Thread by @SlowwCo

20+ highlights from "The Way to Love" by Anthony de Mello

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"Your programming is so strong and the pressure of society so intense that you are literally trapped into perceiving the world in this distorted kind of way. There is no way out, because you do not even have a suspicion that your perception is distorted."

— Anthony de Mello

"Who is responsible for the programming? Not you. It isn’t really you who decided even such basics as your wants and desires and so-called needs; your values, your tastes, your attitudes. It was your parents, your society, your culture, your religion..."

— Anthony de Mello

"Attempt to understand the true nature of worldly feelings, namely, the feelings of self-promotion, self-glorification. They are not natural, they were invented by your society and your culture to make you productive and to make you controllable."

— Anthony de Mello

"The problem lies not with reality outside of you but with you, in your programming."

— Anthony de Mello

"In the things that really matter, life, love, reality, God, no one can teach you a thing. All they can do is give you formulas. And as soon as you have a formula, you have reality filtered through the mind of someone else."

— Anthony de Mello

What is an attachment?

"An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy."

— Anthony de Mello

"There is only one way to win the battle of attachments: Drop them. Contrary to popular belief, dropping attachments is easy. All you have to do is see, but really see."

— Anthony de Mello

"Most people are so brainwashed that they do not even realize how unhappy they are—like the man in a dream who has no idea he is dreaming."

— Anthony de Mello

"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."

— Anthony de Mello

What is love?

"It is a sensitivity to every portion of reality within you and without, together with a wholehearted response to that reality."

— Anthony de Mello

"This is what gives origin to your beliefs: fixed, unchanging ways of looking at a reality which is not fixed and unchanging at all but in movement and change. So it is no longer the real world that you interact with and love but a world created by your head."

— Anthony de Mello

"How could you go about creating a happy, loving, peaceful world? By learning a simple, beautiful, but painful art called the art of looking."

— Anthony de Mello

"Observe the marvelous change that comes over you the moment you stop seeing people as good and bad, as saints and sinners and begin to see them as unaware and ignorant."

— Anthony de Mello

"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."

— Anthony de Mello

"As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead."

— Anthony de Mello

"You first need to see with unflinching clarity this simple and shattering truth: Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy."

— Anthony de Mello

"The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow."

— Anthony de Mello

"Has it ever struck you that those who most fear to die are the ones who most fear to live? That in running away from death we are running away from life?"

— Anthony de Mello

Full book summary of "The Way to Love" by Anthony de Mello

sloww.co/way-to-love-an…