please, regardless of what people think of you. You would become like the birds and flowers that are so totally unselfconscious, too busy with the task of living to care one little bit about what others think of them, about whether they are special to others or not. And at last, you will have become fearless and free.”
Want to suffer while losing your ability to fully express yourself?
Become attached to the good (and/or bad) opinion of others.
De Mello *goes off* on how we need to quit getting so hooked by every little compliment (or criticism), basically echoing Don Miguel Ruiz’s wisdom in The Four Agreements.
Do you recall The Second Agreement?
Don’t Take Anything Personally.
Here’s how Ruiz puts it: “Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally… if I see you on the street and say, ‘Hey, you are so stupid,’ without knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, ‘How does he know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?’”
He also says: “Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.”
What people say to us says more about THEM than it does us. We need to cultivate the ability to step back and see that; otherwise, we run the risk of attaching our sense of self/worth to their opinions. Then we lose our freedom.
And, well, living for someone else’s approval rather than your full expression = not a good trade.
I love the way de Mello captures it in Awareness. He tells us: “A nice definition of an awakened person: a person who no longer marches to the drums of society, a person who dances to the tune of the music that springs up from within.”
And: “You’re much more energetic, much more alive. People think that if they had no cravings, they’d be like deadwood. But in fact they’d lose their tension. Get rid of your fear of failure, your tensions about succeeding, you will be yourself. Relaxed. You wouldn’t be driving with your brakes on. That’s what would happen.”
Let’s dance to the tune that springs from within. And drive without the brakes on. :)
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.
Effort and Effortlessness and Fun
“If at first there is sluggishness in practicing awareness, don’t force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. You will then understand that awareness involves as much effort as a lover makes to go to his beloved, or a hungry man makes to eat his food, or a mountaineer to get to the top of his beloved mountain; so much energy expended, so much hardship even, but it isn’t effort, it’s fun! In other words, awareness is an effortless activity.”
“Effortless activity.”
Sounds a lot like wu-wei, eh?
You may recall from our Notes on Trying Not to Try—the great book on the neuroscience of the ancient Chinese ideal of wu-wei, or effortless effort—that there are a few primary ways we can get to a point at which we effortlessly do our best.
To oversimplify: There was the approach advocated by Confucius and Mencius, which involved us putting in a ton of effort to get to a point where things become automatic. On the other end of the spectrum, there was the approach advocated by Lao-Tzu and Chuang Tzu which involved, essentially, letting go and *not* trying so hard and just going with the flow.
All part of a longer chat, but I lean toward the Confucian/Mencian end of that spectrum (where effort IS fun). De Mello leans (strongly) toward the Lao-Tzu/Chuang Tzu side of things.
The optimal approach is to integrate the style that is appropriate for the various contexts we experience. For our purposes here, we want to focus on creating the environment within ourselves such that what is best within us most naturally arises spontaneously.
For me, for example, I find that when I am well rested and living in integrity with my values, I tend to be a much more loving, present human being. That requires effort (until it’s effortless) yet the fruits of that are effortless. I find that I can spontaneously and effortlessly enjoy a beautiful sunrise when I’m actually on the mountain when the sun is rising—which requires effort to create an optimal day such that I’m joyfully present on that mountain. Etc. Etc.
Again, longer chat. For now: What helps you show up at your best? Do that with a smile.
The day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the land of unending joy called the kingdom.
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