The Happiness Podcast

The first thing to understand, if you really want to wake up, is that you don’t want to wake up. The first step to waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. You want to stay in your nice warm bed made of illusions and false beliefs.

There is a point I want to make that has to do with happiness. It is one of my favorite stories. You know, sometimes a story says more than a whole day’s lecture because it speaks to the depths within us, and this one certainly speaks to mine. This is a story of about a villager in India who comes across a sannyasi, which is a person who, having attained enlightenment, understands that the whole world is his home and the sky is his roof, and God is his father Who will look after him, so he moves from place to place the way you and I would move from one room of our home to another.

Life is a banquet. And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. There’s a story about some people who were on a raft off the coast of Brazil perishing from thirst. They had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water from a river flowing out to sea with such force that it reached their raft.  But they had no idea. In the same way, we’re surrounded with joy, happiness, and love but most people have no idea of it whatsoever.

We’re scared about things that are not. We’re tied to things that don’t exist. They’re illusions. They’re falsehoods. They’re beliefs; they’re not realities. The agonies we go through over things that we have—we have convinced ourselves that our happiness depends upon them, but it doesn’t.

Look into your own heart. Can you say? Oh, there's anger and quarrels in my life but there is no rancor, no bitterness, no hatred. Can you say? Oh, there is pain and suffering in my life, but there is no inner turmoil and conflict. There is a great deal of activity in my life, but there's no stress. Can you say that? If you can, you are a lovely oasis of peace in the vast desert of this world.  If you can't, it's time to awaken the oasis within you.

"I discovered something about ten years ago," Anthony De Mello states, "and it revolutionized my life. I became a new man.  Later, having discovered it, I found it in all the major religious writings, and I was amazed. I mean, I was reading it, but I hadn’t recognized it. I wished to God I’d found this when I was younger. Oh, what a difference it would have made."

You were given a taste of various psychosocial addictions: approval, attention, success, making it to the top, prestige, getting your name in the paper, power, being the boss. Having a taste for these drugs, you became addicted and began to dread losing them. Recall the lack of control you felt, the terror at the prospect of failure or of making mistakes, at the prospect of criticism by others. So you became cravenly dependent on others and you lost your freedom.

To exterminate the darkness, pronounce the name over each part of your being that is in need of healing (your heart … your mind … your limbs … your senses …) and see each part become aglow, alive with grace.

How do you surrender. Begin by seeking silence. For this, come home to yourself. Come to the present. Ask yourself: Where am I right now? What am I doing? What am I thinking? What am I sensing in my body? What is the quality of my breathing?

Imagine you walk into a church. The candles on the altar are the only source of light. You rest your eyes upon the host at the altar that stands out clear and white against the darkness. The host is like a magnet, for it draws your eyes and being toward itself as to the center. Most of our life we focus on the outer surface, but here you gaze into the very heart of things, the center of your being and of the world. As you keep looking a silence falls upon you.

God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to our puzzlement, we might hear God say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.”

What treasure? Is it people … places … occupations … things … experiences of the past … the future’s hopes and dreams?  Or is it something entirely different that God wants from us?

Imagine that you walk into a desert to contemplate your life. Immediately, you see how frequently you rush outside yourself —to people, occupations, places, things— in search of strength and peace and meaning, forgetting that the source of all is here within your own heart, understanding that it is here where you must search. Each person carries thoughts that have the power to bring instant peace. In this podcast, De Mello offers a way to search for yours.

Imagine you are in the presence of Christ and you ask him to give you a list of everything in you he finds defective— each indication of selfishness, each area where you have yet to grow, each thing in you you need to change.  Then ask him which of these defects, in his opinion, needs the most urgent attention.  Do you have the will to rise above this defect?

If you could choose the circumstances of your death, what would you choose? When your life is coming to an end, how many experiences shall you look back to and say, “To have experienced that alone would have made my life worthwhile”?

In this next session of the Wellsprings Series, Anthony De Mello provides the simple,  foundational elements that lead to an enlightened life. When you awaken, the world, your family, your feelings, your body, even your neuroses remain the same — it is you that are the same no longer. You are more loving now, more accepting of what is undesirable. More peaceful, too, for having come to see that attack and defense cannot lead to lasting change —only love and understanding can.

Anthony De Mello takes your mind on a vacation to find the place inside of you that steps out to the vast stillness of Heaven.

In this podcast, Anthony De Mello introduces his Wellsprings Series and discusses the spiritual power it holds to transform your life experience.

