Awareness

Rating:
Summary: Anthony De Mello is an enlightened man, a true mystic.
Review: Although Father De Mello died in 1987, I will speak of him as living because through his writings he is certainly alive and well. He is so alive, in fact, that The Vatican Information Services has a web page ("Notification concerning the writings of Fr. Anthony De Mello, SJ") devoted to discrediting De Mello's work. Here is my summary of that page: "Father DeMello does not think like we want him to think, so Catholics should disregard what he has to say."

...

Awareness is the simplest and most profound book I have ever read. It is less than 200 pages, and I imagine I can (and might) spend the rest of my life reading it. So consider this my "notification" to you about the writings of Anthony DeMello: to the degree that any of us allow ourselves to be awakened by this book --- or any other of his books --- we will be changed forever.

And apparently that makes the Pope nervous.

-Thom Rutledge, ...

Rating:
Summary: Wake Up!!!!
Review: Wake up! Wake up! If you do or you don't...I really don't care. Superb message this book has to transmit, but whether you understand it or not--and whether you are willing to give up all your programming--it's up to you. Like he says, if you profit from it...that's good, but dont thank him, if you dont, its your bad not his!(it wouldnt make a difference 'cause he's dead anyway.) In all the self-help books ever written, true wisdom isn't always present. But De Mello, once again if you understand him, teaches you how to dig within your soul and obtain the wisdom from there. I have read the Bible many times, yet after reading this book it's as if a new light was shed upon God's message to humanity. The parallels found between the lives of Jesus and all the prophets, and the lifestyle which he describes as being 'awake' definitely make a lot of sense. Read it 3,4,5,1000+ times if you wanna reduce life to its lowest terms and be able to suck out the marrow of life!

Rating:
Summary: The strangest thing I've ever read
Review: This is the strangest thing I ever read. I always thought the world was problematic. It never occurred to me that I am the problem, not the world. Dale Carnegie once said "success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get". I never understood that until I read this book. You are in for the shock of your life, assuming that you are ready to understand it. As he says, your ability to understand this is relational to how much truth you can take before you run away. People will always tell you "I just want the truth", but don't believe them, even for a second. What they REALLY want is to be right, first and foremost. The right God, the right philosophy, the right facts..... Then, if there's some room left over for the truth, so be it. THAT'S how people operate. They never consider that life is not the problem, THEY are the problem. He will prove this to you, and although that sounds painful, it's actually joyful and liberating. No need to judge the world anymore. He will shatter the belief system that makes you unhappy, and whether you know it or not, you are unhappy. One can be the happiest person in the entire depression ward of a hospital and can truely believe that they are happy based on relative comparison, but they are not happy. They don't know what true, unconditional happiness is. He will show you TRUE happiness, TRUE love, TRUE peace. Are you ready for that? I'll bet you're not.

Rating:
Summary: This book changed my life
Review: This was the hardest book I have ever read. Each page threw up another challange to my way of thinking. It shattered forever my view of the world and my role within it. But in the end it showed me how to become awake and alive and happy. I am no longer a slave to my programming. I no longer concern myself with how others see me. The fear I lived with for years is gone. I read this book two years ago and have enjoyed peace of mind and freedom from fear ever since, even though I have been through some very tough times. This book will challange you to the core but if you can accept its message you can find your own path to awareness.

Rating:
Summary: I know, the truth can hurt, but come on, don't be a wimp.
Review: i know that some people are very strong on the traditional christian path, or some other rigid belief system, and may disagree with de mello's words simply because he doesn't dress up the truth at all to make people feel comfortable. I actually respect that because it's sometimes hard to speak the raw truth when you know it may hurt someone's feelings. but I can say this, i've been in the same rigid religious place. (probably even more devout and ascetic, fasting and abstaining from the desires rigorously.) I actually was studying to be a pastor for a certain christian church, but these teachings were like a finger pointing toward the moon for me; not the truth itself, just a guide.. so all i can say is: what can be so bad about this book, since after really absorbing its intense life altering message, i am free from worry, ego, stress, suffering, anger.. or at least when these things do appear, i can truly observe them from 3rd person and the nightmare just dissappears..i think the fact that these words changed my own life so drastically is enough to prove their credibility. not to mention all of my freinds who have had the same experience..oh, and by the way, i still have a real love for god, its just not an attachment. for example, i experience divine peace even on the days where it feels like god has abandoned me, like when jesus on the cross said "my lord, why have you forsaken me"..i no longer feel forsaken. i mean really, you are so much bigger than your beliefs!!!

