De Mello likens perception to the filtered version of reality that is presented to a president or a pope; in these scenarios, the leader cannot hear the feedback from the entire populace, but must instead be fed a tailored, selective version. Similarly, de Mello states that every person gets vast feedback from reality but is “filtering things out constantly” (133) and operating on a distorted view of the world. He then identifies craving (or attachment) as the chief cause of sorrow, asserting that it concentrates the mind on the emotions of fear and desire.

De Mello observes that society programs children to “crave” approval and success. He states, “Craving distorts and destroys perception. Fears and desires haunt us” (133). People beholden to these emotions then fight to obtain desired objects. However, when they get what they want, they feel only a brief thrill, then get bored and repeat the cycle with a new desire.

He also questions society’s definition of success, stating that the attributes that society labels “good” or “bad” are entirely arbitrary and essentially meaningless. He calls honors and prestige nonentities and advises people to deprogram themselves by gaining awareness. As he says, “You cannot change by an effort of the will; […] you cannot change through building up new habits. Your behavior may change, but you don’t. You only change through awareness” (135).

De Mello warns that attachments enslave people, forcing them to constantly rearrange their lives to protect what they think they need. He offers an exercise, challenging people to face a specific attachment and affirm inwardly, “I really do not need you to be happy” (137). Another exercise is to recall a past heartbreak and notice that even in the absence of this lost person or thing, one’s happiness has returned.

He recounts his own experience with this exercise, in which he consciously told God that he did not need the concept of “God” to be happy. He notes that mystics sometimes drop the idea of God in order to find the reality that the concept has obscured from their awareness. When de Mello told an intimate friend that he could be happy without them, this act dissolved his anxiety surrounding the bond and ultimately improved the friendship. He goes on to define love as “sensitivity” and “consciousness,” stating that true love is unlike attachment because attachment hardens the heart.

De Mello contrasts soft, sensitive love with the ruthlessness of need-based attachment, stating, “How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them” (140). From this idea, it follows that love can only flower only after an individual “die[s] to the need for people” (141) and grows comfortable with the resulting spiritual solitude, which he likens to a “desert.”

He advises not taking on others’ anger or guilt and recommends analyzing one’s own reactions without self-hatred. He claims that wrongdoing arises from unawareness and that by this definition a truly enlightened person, like Jesus, cannot do wrong.

De Mello begins with several different anecdotes that emphasize people’s tendency to give more weight to words and labels than to reality. He cites Mark Twain’s wry statement—“It was so cold that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death” (142)—to show that people often mistakenly regard representations of reality (like a thermometer) as reality itself. De Mello’s story about a Finnish farmer who chooses Finland over Russia to avoid the frigid cold of a “Russian winter” makes the same basic point.

He then tells the story of a guru who asserts that humans “react to words, feed on words, live on words, rather than on reality” (143). When a man disagrees with this statement, the guru deliberately enrages the man with insults, then instantly calms him with an apology. He then points out how easily the man’s mood was swayed by his words alone.

De Mello distinguishes knowledge from awareness, noting that people often do evil things under the guise of good, seeking to rationalize their behavior. He counsels a woman who feels intense stress in her service job and in traffic. She believes that she can only be happy in serene environments, but de Mello posits that people must learn to find happiness even in the middle of “tension.” In the woman’s case, the need for peaceful environments has become a hindering attachment in and of itself.

He tells the woman to observe her tension rather than changing it or seeking different circumstances. He then goes on to warn against the trap of turning awareness itself into a goal. He says, “The moment you make a goal out of it and attempt to get it, you're seeking ego glorification, ego promotion” (146). Instead, he praises the virtue of unselfconscious charity, which is free of spiritual greed.

De Mello observes that “the more you resist something, the greater power you give to it” (147). In this context, he interprets the Christian adage of “turning the other cheek” as the act of flowing with an enemy rather than opposing them, and he urges dissolving evil through understanding, reasoning that only light dispels darkness.

