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Today’s read time: 11 min

Below are key insights from The Way to Love, one of the most transformative books I’ve encountered. Both times I read it - in 2017 and 2022 - it gripped my soul during and for weeks after.

At its core, the message is that we humans have an innate capacity to transcend stress, anxiety, and depression and to experience peace and happiness anytime, anywhere.

It explores, among other topics, our cultural programming, our attachments, our approach to change, our entanglement with compliments, our (lack of) self-awareness, and our adult wackiness compared to animals and children.

Author Anthony De Mello grew up in India and became a Jesuit priest and so his teachings reflect a unique blend of “Eastern” and “Western” spiritual thinking.

Open your mind and buckle up.

• There is only one cause of unhappiness = the false beliefs you have in your head … beliefs, so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them

• All the things you cling to and have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without = nightmares

• Your mind is creating unhappiness, all the time

• No thing or person outside of you has the power to make you happy or unhappy.

• It's not "you've made me so happy", but rather "when you and I met, happiness arose"

• The orchestra is within you everywhere you go; people outside of you simply determine what melody the orchestra is playing

• True happiness is uncaused. You're happy for no reason at all.

• Cultural Programming = demands about (1) how the world should be, (2) how you should be, and (3) what you should want

  • Your parents, society, culture, religion, past experiences have all decided your wants, desires, needs, etc.

  • Your mind stubbornly insists that reality be shaped to conform to its programming

• Worldly feelings (self-promotion, self-glorification) were invented by our society and culture to make us productive and controllable

• Our ego is forever competing, comparing, coercing, sermonizing, manipulating, seeking admiration, success, and fame; we have a strong desire to show off and please others

• Our culture is based on acquisitiveness and attachment; on anxiety and greed; on hardness and insensitivity of non-love

• We're programmed to be dissatisfied with ourselves

• The discontent we feel comes from not having enough of something

• Your negative feelings are caused, not by another person as you mistakenly think, but by your programming.

• Feelings of insecurity are generated by your emotional programming, something you are telling yourself in your head

• We have layers of fat in our mind. They consist of the beliefs we hold, the conclusions we've reached about people and things, the habits we've formed, and the attachments we have.

  • Beliefs → slant the way we see and touch reality

  • Ideas → we no longer love the person; we love our ideas about the person; once we conclude something about someone, we cease to see this person again

  • Habits → fisherman looks at the ocean and doesn't notice its grandeur

• We’re in a prison created by the beliefs and traditions of the above. To overcome, we:

  • Must see the walls of the prison

  • Contemplate the walls - spend hours observing our ideas, habits, attachments, fears without judgment and condemnation

  • Observe the things and people around us deeply

  • Observe how our mind functions

    • Are we even alive if we’re not conscious of our own thoughts & reactions?

• Familiarity breeds staleness, blindness, and boredom

• An attachment is a state of clinging that comes with the false belief that something or someone is necessary for your happiness

  • Almost every negative emotion you experience is the direct outcome of an attachment

• Say to people: I leave you free to be yourself, to think your thoughts, to indulge your taste, to follow your inclination, to behave in any way that you decide is to your liking … I leave you free to be yourself

• You see people and things not as they are, but as you are.

• Fears and attachments determine what you notice and block out in your experience.

• You must choose between your attachment and happiness; can't have both. Better off dropping your attachments!

• Change needs to be effortless; it can only be brought about by awareness & understanding, not effort.

  • Effort puts food into your mouth but can't produce an appetite

  • Effort keeps you in bed but can’t produce sleep

  • Effort makes you reveal a secret but can't produce trust

• Don't try to change through effort and desire to become something that your ego has planned; rather, study, observe, understand, be aware of your present state and problems, without pushing, without forcing things your ego desires

• Don't try to change yourself; instead, study every one of your reactions to people and things, without judgment then you'll always be open and fresh from moment to moment

• Remember: all the things you were previously insecure about? Well, in the present, you were able to handle them!

  • You can only cope with things when they are present, not before they occur and the present always gives you the resources and energy you need to deal with them!

• No one can teach you; they can only give you formulas, which is reality filtered through the mind of someone else

  • Teachers can help you: (1) notice what's not real, (2) destroy your formulas, (3) indicate errors

• Find activities that delight you and grip your soul

• Animals

  • Never overweight; never eat or drink what’s not good for them

  • Never tense except right as the fight or flight reaction hits

  • Has all the rest and exercise it needs

  • Listens to its body and allows itself to be guided by the body's wisdom

  • Birds, for example, have no concept of the future, no words in their heads, no anxiety about what their fellow birds think of them

• Rose = perfectly content to be itself, no desire to be anything other than it is

• Lamps don't withhold their light from wicked people who walk by

  • Stop seeing people as good and bad

  • The idea that people can’t help behaving the way they do → see them as ignorant and unaware, as crippled; not blame-worthy

• Child's "innocence" = inability to wear a mask or pretend to be anything other than what it is; same with a dog, a rose, a star, etc.

  • Only an adult human is able to be one thing and pretend to be another

• Grown-ups corrupt children by:

  • Punishing the child for telling the truth or revealing him/herself

  • Pushing them to become successful, famous, powerful, etc.

  • Comparing ourselves to others and the children to others

  • Encouraging them to imitate others

• Children are given the drug of approval, appreciation, attention, success, prestige, and power which results in:

  • Feeling of terror at the prospect of failure, mistakes, criticism from others

  • Becoming dependent on people

  • Others having the power to make them miserable

  • An experience of loneliness when ignored or disapproved of

• Love, unfortunately, is too often a camouflage for selfishness and greed

• Love is unaware of itself

• The moment coercion or control or conflict enters, love dies

• Things like love and freedom and happiness .. we cannot really know what they are; we can only observe their opposites

• E.g. "You are pretty" … you often respond by:

  • (1) hardening yourself (if you knew me, you'd know I'm actually ugly deep down) OR (2) allowing yourself to be thrilled by the compliment.

  • Both are wrong .. You're neither ugly nor beautiful .. You're you

  • If you get caught up in other's compliments, you eat the fruit of tension and insecurity and anxiety

  • Sure, you're "beautiful" today but you could be "ugly" - and thus, depressed - tomorrow

  • Either way, it’s dangerous to form an image of ourselves based on the judgments of others

  • Ultimately, what they say about you reveals more about them than it does you

  • When you accept a compliment, you give up control to that other person; you try to live up to another's expectations, your happiness then depends on his/her judgment

  • So … beware of + ignore them!

• A good deed is never so good as when you have no consciousness that it is good. Once you're aware of your holiness, it becomes self-righteous.

• We often ask the wrong question - when irritated or angry with someone, don't ask what's wrong with that person; ask, what does this irritation tell me about myself

  • Find out how you're causing the irritation

  • A likely reason why the person's so-called defects are irritating you is that you have them yourself

  • Perhaps, too, another's words or behaviors point out something in your life and in yourself that you've refused to see

  • Or, perhaps, that person isn't living up to the expectations that have been programmed into you

• See your negative emotions, defects, handicaps, errors, attachments, neuroses as a necessary part of your development. Plus, they hold out a promise of growth and grace for you and others.

  • If you cause pain / negative feelings in others, you're in that moment a teacher for them; an instrument that offered them a seed for self-discovery and growth

• Life carries all things away while you crave for stability and permanence

• You must see things for yourself - to look without fear and without formula

• Be aware of your attachments, your reactions and your relationships

• Face the death, loss and separation from loved things and loved ones NOW

What cut deep for you? What do you disagree with? Let me know.

With deep appreciation,
Phil