Awareness is Anthony de Mello’s best-selling guide to the spiritual life, now firmly established as a modern spiritual classic. It uses humour, compassion and insight to help readers into an understanding of the importance of awareness in order to understand ourselves and the world around us. With anecdotes and stories as well as guidelines and exercises in self-help, this book is filled with real wisdom and practical advice. It tackles the universal issues of change, happiness, suffering and loss and also gives direction on coping with love, anger and fear. One of the most gifted spiritual teachers of the 20th Century, Anthony de Mello was widely known throughout the world for his retreats, workshops and therapy courses before his untimely death in 1987.
I was recently sitting in one of Dublin’s main train stations on my way to my brother’s apartment. Late in the evening, the last trains were heading for the remoter outlying towns. Three work colleagues, professional types, sauntered along the platform after a long day’s work – laughing and joking. One of the guys, Gerry, started telling a joke and, as one does, one of the others interrupted with a witty remark.
But Gerry wasn’t happy at his joke being interrupted – “Shut up, Clodagh, I’ve spent the whole evening listening to your stupid accountant jokes – let me tell mine!” Clodagh started laughing “Are you serious, Gerry – we’re just having fun”. But Gerry got more annoyed and, like a bold two-year-old, refused to continue with his joke, storming off to one end of the platform.
Clodagh and the other guy sat down beside me. “What’s wrong with Gerry?” she asked. “Just ignore him and he’ll cool down” was the response. Five minutes later, as Gerry paced the platform, Clodagh followed – “Come on, Gerry, what’s wrong, this is stupid” – “F**k off” Gerry replied, sitting down the other side of me.
Just then, a young cleaner moved along the platform, emptying the bins into a large black bag, sweeping up rubbish as he went. He stopped in front of Gerry “Excuse me, sir” as he motioned to Gerry that he wanted to sweep some rubbish from under his seat. Once again, Gerry rose to the occasion – “F**k off” was his only response. “Sorry, sir?” “I told you to f**k off!” Gerry stood, kicking the black bag in a temper. The bag toppled and, in slow motion, fell onto the railway track – spilling rubbish all over the place.
Within a couple of moments, station security arrived – and as Gerry’s last train home pulled into the station that Tuesday evening, Gerry was being escorted from the platform, kicking and screaming, by two police men.
Now, make up your own mind – is this madness? What started as a stupid reaction to a throw-away remark, ended up with a night in the cells. And I don’t make these stories up!
You may just have mouse-clicked your way to a “phenomenal” life. That’s the kind of word my clients have been using over the last twelve years. Others say things like “astounding”, “amazing”, “epic” and “profound”. Some have said that what I do is “life-changing”.
Are you ready to change your life? – to be effortlessly happy and successful, way beyond what you think is possible – because many more of my clients describe their lives nowadays as “unbelievable”.
That’s what Gurdy.net is all about – it’s about being gurdy!
About eight years ago, during a family holiday in Spain, my youngest daughter – she was five at the time – swam around our pool everyday while we were BBQ-ing. Everyday she shouted that she was gurdy – that everyone and everything was gurdy. She actually meant that she was so happy, everything was so good, we hadn’t got a care in the world – she was having the time of her life. If the Oxford English Dictionary ever includes an entry for “gurdy” – that, pretty much, will be the definition.
Nowadays, gurdy is a word we use in our family everyday – because, everyday, we’re gurdy. Now, you can be gurdy too – effortlessly happy, everyday. All you have to do is take control of your mind – in doing so, you’ll take control of your life.
Normal people – and that includes most of us – are out of control. Decades of research from universities as diverse as Chicago and Milan have concluded that normal people use about 1% of their mental capacity to do what they’re supposed to be doing at each moment in time. For normal people, their minds live partly in the past – this activity leads us to believe ourselves to have inadequacies. And part of a normal person’s mind is wondering (or worrying) about the future.
So, a normal person’s mind is not all there – normal people’s minds control them, not the other way around. If you’re not in control of your own mind, are you, perhaps, insane? Are normal people mad?
The same universities have explored the way that abnormal people take control of their minds. As a result, abnormal people are more all here – more present. We notice this when we notice someone with charisma or presence. Abnormal people are more impressive and more successful. Some are even uncommonly happy!
The only difference between a normal life, that’s “OK” or “Not too bad” and a happy, successful life is the extent to which you are in control of your mind or, to put it another way, the extent to which you are here, paying attention, experiencing the here and now.
If you want to have a wonderful life, you need to take control of your mind. It is that simple. How do you do this? By re-training your mind to experience the present moment – using your five senses. In other words, by coming to your senses! For most people, this is no big deal. As children, we experienced our whole world through our five senses – we just need to sharpen up on our innate ability to do so. This is done by training yourself to pay attention to your five senses. In turn, this develops your ability to pay attention – to what your child is saying, to what a customer really wants, to writing that assignment, to saying just the right thing in the client meeting or interview.
Paying attention, using your five senses as your connection to the here and now, is the key – the only key, to an effortlessly successful and happy life.
For almost thirteen years I’ve been enabling my clients re-train their senses and, as a result, develop their ability to pay quality attention to what they are doing. A number of things happen as a result. They are more focussed at the task in hand – it’s done better, quicker and with greater satisfaction. They have more time to do other things that they really enjoy – and they enjoy them even more as a result. They have a better quality of experience with their nearest and dearest – and they’re more at home in their own skin.
However, perhaps the greatest benefit of re-developing your skills to pay attention is that enables you turn that attention to what you really, really want out of life. All my clients reflect on this carefully – because, very often we set ourselves goals and, when we achieve them, we realise that we’re still not happy. But, when they are sure what their objectives are, they then use the power of focus to set their minds to achieve that outcome.
What does that mean? Well an in-depth explanation is way beyond the space available here. Suffice it to say that they use their five senses to imagine how good they would feel having achieved their objective. Abnormally successful people have been doing this for many generations. Normal people call it belief.
You can believe too – and a have a wonderful life in the process. My many clients know what it’s like to believe – and to receive. And that’s what Gurdy.net is all about. It’s designed to enable you work at your own pace to re-discover your own innate ability to pay attention and use that attention to have a great life, a happy life, and effortlessly successful life.