He also differentiates renunciation from the act of seeing through an illusion. To clarify this, he cites the hypothetical temptation of a billion-dollar check and posits that someone who attempts to renounce their greed by rejecting the check will only fall prey to the trap of “spiritual greed”—the desire to be virtuous, which is another example of an ego-based goal. Instead, he recommends recontextualizing the check as a mere piece of paper, at which point it ceases to wield any control or represent any form of temptation. In short, he warns against swapping a worldly ego for a spiritual one.

De Mello cites several specific people with cultural prejudices—namely, those who believe that women are “cattle” and those who have been taught to fear Russians. He states that such people are acting as they have been programmed, and it is therefore useless to blame them for their actions. In his view, ideologies distort reality, and true meaning remains a mystery. He notes that one side’s “terrorist” is another side’s “martyr.”

He then distinguishes between loneliness and aloneness, quoting George Bernard Shaw, and defines a true community as a gathering of free people who have no need to cling to others. He once again warns against making awareness a goal, comparing such a mindset to eating a menu instead of the food that its printed words only represent.

De Mello states, “The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that” (150). He redefines death itself as “resurrection,” using the analogy of a caterpillar-turned-butterfly. In his view, unaware, “asleep” people cause the world’s ills, and the act of “waking up” addresses the root causes of such evils.

He recalls the Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe, who said that systems are only as good as the people who use them. He emphasizes the importance of changing oneself before attempting to change the world to fit one’s preferences, cautioning that unawakened, unaware attempts at reform often mask pride.

He rejects willpower and ideals as shallow methods of effecting personal change, and he advocates finding the root cause of one’s unwanted behavior, stating that when one truly understands the reasons, the problem itself often dissipates. He counsels a priest who calls himself “lazy” and helps the man to realize that his depression is rooted in anger over a failed exam that derailed his career hopes. This insight restores the man’s energy.

De Mello then describes a young Jesuit who had many fine qualities but inexplicably bullied his employees. During a talk, the man finally revealed to de Mello that he felt shame over his mother’s menial job and had been expressing this displaced rage toward other servants. Once the man understood and voiced the truth of this dynamic, his abusive behavior ended. De Mello uses this story to emphasize that insight, not effort, is the engine of change.

De Mello states that it is ineffective to consciously strive to imitate Jesus in order to attain a Christlike “awareness.” Instead, one must become aware as Jesus was. He compares the efficacy of willpower to the act of pushing a broken car to its destination, while gaining understanding is akin to a mechanic fixing the engine so that the car easily runs on its own.

He posits that constant inner pushing leaves people weary, whereas true insight makes the coveted inner change occur effortlessly. As he states, “You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. That’s where the evil comes from psychologically. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. […] But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding” (156-57).

De Mello recalls the day after his ordination in India, when a saintly Jesuit sent him to hear confessions. After three hours, he felt depressed, not by the sins but by the uselessness of the pious advice that he was giving. He was suddenly aware that such platitudes were ineffective cures for the “cancer” of unawareness.

He vowed to learn what would actually help people to change. He says that awareness and self-observation make one an expert, but the process is often blocked by self-condemnation, which must also be faced.

He compares awareness-driven change to a sailboat gliding with the wind: The pilot just steers. He notes that solid inner illusions “hit” reality and cause pain, like a man who says the stop—not the fall—is what injured him.

He then asserts, “Wisdom occurs when you drop barriers you have erected through your concepts and conditioning” (160). He recommends that a person deal with each new situation with a fresh, unbiased perspective that remains untainted by the experiences of the past. He quotes an Eastern sage who observed that unobstructed senses yield sight and hearing, an unobstructed mind yields wisdom, and an unobstructed heart yields love. From this perspective, wisdom requires being sensitive to the needs of the present moment rather than falling back on a lifetime of accumulated concepts.

