"the Way To Love" By Anthony De Mello

[SurferBabe]

Has anyone read this book? I have it on Kindle and last year I started reading it but got distracted by other things. I've picked it back up recently and am dedicated to really focusing on the principles this year.

Ladies... it is an excellent book. The author was a spiritual teacher and this was his last work before death. In it he shares his thoughts on how to love without attachment-- thus reaping the greatest benefit of love and romance and finding true happiness.

I recommend this book to everyone, but especially those who struggle with keeping a healthy emotional distance in romantic, platonic, and even family relationships. It's a GREAT book for someone going through a breakup. It presents a way to re-frame things like rejection and abandonment. These principles are also useful for forming a healthier relationship with money and material possessions. The principles are not easy to practice as it requires a major shift in mindset that completely goes against how we've been programmed.

At these links you can find some excerpts from the book that are on his website...

Excerpt One

Has it ever occurred to you that you can only love when you are alone? What does it mean to love? It means to see a person, a thing, a situation, as it really is and not as you imagine it to be, and to give it the response it deserves. You cannot love what you do not even see...

Excerpt Two

Recall the kind of feeling you get when someone praises you, when you are approved accepted, applauded. And contrast that with the kind of feeling that arises within you when you look at the sunset or the sunrise or Nature in general or read a book or watch a movie you thoroughly enjoy.

Excerpt Three

An attachment isn't a fact. It is a belief, a fantasy in your head, acquired through programming....Getting rid of an attachment is a perfectly delightful task if the instrument you use to rid yourself of them is not willpower or renunciation but sight. All you need to do is open your eyes and see that you do not really need the object of your attachment at all; that you were programmed, brainwashed into thinking that you could not be happy or could not live without this particular person or thing.

Here are some of my favorite parts of the book:

Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings

Compare the serene and simple splendor of a rose in bloom with the tensions and restlessness of your life. The rose has a gift that you lack: It is perfectly content to be itself. It has not been programmed from birth, as you have been, to be dissatisfied with itself, so it has not the slightest urge to be anything other than it is. That is why it possesses the artless grace and absence of inner conflict that among humans is only found in little children and mystics.

Imagine you have a radio that no matter how you turn the knob picks up only one station. You have no control over the volume. At times the sound is barely audible, at others it is so loud that it almost shatters your eardrums... who would put up with this kind of performance in a radio? And yet when your heart behaves in this kind of crazy fashion you not only put up with it but even call it normal and human.

Think of the numerous times you were tossed about by your emotions... in every instance it was because your heart became set on getting something that you did not have or on holding onto something you had...

...to put it briefly, the moment you pick up an attachment, the functioning of this lovely apparatus called the human heart is destroyed....

... if you want to liberate your heart, you must give serious, prolonged thought to four liberating truths...

Here are the four liberating truths:
1. You must choose between your attachment and happiness. You cannot have both.
2. You were not born with this attachment. It sprang from a lie taught to you by society, your culture, or yourself that you could not be happy without this thing or person. So make your choice: do you want your attachment, or your freedom and happiness?
3. If you want to be fully alive you must develop a sense of perspective. Life is infinitely greater than this trifle your heart is attached to and which you have given the power to upset you.
4. No person or thing outside of you has the power to make you happy or unhappy.

I have the Kindle version but just ordered the hardcover and a few paperbacks to give to a few of my friends going through divorce and ltr breakups. There might be a free pdf online but I haven't searched.

If anyone has it... what do you think? I'd love to start a discussion in this thread.

 

[biznesswmn]

I love tony demello. His book 'awareness' changed my life

I know of this title but never read it. Its now on my list. Thanks @ArcticFemme

 

[Fine 4s]

Uhm.....I really feeling this @ArcticFemme !!!!!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I really don't want to accumulate all these 'relationship' books and would rather rent them from a library.
But this one....I'd keep on the bookshelf. It sounds like it speaks to a higher purpose and reason. This type of book would encourage me to adjust my thinking.
Gosh I have a lot of books to read.

 

[Fine 4s]

I just wanted to post again how excited I am to read this book LMAO!
THANK YOU!!!!!

 

[BlueSage]

Thanks for sharing this! I will add it to my list and read it after I call in the one and figure out why men don't love women like me

 

[Fine 4s]

LOL @BlueSage

 

[SurferBabe]

Uhm.....I really feeling this @ArcticFemme !!!!!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I really don't want to accumulate all these 'relationship' books and would rather rent them from a library.
But this one....I'd keep on the bookshelf. It sounds like it speaks to a higher purpose and reason. This type of book would encourage me to adjust my thinking.
Gosh I have a lot of books to read.

I agree. I have most of those relationship books and while they all serve their purpose, this one is the only one that really deals with spiritual growth. It's not only about romantic relationships. Romantic attachment is no different from any other type of attachment. This mindset shift has served me well in coming to terms with the fact that I'm happiest when I can just be myself, a free-spirit, without getting so caught up in material possessions to prove my success. Late last year I got rid of my really nice car and got my old clunker back up and running. I'm happy with the clunker because it is still reliable and I save enough money with it to allow myself to do what I really love-- travel and go to the beach every weekend. That is what makes me happy-- not my attachment to looking good when I pull into valet parking. I have many other attachments I need to release.

