Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Join here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life. (A space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living!)
This Friday continues our exploration of Anthony de Mello’s book Awareness: Conversations with the Masters. Learn more about the life and teachings of Anthony de Mello here.
Check out our bookshelf below for previous and future reading!
Listen and Unlearn
Anthony de Mello (1931 – 1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest and psychotherapist. A spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker, de Mello wrote several books on spirituality and hosted numerous spiritual retreats and conferences.
In a chapter titled Listen and Unlearn, de Mello explains,
Some of us get woken up by the harsh realities of life. We suffer so much that we wake up. But people keep bumping again and again into life. They still go on sleepwalking. They never wake up. Tragically, it never occurs to them that there may be another way. It never occurs to them that there may be a better way. Still, if you haven’t been bumped sufficiently by life, and you haven’t suffered enough, then there is another way: to listen.
Listening doesn’t have anything to do with agreement. It is an attitude of openness, a willingness to discover something new. “All I can do for you is help you to unlearn,” stressed de Mello. That’s what learning is all about where spirituality is concerned: unlearning almost everything you’ve been taught.
