Of the many books I have read, a few of them have had the kind of impact that ‘The Way To Love’ by Anthony De Mello have had on me. Anthony De Mello was a Jesuit priest who was a great preacher and a great retreat master. The Way to Love is a compilation of his last meditations. It is a series of thirty-one meditations that could be read, one each day for the whole month. De Mello takes themes or quotations from the saying of Jesus in the Gospels and weaves his meditation and reflection around them, adapting them to life. In these meditations De Mello urges his readers to break through their illusions, irrational thoughts and beliefs, their human manipulations and abuses and experience the power of love. He notes that manipulations, prejudices and illusions are obstacles to love. He insisted that love springs from our awareness and our willingness to see others as they are devoid of biases, prejudices and irrational judgments. He sees the process of self-awareness as a very difficult one indeed. According to him, “the most painful act is the act of seeing. But it is in that act of seeing that love is born”.
One of the most important points that Anthony De Mello makes in this book is that we should not be blind to our environment. In the first meditation under the title “Profit and Loss’, he takes his reflective theme from Matthew 16:26, ‘For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life.’ De Mello contradicts the worldly feeling with a soul feeling. He pointed out that the worldly feeling comes from self-glorification, the type that we get when we are praised, approved, accepted and applauded; while the second feeling comes from looking at the sunset, or sunrise or observing nature in general or from reading a book or watching a movie, or just doing something that we love to do for the sheer joy of doing it, without any ulterior motive. He went on to say that people do things or engage in activities that will produce emptiness, in their desires for approval, fame, popularity, success or power. “These feelings do not produce the nourishment and happiness that is produced when one contemplates nature or enjoys the company of one’s friends or one’s work. They were meant to produce thrills, excitement – and emptiness.” Anthony contends that people with worldly feelings are like a group of tourists who sits in the bus with the shade pulled down while driving pass a “gorgeously beautiful country, lakes and mountains and green fields and rivers…They do not have the slightest idea of what lies beyond the windows of the bus, and all the time of the journey is spent in squabbling over who will have the seat of honor in the bus, who will be applauded, who will be considered. And so they remain till the journey’s end. This reminds me of reading one of Martin Luther King’s sermons, “Remaining awake through a great Revolution.’ In this sermon, Dr. King talked about a man by the name of Rip Van Winkle who slept for twenty years while a great revolution was taking place. According to Dr. King, “…one of the greatest liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amidst a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”
In the second meditation, “Discipleship”, Anthony examines one other barrier to love and happiness. He stresses that the cause of unhappiness in the world is our false beliefs and our distorted worldview that we find difficult to question. According to him, “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.’ He contends that this programming was put into us by our tradition, our culture, our society, our religion. He noted that happiness cannot be defined or described. No one can give us happiness, it is either we have it or we do not. He confronts our assumptions and false beliefs that things, people or place can make us happy. In order to understand happiness, we must understand our false beliefs and let go of our attachments. He calls on us to see things or people that we are attached to as nightmares and let go of them. Once we let go of them, they will no longer have any power over us, then, we will understand what happiness is.
I find this meditation very fascinating indeed. I know that I am happy to the extent that things or people do not control me. If we can have the attitude of a plant in the forest that produces its flowers and fragrance to be enjoyed by all and not to be possessed by any one individual then will we understand true freedom and happiness. But don’t we, most of the time, manipulate people and control them so that we may feel loved and appreciated? This Anthony De Mello sees as an obstacle to love and happiness. And he is absolutely correct.
I must confess that it was not easy to say that my parents are nightmare, that I do not need them. But that is the truth, isn’t it? I know, of course, that my parents are very important to me. But I do not need them to make me happy. Neither people, nor money can guarantee my happiness. Christ puts it well when he says, “Watch, and be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a man’s life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more that he needs.” Lk. 12:15.
In the next post, I will continue with the remaining part of this review. But in the main time, if you come across the book, ‘The Way To Love’, it is sold for $7:00 in Amazon.com, please buy and read it. You will thank me for introducing you to it. Happy Good Friday to you!
Sounds like a great book and I will order it.
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