 

[Fine 4s]

Great example how this is much bigger than romantic relationships.
We're here for so much more than that.

 

[GrowthHairMindset]

I just ordered this book! THANK YOU so much for sharing this. I'm very spiritual but this heartbreak has shook me to my core. Gaining a new perspective is what I desperately need right now. I can't wait to read every page. I hope in a few months I can look back and smile at what's a very painful situation for me at the moment.

 

[YvetteWithJoy]

I just read the preview on Amazon. It resonates extremely deeply with Miguel Ruiz's books, such as Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, The Circle of Fire, The Mastery of Self, etc.

I feel like Ruiz's Voice of Knowledge really breaks down what I read in the DeMello preview: I was nodding my head and thinking, "I know EXACTLY what you mean when you wrote that analogy about folks riding on a bus through a beautiful country with the shades down, only able to see the interior of the bus and argue/worry about getting the best seat, never knowing about the whole world outside." Miguel Ruiz has broken this down so that you just KNOW this truth. He tells you the cause and what to do about it to get to a very beautiful life.

Thanks for sharing. I'll add to my Amazon list.

 

[SurferBabe]

I just read the preview on Amazon. It resonates extremely deeply with Miguel Ruiz's books, such as Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, The Circle of Fire, The Mastery of Self, etc.

I feel like Ruiz's Voice of Knowledge really breaks down what I read in the DeMello preview: I was nodding my head and thinking, "I know EXACTLY what you mean when you wrote that analogy about folks riding on a bus through a beautiful country with the shades down, only able to see the interior of the bus and argue/worry about getting the best seat, never knowing about the whole world outside." Miguel Ruiz has broken this down so that you just KNOW this truth. He tells you the cause and what to do about it to get to a very beautiful life.

Thanks for sharing. I'll add to my Amazon list.

I'm going to have to check out Miguel Ruiz's books. It looks like most are on Audible which is perfect for my upcoming roadtrips!

And that bus analogy really gripped me, because it reminded me of the times I was going through some heartbreak or inner turmoil over rejection, and how so many of the amazing experiences I had during that time didn't matter to me because I was so caught up in being sad that I didn't fully take advantage of them.

For example, I posted about some unrequited like situation I went through with a guy last year that left me feeling powerless. I remember one day I was hanging at the beach with some girlfriends when I made the stupid decision to stalk his FB profile (dumb, dumb I know). He was hugged up on some girl. Of course this sent me into a dark place emotionally. Now I couldn't fully enjoy the good times we were having on the beach. That day, one of my friends ran into a former co-worker at the beach and we ended up being invited to a party at a beach house. Here I was at a private beach with friends-- surf and turf, cold beers, daiquiris, good music, and perfect sunny weather-- yet I was sad the entire time. None of it mattered. I look back and kick myself over that. I was so caught up in a common man's approval that I denied myself the ability to fully enjoy an experience that the universe blessed me with for my own enjoyment.

So now I am working to become more aware of when my mindset shifts to a place where approval and acceptance become more important than my happiness. Funny how 'Men Don't Love Women Like You' sorta touched on this-- that this world was created for our enjoyment. Once we let insecurity and our desperation for the approval of other people sidetrack us, then this experience is no longer about us... but about them.

 

[YvetteWithJoy]

I'm going to have to check out Miguel Ruiz's books. It looks like most are on Audible which is perfect for my upcoming roadtrips!

And that bus analogy really gripped me, because it reminded me of the times I was going through some heartbreak or inner turmoil over rejection, and how so many of the amazing experiences I had during that time didn't matter to me because I was so caught up in being sad that I didn't fully take advantage of them.

For example, I posted about some unrequited like situation I went through with a guy last year that left me feeling powerless. I remember one day I was hanging at the beach with some girlfriends when I made the stupid decision to stalk his FB profile (dumb, dumb I know). He was hugged up on some girl. Of course this sent me into a dark place emotionally. Now I couldn't fully enjoy the good times we were having on the beach. That day, one of my friends ran into a former co-worker at the beach and we ended up being invited to a party at a beach house. Here I was at a private beach with friends-- surf and turf, cold beers, daiquiris, good music, and perfect sunny weather-- yet I was sad the entire time. None of it mattered. I look back and kick myself over that. I was so caught up in a common man's approval that I denied myself the ability to fully enjoy an experience that the universe blessed me with for my own enjoyment.

So now I am working to become more aware of when my mindset shifts to a place where approval and acceptance become more important than my happiness. Funny how 'Men Don't Love Women Like You' sorta touched on this-- that this world was created for our enjoyment. Once we let insecurity and our desperation for the approval of other people sidetrack us, then this experience is no longer about us... but about them.

I can relate!

I realize that I linked several Ruiz books and he has quite a few. I recommend starting with The Voice of Knowledge and then getting Mastery of Love. The Voice of Knowledge, I feel, will amplify the meaning of De Mello's book The Way to Love so much. They resonate so much, I feel, but Ruiz goes deeper and has the best analogies, explanations, stories, and positive vibe to it all. If you do read The Voice of Knowledge, please let me know what you get from it and/or think of it!