Rating:
Summary: The strangest thing I've ever read
Review: This is the strangest thing I ever read. I always thought the world was problematic. It never occurred to me that I am the problem, not the world. Dale Carnegie once said "success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get". I never understood that until I read this book. You are in for the shock of your life, assuming that you are ready to understand it. As he says, your ability to understand this is relational to how much truth you can take before you run away. People will always tell you "I just want the truth", but don't believe them, even for a second. What they REALLY want is to be right, first and foremost. The right God, the right philosophy, the right facts..... Then, if there's some room left over for the truth, so be it. THAT'S how people operate. They never consider that life is not the problem, THEY are the problem. He will prove this to you, and although that sounds painful, it's actually joyful and liberating. No need to judge the world anymore. He will shatter the belief system that makes you unhappy, and whether you know it or not, you are unhappy. One can be the happiest person in the entire depression ward of a hospital and can truely believe that they are happy based on relative comparison, but they are not happy. They don't know what true, unconditional happiness is. He will show you TRUE happiness, TRUE love, TRUE peace. Are you ready for that? I'll bet you're not.

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Works
Review: This is one of the most powerful books I have ever read in my life. It's amazing how that saying is the truth..."when the student is ready, the teacher will come" This book came at the perfect time and it rocked my world. What an awesome truth teller. Read it slowly and savor each word

Rating:
Summary: Top list
Review: This book is on my top 5 list of all time. It was given to me at I time when I was ready to hear what it had to say, and I re-read it whenever I have the chance. Though I was unclear about a few parts, I found it helpful to keep reading, as he returns to themes later on, and this reinforces what he is saying. Of all the self-help material out there, I find this to be the clearest, most succinct, most honest, and most direct. If you want to move through painful parts of your life or begin appreciating things -- I wholeheartedly recommend this!

Rating:
Summary: A Statistically Significant 5 Star Gift
Review: As of this date 50 of 55 have given this book a 5 star review. Tony De Mello will remain immortal through his writings and Awareness is a gift which I will appreciate each day of my life through a daily reading of one (or more)of Tony's 58 gems of spirituality. This book was a gift to me and it is a wonderful "opportunity of reality" to give the book to my friends and family members. One of my many enjoyments in life is to laugh outloud while I am reading a book ... which I did so many times throughout Awareness beginning with the empathic story of the headmaster who didn't want to get up in the morning and go to school. Tony's sudden death of heart failure at age of 56 was his last mortal reminder to live each day and each moment of our lives with love and Awareness.

Rating:
Summary: AWAKE! You are not meant to be a brain in a jar!
Review: This book will throw a monkey wrench into the gears of your mechanical modern mind. Not just the mechanical mind of the secular consumer, but more so for the religious, who just may be "worshipping a mental idol." This book is about waking up existentially. Quit adopting the externals of others, whether saints or not, quit absorbing things to your false self, quit personalizing everything, quit identifying with what makes you both seemingly happy and miserable; and what is so great is that you are not to actively "quit" these things. Instead, look. Exist. Listen. Awareness, awareness, awareness. As in the words of that unknown author of "The Cloud of Unknowing": instead of realizing "what you are", realize "that you are".

The awareness spoken of in this book is not self-consciousness, not a straining of the will or mind; in fact, the awareness in this book implies a kind of good unawareness.

Some other reviewer on this page says this book is "watered-down yogiism". He goes on to say basically, in more or less words, that this book is Godless and is psuedo-eastern escapist pacisfist quietistic navel-gazing crap. Now, it MUST be noted, this book is for people who are capable of understanding that De Mello is not here teaching a doctrine of Salvation, so to speak. He is not saying, "okay, here is how you save yourself..." No. It is more like he is saying, "okay, here is how to be yourself..." He is not saying that awareness is salvation. No. Awareness is simply awareness. Christ was aware of all that was going on around Him. This came with being fully human. Christ wants us to be fully human and to love Him as humans, not as rigid "religious" mercenaries, mistaking our discursive thoughts and mental images for Christ Himself. Our discursive thoughts and mental images are good, but reality keeps on going, not mechanically, but in a kind of always beginning, calling us to a kind of daily death, which is actually creation groaning in its birth pangs.

This book teaches what Christ taught when He spoke about the lilies of the field. I don't think we really take that teaching seriously. It is not about irresponsibility. It is not about feel-goodism, (which, I might add, is one of the things that De Mello nicely destroys in this book, leaving for the reader throughout the reading, many instances where you are neither ecstatically crushed under condemning news about yourself, nor led away on some discursive and clever "insight", flattering you away to neverland, but left plainly and wordlessly in front of yourself with your bubble burst, yet still pointing to some ground of your being that is undeniable, so that you don't get to indulge in the pleasure of crawling under a rock to sleep in self-pity.)

I recommend this book to those who have not only wept for their sins and errors, (by this I mean real error and sin, not social faults) but who have also realized a little bit that there is the danger of a certain pride and egoism that comes with weeping over them too much or in the wrong way. WAKE UP!