Favorite Quotes.
"As well search for an eagle's nest on the bed of an ocean, as search for happiness in the world outside of you." (6)
"Look into the very real possibiliy that the reason why this person's defects or so-called defects annoy you is that you have them yourself. But you have repressed them and so are projecting them unconsciously into the other. This is almost always true but hardly anyone recognizes it." (87)
Know Thyself.
People tend to have similar goals, desires, fears, hopes, and dreams. Most want to be rich, successful, do meaningful work, be admired, loved, respected, happy.
Yet none of these are innate or fixed, though some come close. I think people will always want to be respected. But the other goals are valuable because they are linked to something deeper. Being rich → status → respect. Being rich → meeting basic needs and being prepared for emergencies → security → self-preservation.
The problem is that these are link chains. No link implies the next with certainty. Maybe there's an 80% chance being rich implies meeting needs, but already this means attaining security is capped at 80% if we chase it through the "being rich" path. Humans are terrible at interpreting probability so this is hard to correct.
But there are billions of people with similar goals; surely, we must have converged on the optimal means of meeting our needs? I don't think so, precisely because we have similar goals. This is just supply and demand. If donuts grant 100 utils and donutholes grant 1 util, and we have a lot more donutholes than donuts, the optimal solution isn't for everyone to go for donuts. Having the same goals doesn't mean we should all achieve them the same way. In fact, that's the worst way to go about it.
Anyway, all of this is just about why our goals and methods of achieving them are misguided. Now what?
De Mello's answer: stop instinctively responding to things. Your programming (choice of goals and methods of achieving them) is deeply flawed. So do the opposite of what you want to do.
If someone forces you to walk one mile, walk two, so you can practice repressing that instinctive hate and desire to stop, choosing instead to just observe the instincts as they try to make you miserable.
And make no mistake: it is your programming/instincts that are the cause of your unhappiness.
An almost tautological definition for the cause of unhappiness is "life is not giving you what you need." What every spiritual leader and person-who-has-thought-about-this-for-their-whole-life recommends is rewriting that definition of unhappiness as "life is not giving you what you have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without."
Instead, we try to change life in order to make it give us what we want. The terrible truth about that is: it usually works - but it almost always takes a long time, during which you resign yourself to remaining unhappy. The typical example: working 40 years at a boring job so you can retire peacefully. Even if retirement brings serene happiness (which it doesn't seem to), it was you who delayed that happiness for 40 years.
The answer is to change yourself. Don't convince yourself you don't want what you're not getting. Rather, convince yourself you don't need what you're not getting. Then the want falls away too - a desire is only strong if it's a necessity.
Attachment.
Persuading ourselves is nearly impossible if we rely on willpower. So don't. Instead, rely on sight: see that you don't need this thing to be happy. This is super abstract, so here's an example of a thought experiment.
Another observation: when we finally get something we deeply desire, we're ecstatic. But without fail, we notice the happiness high fading after a little time. Dopamine triggers can't be monotonous. Instead of dreading the hedonic treadmill, why not internalize it? Use it as a tool to notice the sabotaging nature of attachments.
How do we know what is attachment? Let's construct a situation where a person can only have a single attachment and look for its key qualities. De Mello uses the example of a person in a concentration camp who suddenly gets a large amount of food. They hastily eat with their right hand, but use their left to keep others away. This positive emotion of thrill, elation coupled with the negative emotion of fear, anxiety is characteristic of all attachments.
What if, like most people, you harbor many attachments? By now you must have noticed this truth: even if you attain most of your attachments in one day, your mind will be swallowed up by the regret of not fulfilling the last one.
I think this is why gratitude journals seem to make people happier. Actively thinking about what you have instead of what you don't bypasses the anxiety of not attaining a desire. But still, simple gratitude doesn't prevent attachment-based "gratitude," so I don't think it's anything more than a band-aid solution.
Why is escaping attachment worth it? Because you will enjoy what you were attached to even more once you let go of that attachment. De Mello: "if you learn to enjoy the scent of a thousand flowers you will not cling to one or suffer when you cannot get it." It is because of your attachments that you refrain from stopping to appreciate the varied experiences of life. But with increased variety comes deeper appreciation and enjoyment.
The Middle Road.
Consider the spectrum of all possible attitudes toward changing ourselves. Leftmost is contentness with our present selves and rightmost is striving for self-improvement.
As a child, I spent a lot of time on the left extreme. Self-improvement necessitates some ideal to strive toward and at this point, I hadn't begun to seriously compare myself to others. If I'm lucky enough to grow old and unlucky enough to not see age-reversal in my lifetime, again I think I'd be on the side of pure contentness, though this time I think it'll be because I don't anticipate having a lot of time left and don't think self-improvement is worth the effort.
So why have I been pushing myself to the right side of that spectrum if I know I must start and end on the left? Because the left side sucks: contentness is fine but it can also mean stagnation, laziness, sleep, pride, boredom.
The problem with the right side is that those comparisons with others that motivate self-improvement nurture self-hatred. Needing to become better means our current self isn't good enough. Change is intrinsically violent, and so our failed and successful attempts at self-improvement are violence born from intolerance and discontent.
Finding a balance isn't easy. Honestly, I seem to have found a compromise where I get the worst of both ends: an attitude toward self-change that remains both prideful and entitled while jealous of others.
De Mello's solution is self-understanding, which can only be attained by turning off all desires to improve oneself. Any desire to improve oneself is born from ego. Instead, just observe your reactions to people and things with no desire for reform.
This itself brings about a change. All change is violent, but this isn't violence grown from ambition. It's a Natural violence - the "kind of violence that arises within mystics who storm against ideas and structures that have become entrenched in their societies."
To be less abstract, become like a child. If children are grown-ups who haven't yet succumbed to constant comparison, to revert back to that state we must seek out that spark of originality that was stamped out so long ago. What possible justification allows exchanging that originality for a life spent addicted to applause and those empty things called success and fame?