A Year with Anthony De Mello: Waking Up Week by Week

We’re scared about things that are not. We’re tied to things that don’t exist. They’re illusions. They’re falsehoods. They’re beliefs; they’re not realities. The agonies we go through over things that we have—we have convinced ourselves that our happiness depends upon them, but it doesn’t.

Yet it is a given of life that nothing is permanently and finally satisfying. Despite this fact, many of us believe that somewhere there is a person or thing that will be permanently satisfying. Such a chimerical belief, and the restless, desperate seeking that follows from it, can become deeply disheartening and self-defeating. In mindfulness we c

You don’t demand that situations, conditions, places, or people should make you happy, and then suffer when they don’t live up to your expectations.

obsession? How do I do that? What is the payoff for obsessing? Pretty soon you lose interest in that. You become bored with it because it’s not making you do anything. Then, maybe you turn your attention to boredom. What is boredom? How do I do that? What is the payoff for being bored? And you just sit there. Eventually, it all begins to quiet down