Do you want to change the world? How about beginning with yourself? How about being transformed yourself first? How do you achieve that? Through observation. Through understanding with no interference or judgment on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand.  When you say of someone, “He’s a Republican,” understanding has stopped at that moment. You slapped a label on him. “She’s a Democrat.” Understanding has stopped at that moment.  How are you going to understand what you disapprove of or what you approve of, for that matter?

All of this sounds like a new world, doesn’t it?

The first thing you need to do to wake up is get in touch with negative feelings that you’re not even aware of. Lots of people have negative feelings they’re not aware of. Lots of people are depressed and they’re not aware they are depressed. It’s only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they were. You can’t get rid of boll weevils on your farm if you’re not aware of their existence. To awaken, the first thing you need is awareness of your negative feelings

The great masters tell us that The Most Important Question in the world is: “Who am I?” Or rather: “What is ‘I’?” What is this thing I call “I”? What is this thing I call self? Who’s living in you as you? 

The harder you try to change, the worse it can get. Does this mean that a certain degree of passivity is all right? Yes, the more you resist something, the greater power you give to it. That’s the meaning, I think, of Jesus’ words: “When someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer him your left as well.” You always empower the demons you fight. That’s very Oriental. But if you flow with the enemy, you overcome the enemy.

Some people make awakening a goal. They are determined to get there; they say, “I refuse to be happy until I’m awakened.” In that case, it’s better to be the way you are, simply to be aware of the way you are. Simple awareness is happiness compared with trying to react all the time. People react so quickly because they are not aware. You will come to understand that there are times when you will inevitably react, even in awareness. But as awareness grows, you react less and act more. It really doesn’t matter.

Anthony De Mello in a nutshell.

Do not suppress desire, because then you would become lifeless. You’d be without energy and that would be terrible. Desire in the healthy sense of the word is energy, and the more energy we have, the better. But don’t suppress desire, understand it. Understand it. Don’t seek to fulfill desire so much as to understand desire.  Know your preferences. When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re moving toward wakefulness

A scientist observes the behavior of ants with no further end in view than to study ants, to learn as much as possible about them. He’s not attempting to change them or train them or get anything out of them. He wants to learn as much as possible about them. That’s his attitude. The day you attain a posture like that, you will experience a miracle. You will change—effortlessly, correctly.

Do you want to change the world? How about beginning with yourself? How about being transformed yourself first? But how do you achieve that? Through observation. Through understanding. With no interference or judgment on your part. Because what you judge you cannot understand. and what you do not understand cannot change.

The first thing I want you to understand, if you really want to wake up, is that you don’t want to wake up. The first step to waking up is to be honest enough to admit to yourself that you don’t like it. You don’t want to be happy.

When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live. Understand too, that happiness is not the same as excitement, it’s not the same as thrills. That’s another illusion, that a thrill comes from living a desire fulfilled. Desire breeds anxiety and sooner or later it brings its hangover. When you’ve suffered sufficiently, then you are ready to see it.

Love is generated through awareness and through no other way, no other way. Understand the obstructions you are putting in the way of love, freedom, and happiness and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness and the darkness will disappear. Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something that you have; love is something that has you.

You’re never so centered on yourself as when you’re depressed. You’re never so ready to forget yourself as when you are happy. Happiness releases you from self. It is suffering and pain and misery and depression that tie you to the self.

The pandemic has changed the world as we have known it.  What Anthony de Mello offers in this podcast is a change of mind, a change heart that opens to a new way of looking at the world, a new way of looking at life, at everything.  It is a simple way of being in which peace and happiness become your constant companions, even as you relate to all the changes the Pandemic imposes.

Are you having trouble with people? You find somebody selfish, moody, unreliable, rejecting, stupid, intolerable, irresponsible, insulting? Think of the troubles you have with human relations. Do you know the root of all of those problems? Hold onto your chairs.

Yesterday you had occasions to be happy that you weren’t even conscious of. Do you see them now? It is inconceivable that anyone could be grateful and unhappy. Thank the Lord for each event of yesterday and notice the effect this has on you. And the things you call unpleasant, undesirable — search for the good that comes from these … the seeds for growth they carry … and find reason to be grateful for them too.  Finally, see yourself moving through each portion of today in gratitude —and happiness.

