Joel's Reviews > Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

I picked up this book at a monastery in Northern California about 10 years ago and have kept it close ever since.

De Mello, espousing no religious agenda, contends we've been brainwashed as to our typical ideas of love and happiness. This untypical priest--his writings were denounced by the Pope--says our attachments, illusions, conditioning and general unawareness keep us anxiety-ridden. (Maybe the Pope didn't like de Mello's appreciation of the prostitute scene in Fellini's "8 1/2.")

The author says, "If we really dropped illusions, we would be alert. The consequence of not doing this is terrifying and unescapable. We lose our capacity to love. If you wish to love, you must learn to see again....How can you love someone whom you do not even see? Do you really see someone you're attached to?"

And once we have the "awareness" he asks, "Can you imagine the relief when you don't have to impress anybody anymore? Oh, what a relief. Happiness at last! You no longer feel the need or the compulsion to explain things anymore."

Read this book and feel free.