The Happiness Podcast 31 - The Harder You Try to Change, the Worse It Get
Nov 29, 2019
A talk on spiritual greed and our attachment to peace. It explores being content amid tension and why forcing relaxation backfires. Listeners are urged to simply observe sensations and allow awareness to let reality change them. The piece challenges goal-oriented striving and highlights how true transformation arises naturally when ego steps aside.
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Attachment To Peace Is Spiritual Greed
- Seeking peace as a precondition for happiness is a form of spiritual greed that makes you attached to a state rather than reality.
- Anthony de Mello points out you can be happy in tension and that insisting on peace blocks awareness and genuine change.
Observe Tension Instead Of Forcing Relaxation
- Don't try to force yourself to relax; instead observe the tension without trying to change it.
- Anthony de Mello uses the phone-ring example: feel the jarred nerves and let tension or calmness take care of itself.
Enlightenment Didn't Erase Depression
- De Mello shares his before-and-after paradox: he was depressed before enlightenment and continued to be depressed after.
- This personal admission illustrates that enlightenment didn't erase experience but changed his relation to it.