Have you ever felt disgusted with life, sick at heart of constantly running away from fears and anxieties, weary of your begging rounds, exhausted from being dragged about helplessly by your attachments and addictions? Have you ever felt the utter meaninglessness of working for a degree, then finding a job, then settling down to a life of boredom; or, if you are an achiever, settling down to a life of  emotional   turmoil   caused   by the things that you are chasing after? If you have, and is there a single human being who hasn't, the divine flame of discontent has arisen within your heart.

Now is the time to feed it before it gets stamped out by the routine chores of life. Now is the Holy Season when you simply must find the time to get away and look at your life, allowing the flame to grow as you look, refusing to let anything distract you from this task.

Think  of  some  of  the  painful  events  in your life. For how many of them are you grateful today, because thanks to them you changed and grew? Here is a simple truth of life that most people never discover. Happy events make life delightful but they do not lead to self-­ discovery and growth and freedom. That privilege is reserved to the things and persons and situations that cause us pain.

How does one drop an attachment? People try to do this through renunciation. But to renounce some bars of the music, to blot them out of one's consciousness creates exactly the type of violence, conflict and insensitivity that clinging does. Once again you have hardened yourself. The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy every thing and allow it to pass, to flow.

God makes his sun to shine on good and bad alike and makes his rain to fall on saints and sinners alike; so, you must be all goodness as your heavenly Father is all goodness." Contemplate in astonishment the sheer goodness of the rose, the lamp, the tree, for there you have an image of what love is all about. How does one attain this quality of love?

What does it mean to love? It means to be sensitive to life, to things, to persons, to feel for everything and everyone to the exclusion of nothing and no one. For exclusion can only be achieved through a hardening of oneself, through closing one's doors. And the moment there is a hardening, sensitivity dies. 

A big lie that we were told when we were kids is the following: You need to be loved. When you’re a kid, yes, granted, that’s okay. Let’s not quarrel about that. But what if you’re sixty-four years old? You’re twenty-five years old? They’re still telling you that you need to be loved. You need to be a success. You need to be approved. You need to be appreciated. It's rubbish yet everybody’ goes on believing this. There’s only one emotional need you have and that is to love. 

Has  it  ever struck you that you have been programmed to be unhappy and so, no matter what you do to become happy, you are bound to fail? If you wish to be happy the first thing you need is not effort or even goodwill or good desires but a clear understanding of how exactly you have been programmed. This is what happened:your society and your culture taught you to believe that you would not be happy without lots of money, power, success, approval, a good reputation, love, friendship, spirituality, God. What is your particular combination?

Some of us get woken up by the harsh realities of life. We suffer so much that we wake up. Other people keep bumping again and again into life. They still go on sleepwalking. It doesn't occur to them that there may be a better way. If you haven’t been bumped sufficiently by life, and you haven’t suffered enough, then there is another way: to listen.

Is there any way you can know that what you are in touch with is Reality? Here is one sign: What you perceive does not fit into any formula whether given by another or created by yourself. It simply cannot be put into words. So, what can teachers do? They can bring to your notice what is unreal, they cannot show you Reality; you will have to walk out there all alone and discover for yourself. To walk alone-that means to walk away from every formula-the one given to you by others, the ones you learned from books, the ones that you yourself invented in the light of your own past experience.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone or anything, you’re living in an illusion.  There’s something seriously wrong with you in need of correction. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change. The situation needs to change” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you. So how do we transform our being?  This podcasts provides a way.

From Anthony DeMello's book The Way to Love.  Narration by Paul Coutinho. What you call the experience of happiness is not happiness at all but the excitement and thrill caused by some person or thing or event. True happiness is un-caused. You are happy for no reason at all. And true happiness cannot be experienced. It is not within the realm of consciousness. It is un-self-consciousness.

Buddhism says, "May all beings practice dying."  Why? Because when we transcend the fear of death, we become more alive.  This podcasts offers an exercise in dying to become more fully awake and alive.  

Can you be said to love me if you cling to me and will not let me go, if you will not let me be? Can you be said to love me if you need me psychologically or emotionally for your happiness? This is not love; it is craving and wherever there is craving there is a threat and where there is a threat there is fear, and where there is fear there is no love because we always hate what we fear.  But where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency, and no fear because perfect love casts out fear.

It is said that God was in the world for the world was created by Him but the world did not recognize Him. We have made images of God that are more unlike Him than like Him. Therefore, the first thing we need to do if we want to find God is have the readiness to realize that our ideas of God are all inadequate. Then the second thing we need to do is listen, hear, and see in a special way called heart listening, heart hearing, heart seeing. That’s all we have to do.  DeMello explains how in this podcast.

