Anthony De Mello & Awareness

In Anthony De Mello’s book, Awareness, he opens with a story about someone not wanting to go to school.

“A father knocks on his son’s door. "Jaime," he says, "wake up!"

Jaime answers, "I don’t want to get up, Papa."

The father shouts, "Get up, you have to go to school."

Jaime says, "I don’t want to go to school."

"Why not?" asks the father.

"Three reasons," says Jaime. First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school.

And the father says, "Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school.

First, because it is your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because you are the headmaster." Wake up! Wake up! You’ve grown up. You’re too big to be asleep. Wake up! Stop playing with your toys.”

The book goes on to explain how we are all asleep. It touches on theories that I interpret this way. What happens if you are in your car and you fall asleep at the wheel? You crash!

How many of us are crashing without even knowing it? How many of us are just broken vehicles moving at slow speed or on cruise control? When we realize what we need and not necessarily want, we begin to repair our vehicles from the inside, but it takes waking up.

Mr. De Mello says, “Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don’t believe them. Don’t believe them! All they want you to do is to mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced.”

In this hard hitting tale of awareness, the reader is inclined to wake up, get out of bed, throw off the covers and start living. It is the process of living that Mr. De Mello guides us down the road to enlightenment; not his enlightenment, but our own.

“Spirituality means waking up. Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep without ever waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. You know ~ all mystics ~ Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion ~ are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare.”

On behalf of Mr. De Mello and myself, I invite you all to wake up.


Mini Biography

Anthony De Mello was a Jesuit priest from India who influenced the world through his intuitive understanding of the human condition. Well versed in parables, he influenced many in spiritual traditions outside mainstream Christianity.

His teachings were temporarily banned within the Roman Catholic Church. Though the ban has since been lifted, Catholics are still advised to avoid his writings. Mr. De Mello is among many on the Roman Catholic Church blacklist, a second home for mystics.