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Another illusion is that external events have the power to hurt you, that other people have the power to hurt you. They don't. It's you who give this power to them.

Anthony de Mello

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Anthony de Mello
Age: 55 †
Born: 1931
Born: September 4
Died: 1987
Died: June 2
Philosopher
Priest
Psychologist
Theologian
Writer
Bombay
Power
Give
Giving
External
People
Illusion
Events
Hurt
Spiritual
Another

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Pleasant experiences make life delightful. Painful experiences lead to growth.
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Name one practical, down-to-earth effect of spirituality, said the skeptic who was ready for an argument. Here's one, said the Master. When someone offends you, you can raise your spirits to heights where offenses cannot reach.
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A good teacher offers practice, a bad one offers theories.
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God in heaven holds each person by a string. When you sin, you cut the string. Then God ties it up again. Making a knot, bringing you a little closer to Him. Again and again your sins cut the string and with each knot God keeps drawing you closer and closer.
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Love springs from awareness.
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The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas.
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The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate second, including the excluded third, admitting that you are wrong.
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You can will an act of service but you cannot will love.
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Wisdom comes to those who learn nothing, unlearn everything.
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If the heart is unobstructed, the result is love.
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We're crazy, We're living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything.
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The way to really live is to die. The passport to living is to imagine yourself in your grave. Imagine you're lying in your coffin....Now look at your problems from that viewpoint. Changes everything, doesn't it?
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The feigning sleeper can delude others he cannot delude himself. The false mystic, unfortunately, can delude both others and himself.
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The butterfly in a caterpillar: the eagle in an egg the saint in a selfish human being.
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You are so proud of your intelligence, said the master. You are like a like a condemned man, proud of the vastness of his prison cell.
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There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved.
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Because everyone is the same distance from the sun. Does it really lessen the distance if you live on top of a skyscraper?
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Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.
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If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else.” “I know. An overwhelming passion for it.” “No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.
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A disciple, in his reverence for the Master, looked upon him as God incarnate. Tell me, O Master, he said, why you have come into this world. To teach fools like you to stop wasting their time worshiping Masters.
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