Suffering is a sign given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there’s falsehood somewhere.  Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering. What leads to growth is painful experiences. Suffering points up an area in you where you have not yet grown, where you need to grow and be transformed and change. 

If you just suppress your desire and you attempt to renounce the object of your desire, you are likely to be tied to it. Whereas if you look at it and see it for what it is really worth, if you understand how you are preparing the grounds for misery and disappointment and depression, your desire will then be transformed into what I call a preference.  When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake.

Spiritual greed makes us attached to peace. We are saying, “Unless I’m peaceful, I won’t be happy.” Did it ever occur to you that you could be happy in tension? Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed; after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed. You don’t make a goal out of relaxation and sensitivity. Have you ever heard of people who get tense trying to relax? If one is tense, one simply observes one’s tension. You will never understand yourself if you seek to change yourself. The harder you try to change yourself, the worse it gets. You are called upon to be aware. Let tension or the calmness take care of itself. Step by step, let whatever happens happen. Real change will come when it is brought about, not by your ego, but by reality. Awareness releases reality to change you.

God is love, so what is love? Love is sensitivity, love is consciousness.   A loving heart is sensitive to the whole of life, to all persons; a loving heart doesn’t harden itself to any person or thing. Love entails clarity of perception, objectivity; there is nothing so clear-sighted as love. But the moment you become attached, then you’re blocking out so much of life. You’ve got eyes only for the object of your attachment; the heart has hardened. It can no longer see life as it is. 

The only way to change is by changing your understanding. But what does it mean to understand? How do we go about it? Consider how we’re enslaved by various attachments; we’re striving to rearrange the world so that we can keep these attachments, because the world is a constant threat to them. How liberating it is not to depend emotionally on anything. If you could get one second’s experience of that, you’d be breaking through your prison and getting a glimpse of the sky. Someday, maybe, you will even fly.

Life is a banquet and the tragedy is that most people are starving to death. Why? We’ve been brainwashed into believing what isn't true. Wake up and see the truth. Heaven is here and now. Don’t suffer with the pain of the past; it happened when you were asleep. Wake up! Put on a new mind. Take on a new way of looking at things! Awakening is in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. To do that, what you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new.

This podcast is about what it means to really begin to live and what blocks us from living fully. DeMello offers an exercise to unblock ourselves that is so simple that you might think it couldn't possibly produce a change in you that changes everything for you . . . but it does.

Society drugged us when we were kids. They didn’t bring us up on the healthy, wholesome nourishment of play and work and the pleasures of the senses, and as we grew older, the pleasures of the mind. Instead, they addicted us to a drug called “approval.” A drug called “success.” A drug called "money" and "reputation" and "making it to the top" and "never feeling good enough or having enough." As a result, we've lost our ability to love.

This is Anthony DeMello's parable about listening for the singer in the song, looking for the dancer in the dance, experiencing the life inside the moment.   

The trouble with most people is they’re busy trying to fix things in themselves that they really don’t understand. Stop fixing yourself. Don’t interfere. Don’t fix anything. Simply watch. Observe. You're OK. These things in you just need to be understood. If you understand them, they will change and you would finally see that all is well, within you and around you. This short practice is a simple  way of discovering this.

De Mello talks about effortlessness in transformation change. He likens it to the image a sailboat. When a sailboat has a mighty wind in its sail, it glides along so effortlessly that the boatman has nothing to do but steer. He makes no effort; he doesn’t push the boat.  That’s an image of what happens when change comes about through awareness, through understanding.

Can you imagine how liberating it is to never be disillusioned by people again, never be disappointed by anyone again? Imagine never feeling let down again. Never feeling rejected. If you want to wake up, if you want happiness and freedom, here it is: Drop your false ideas about people and see through people. If you see through yourself, you will see through everyone. Then you will love everyone. Otherwise you spend your life grappling with your wrong notions about others, with your illusions constantly crashing against reality.

The religion known as freedom makes all people good, for it destroys the inner conflict that makes people devils. As you begin to understand this, you stop making demands on yourself, you stop having expectations of yourself, you stop pushing yourself and you start nourishing yourself with sunsets and nature, with a good movie or a good book.  You start pursuing enjoyable work that you love, and you make time for good company.  In short, you break free of the negative drives society programmed into you that has blocked you from being happy.

