The Daily Stoic - How to Create Change in Your Life

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

Today’s audiobook reading features the second excerpt from The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of Anthony de Mello. Anthony was an Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and spiritual teacher, writer, and public speaker who wrote several books on spirituality, including this collection of his last meditations on love and awareness. In today’s excerpt, Anthony discusses why awareness is a key part of creating real change in your life.This book is published by the Center for Spiritual Exchange, and you can buy your copy at The Painted Porch.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon Music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, from the Stoic texts, audio books that we like here recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life. Thank you for listening. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of The Daily, still a podcast. Last week I was telling you that I was introduced to this great little book by Anthony Dimeo, by the one and only Shaka Smart, the head basketball coach now at our KET University. And we brought you last week Dimeo's advice on how to enjoy life fully.

Well, this week's episode is also from the same book, The Way to Love. But in this excerpt, we're learning how to create change in your life. The way to love is Dimeo's collection of meditations and a very serstobic, marks-relious style on cultivating love and awareness in your life. This excerpt is about the desire to change, but then actually bringing that change into being into the world and how awareness is such a key part of doing that. This audiobook was published by the Center for Spiritual Exchange. So thank you to them for letting this publish it.

I carry the physical book at the painted porch, which you should check out, a lovely little book, and I'm indebted to Shaka for introducing it to me. And I feel very glad to pay that forward to you now. Enjoy! Sooner or later, there rises in every human heart, the desire for holiness, spirituality, God, call it what you will. One hears Mystics speak of a divinity all around them, that is within our grasp and would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich if we could only discover it.

People have some sort of a vague idea as to what this thing is, and they read books and consult gurus in the attempt to find out what it is that they must do to gain this elusive thing called holiness or spirituality. They pick up all sorts of methods, techniques, spiritual exercises, formulas. Then after years of fruitless striving, they become discouraged and confused and wonder what went wrong. Mostly they blame themselves. If they had practiced their techniques more regularly, if they had been more fervent or more generous, they might have made it.

But made what? They have no clear idea as to what exactly this holiness they seek is. But they certainly know that their lives are still in a mess. They still become anxious and insecure and fearful, resentful and unforgiving, grasping and ambitious and manipulative of people. So once again, they throw themselves with renewed vigor into the effort and labour that they think they need to attain their goal. They have never stopped to consider this simple fact. Their efforts are going to get them nowhere.

Their efforts will only make things worse, as things become worse when you use fire to put out fire. Effort does not lead to growth. Effort, whatever form it may take, whether it be willpower or habit or technique or a spiritual exercise, does not lead to change. At best, it leads to repression and covering over of the root disease. Effort may change the behaviour, but it does not change the person. Just think what kind of a mentality it betrays when you ask. What must I do to get holiness?

What must I do to get holiness? Is it it like asking how much money must I spend to buy something? What sacrifice must I make? What discipline must I undertake? What meditation must I practice in order to get it. Think of a man who wants to win the love of a woman and attempts to improve his appearance or build his body or change his behavior and practice techniques to charm her. to charm her. You truly win the love of others, not by the practice of techniques, but by being a certain kind of person. And that is never achieved through effort or techniques. And so it is with spirituality and holiness. Not what you do is what brings it to you.

This is not a commodity that one can buy or a price that one can win. What matters is what you are, what you become. Holiness is not an achievement. It is a grace called looking, observing, understanding. If you would only switch on the light of awareness and observe yourself and everything around you throughout the day, if you would see yourself reflected in the mirror of awareness, the way you see your face reflected in a looking glass, that is accurately, clearly, exactly as it is, without the slightest distortion or addition, and if you observe this reflection without any judgment or condemnation, you would experience all sorts of marvelous changes or be able to plan them in advance or decide

how and when they are to take place. It is this non-judgmental awareness alone that heals and changes and makes one grow. But in its own way and at its own time. Raising kids can be one of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday, parenting is unbearable. I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident

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as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. What specifically are you to be aware of? Your reactions and your relationships. Each time you are in the presence of a person, any person, or with nature, or with any particular situation,

you have all sorts of reactions, positive and negative. Study those reactions, observe what exactly they are and where they come from, without any sermonizing or guilt or even any desire, much less effort to change them. That is all that one needs for holiness to arise. But isn't awareness itself an effort? Not if you have tasted it even once. Or then you will understand that awareness is a delight. The delight of a little child moving out in wonder to discover the world. For even when awareness uncovers unpleasant things in you, it always brings liberation and joy.

Then you will know that the unaware life is not worth living. It is two full of darkness and pain. If at first there is a sluggishness in practicing awareness, don't force yourself. That would be an effort again. Just be aware of your sluggishness without any judgment or condemnation. You will then understand that awareness involves as much effort as a lover makes to go to his beloved or a hungry man makes to eat his food or a mountaineer to get to the top of his beloved mountain. to get to the top of his beloved mount. So much energy expanded, so much hardship even, but it isn't effort, it's fun. In other words, awareness is an effortless activity. Will awareness bring you the holiness you so desire?

Yes and no. The fact is you will never know. For true holiness, the type that is not achieved through techniques and efforts and repression, true holiness is completely unselfconscious. You wouldn't have the slightest awareness of its existence in you. Besides, you will not care, for even the ambition to be holy will have dropped. As you live from moment to moment, a life made full and happy and transparent through awareness. It is enough for you to be watchful and awake. For in this state, your eyes will see the Savior. Nothing else but absolutely nothing else. Not security, not love, not belonging, not beauty, not power, not holiness.

Nothing else will matter anymore. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoke Store. You can get them personalized, you can get them sent to a friend. The app goes the way. You go as the enemy, still in this is the key. The leatherbound edition of the Daily Stoke. We have them all in the Daily Stoke Store, which you can check out at store.dailystoke.com. Hey, Prime Members. You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music,

download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes

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