Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

In one of his retreats, de Mello tells his audience that fear and love are the only two fundamental forces and that all violence arises from fear and the ignorance it breeds. He asks his listeners to recall a moment of anger and find the underlying fear that fueled it, whether that anger was caused by the fear of loss, of being diminished, or of having something taken away. He concludes that all angry people are actually frightened people.

He equates love, happiness, freedom, and God with the same reality as awareness. He says he will keep his retreat unstructured, returning to the same themes to allow people’s understanding to deepen.

De Mello defines awareness as observing one’s own experiences without judgment or interference, as if these events were happening to someone else. This practice leads to disidentifying from the egoic “me.” He describes it as a form of dying to the self, since attachment to what is “mine”—body, family, possessions—creates the emotional reactivity that prevents people from achieving true awareness.

He cites the Spanish mystic Teresa of Ávila, who was fortunate enough to experience a state of