Every new idea, every great idea, when it first began was in a minority of one. That man called Jesus Christ—a minority of one. Everybody was saying something different from what he was saying. The Buddha— a minority of one. Everybody was saying something different from what he was saying. I think it was Bertrand Russell who said, “Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.” That’s well and accurately put. It never occurs to our rigidity that comes from having become dogmatic that there may be a better way. If you haven’t been bumped sufficiently by life, and you haven’t suffered enough, then waking up may require seeing that there is another way.  It is the way of listening. 

One sign that you’ve woken up is you're asking yourself, “Am I crazy or is the whole world crazy?" We’re living on crazy ideas about love, about relationships, about happiness, about joy, about everything; and it's all been feed to us by our crazy society. The sooner we see this, the better for our mental and spiritual health. 

If you’re lucky and the gods are gracious or if you are gifted with divine grace - use any mystical or theological expression you like - you might one day suddenly understand who “I” is, and you’ll never be the same again.  Never. Nothing will ever be able to upset you again and no one will ever be able to hurt you again.

Some people make awakening a goal. They're determined to get there. They say, “I refuse to be happy until I’m awakened.” This forms an attachment and attachments are the source of suffering, which moves in the opposite direction of awakening.  Enlightenment comes from a deeper awareness of the way you are without judging it.  DeMello tells a story of a disciple who leaves his guru for the hills to attain enlightenment. Years pass, but no enlightenment; not until he gives it up.

To say no to people—that’s wonderful; that’s part of waking up. Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit.  That’s selfish. It is not selfish to live your life as you see fit.

When you awaken, when you understand, when you see, the world becomes right.  However, we’re always bothered by the problem of evil, aren't we.  Our intellect can't explain it.  There’s a powerful story about a little boy and crocodile that illuminates the nature of  evil. 

Never identify with a negative feeling, or any feeling for that matter. A fleeting emotion has nothing to do with your essential self. Don’t say, “I am depressed.” If you want to say, depression is there, that’s fine. But to say "I am depressed is defining yourself in terms of that feeling. That’s your illusion; that’s your mistake. There is a depression there right now, there are hurt feelings there right now, but let it be, leave it alone. It will pass.

Reality is not problematic. Problems exist only in the human mind. We might add: problems exist only in the not-yet-awakened human mind. But reality is not problematic. Take away human beings from this planet and nature would go on in all its loveliness and violence. Where would the problem be? No problem.

You’ve got to make sure of your “being” before you swing into action. You have to make sure of who you are before you act. Unfortunately, when people who are not awake swing into action, they simply substitute one cruelty for another, one injustice for another. And so it goes. Meister Eckhart says, “It is not by your actions that you will be saved” (or awakened) "but by your being.

Think of anything that's causing you pain, worry or anxiety. First, can you see the desire under that suffering? Make no mistake, there’s something you desire keenly or else you wouldn’t be suffering. What is that desire? Second, it isn’t simply a desire; there’s an identification made. You have said to yourself, “The very well-being of my existence is tied to fulfilling this desire.” Open to it and it will reveal how all suffering is caused by identifying with something within or outside you.

Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion.

A good is never so good as when you have no awareness that you’re doing good. You are never so good as when you have no consciousness that you’re good. Or as the great Sufi would say, “A saint is one until he or she knows it.” Unselfconscious! 

Are you listening, as most people do, in order to confirm what you already think?  Or are you listening with an attitude of openness?  Are you listening to learn something new? That's what's important!

We’ve been taught to look for our happiness in outside things: money, power, romance, approval. That’s the first thing we need to understand if we want to come awake, which is the same thing as saying: if we want to love, if we want freedom, if we want joy and peace and spirituality. In that sense, spirituality is the most practical thing in the whole wide world. I challenge anyone to think of anything more practical than spirituality as I have defined it—not piety, not devotion, not religion, not worship, but spirituality—waking up, waking up!

Tony De Mello on where self-worth comes from? He asks: Do you get it from success in your work? Do you get it from having a lot of money? Do you get it from attracting a lot of men if you’re a woman or a lot of women if you’re a man?  How fragile all that is, how transitory.

Happiness is your natural state. It is coming home to yourself simply by observing yourself.  Does that sound a bit tedious? It's not.  Self-observation is such a delightful and extraordinary thing. After a while you don’t have to make any effort, because, as illusions begin to crumble, you begin to know things that cannot be described. It’s called happiness, which is the experience of your essential nature. Everything changes and you become oriented to awareness instead of to suffering.

Sooner or later there arises 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, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. 

Sooner or later there arises 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, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. 

Sooner or later there arises 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, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it. 

Sooner or later there arises 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, that would make our lives meaningful and beautiful and rich, if we could only discover it.