The Happiness Podcast

141 - The One Thing You Need to Wake Up

The most difficult thing in the world is to listen, to see. We don’t want to see.  We don’t want to look, because if we do, we may change. We don’t want to change. If you look, you lose control of the life that you are so precariously holding together. In order to wake up, the one thing you need the most is not energy, or strength, or youthfulness, or even great intelligence. The one thing you need most of all is the readiness to learn something new. The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to the amount of truth you can take without running away. How much of everything you’ve held dear are you ready to have shattered, without running away? How ready are you to embrace something unfamiliar?

142 - Don’t Seek the Truth, Just Drop Your Opinions

The important thing is not to know the truth of who I am or what “I” am. You’ll never succeed.  There are no words for it. The important thing is to drop the labels. As the Japanese Zen masters say, “Don’t seek the truth; just drop your opinions.” Drop your theories; don’t seek the truth. Truth isn’t something you search for. If you stop being opinionated, you would know. If you drop your labels, you would know. What do I mean by labels? Every label you can conceive of except perhaps that of human being.

143 - Never Be Disillusioned Again

Can you imagine how liberating it would be to never be disillusioned again, never be disappointed again? To never feel let down again by anyone; to never feel rejected? Want to wake up? Here it is: Drop your false ideas about people.  Everyone can be expected to be selfish and to seek his or her own self- interest. If you see through yourself to these same selfish tendencies in you , you will see through everyone. Then you will accept people as they are, and then you can love them, instead of  crashing against reality.  That's the real source of your disappointment, your disillusionment.

144 - Put on a New Mind

We’re surrounded with joy, with happiness, with love. Most people have no idea of this whatsoever. The reason: They’re brainwashed. The reason: They’re hypnotized; they’re asleep. Imagine a stage magician who hypnotizes someone so that the person sees what is not there and does not see what is there. That’s what it’s all about. Accept the good news. Wake up!  Put on a new mind. Take on a new way of looking at things! For “the kingdom is here!”

145 - You’re Not O.K. and You’re Not Not O.K

How necessary it is that people tell you you’re OK Then you’ll have a good feeling about yourself.  No, no, no. You just put yourself in a cage. Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel good when people tell you that you’re OK, you are preparing yourself to feel bad when they tell you you’re not OK. As long as you live to fulfill other people’s expectations, you better be sure to make yourself over to live up to every damned expectation they will surely put on you.

146 - You’re Surrounded by God and You Don’t See God

The fact is that you’re surrounded by God and you don’t see God. God is there; whatever that is, reality is there. It’s all there. We are like the poor little fish in the ocean who says, “Excuse me,   I’m looking for the ocean. Can you tell me where I can find it?” Pathetic, isn’t it? If we would just open our eyes and see, then we would understand, and there is only way we open our eyes.

147 - Ultimately There Are Only Two Things

Anthony De Mello had different themes, but he said they are all about the same thing. Call it awareness, call it spirituality or freedom or awakening or whatever. It really is the same thing. But ultimately, there are only two things in the world: love and fear.

148 - Not Pushing It

You don’t need pushing.You don’t need effort. That’s why people are so tired, so weary. You and I were trained to be dissatisfied with ourselves. That’s where the evil comes from psychologically. We’re always dissatisfied, we’re always discontented, we’re always pushing. Go on, put out more effort, more and more effort. But there’s always that conflict inside; there’s very little understanding.

149 - The Death of Me

Death is resurrection. The end of the world for a caterpillar is a butterfly for the master.  We’re talking not about some resurrection that will happen but about one that is happening right now. If you would die to the past, if you would die to every minute, you would be the person who is fully alive, because a fully alive person is one who is full of death. We’re always dying to things. We’re always shedding everything in order to be fully alive and to be resurrected at every moment. 

150 - Awareness: The Secret of Awakening

This talk could be the most important 8 minutes in your life. If you could grasp it, you’d hit upon the secret of awakening. You would be happy forever. You would never be unhappy again. Nothing would have the power to hurt you again. I mean that, nothing. It’s like when you throw black paint in the air; the air remains uncontaminated. You never color the air black. No matter what happens to you, you remain uncontaminated. You remain at peace. There are human beings who have attained this; we all know there are.  It is simply what I call being a true human being.