De Mello offers a brief meditation on a gospel scene of Jesus praying alone, saying that love requires the clarity of aloneness because a person must see other people or situations as they truly are and respond appropriately. In his view, conditioning (in the form of concepts, prejudices, and labels) blocks clear sight. True seeing demands a disciplined, alert form of attention that most people avoid cultivating.

De Mello compares social conditioning to drug addiction: Society hooks people on approval, success, power, and prestige. He cites A. S. Neill, the author of Summerhill (1960), who said that healthy children are confident enough to be interested in things, while insecure children still cling to their parents.

This dependence breeds fear of failure and gives others power over one’s happiness. To capture this tension, he quotes Jean‑Paul Sartre’s observation that “hell is other people” (163) and then asserts, “When you are in this state of dependency, you always have to be on your best behavior; […] you've got to live up to expectations. To be with people is to live in tension” (164). He equates the fixation on other people's opinions to an addiction, stating that this fixation compels one to categorize other people as either supports or threats rather than seeing them as they truly are.

De Mello recommends enjoying the simple pleasures of life, stating that an animal instinctively knows what is best for it and does not overeat or fail to exercise when it needs to. He champions the “solid food” of life—good tastes, good reading, and vigorous thinking, and he laments that affluent cultures chase schedules and “fancy gadgets” and forget to listen to and enjoy the music they buy.

He advises people to “slow down” and “let [their] senses come alive” (166) in order to truly enjoy life. For example, a Jesuit friend who indulged in too many sweets now enjoys only a little, but does so “intensely.” Similarly, de Mello warns against photographing vacations and urges people to simply experience the events fully. He recommends an exercise of sitting quietly and listening to all sounds at once, as fully activating one’s senses can  catalyze profound change.

De Mello distinguishes between analysis and awareness. He cites the whimsical example of using analysis to name a deadly snake on one’s arm without having the true awareness that would compel one to avoid the danger instantly. He then extrapolates this example and asserts that a person with an addiction knows that the addiction is harmful to them but is not “aware” of it on a level that will effect change. He cites the example of a priest (a smoker) who knew that smoking could be deadly but did not change his habits until a medical scan detected potential cancerous growths on his lungs; he suddenly became “aware” that his smoking habit might kill him, and instantly changed his behavior.

He cites St. Ignatius’s comment on the importance of “tasting and feeling the truth” (168) in order to trigger spontaneous change.

De Mello proposes a meditation on death, telling his listeners to imagine their bodies in a coffin and then view their problems from that perspective. He states that this practice revives one’s sense of being alive and helps to free people from fear. He recommends making visits to graveyards in order to similarly purify one’s perspective.

He then cites the ideas of an astronomer friend of his who explains cosmic scale, stressing that when one gains a real sense of the vastness of the universe, this sudden shift in perspective can also cause one to become aware. When de Mello himself considered that the sun’s light is minutes old, that all starlight as seen from Earth is ancient, and that he universe contains hundreds of millions of galaxies, he had a different perspective on the sky. This example is meant to illustrate that true awareness differs from mere information.

De Mello recommends dropping one’s dependencies in order to restore the capacity to love. Although such a withdrawal from one’s desires may feel like committing to living in a desert of solitude, he insists that staying with this path will lead to freedom. He tells a parable of a man who invents fire. Later, priests kill the man, enthrone his portrait, and teach people to venerate him, but no one makes the fire. De Mello rhetorically asks where the living fire of awareness has gone.

He urges insight over analysis and recommends devoting more time to developing self‑understanding than to observing rituals and ceremonies. He repeats his core practices. First, he advises people not to identify with low feelings. He recommends locating these feelings within oneself, then watching them pass, as if they are weather patterns. He recommends focusing on activities that bring joy in and of themselves and warns against taking actions in search of external approval. He contrasts “worldly feelings” like the joy of winning with “soul feelings” that are derived from nature, work, and non-possessive intimacy. In order to be truly aware, he advises people to cultivate soul feelings in order to live authentically in the present moment.