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.