The Happiness Podcast

31 - The Harder You Try to Change, the Worse It Get

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.

32 - Turning Desire Into Preferences

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.

33 - Suffering is a Sign

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. 

34 - God

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.

35 - Perfect Love

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.

36 - An Exercise in Dying

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.  

37 - What You Call Happiness ... Isn''t

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.

38 - How to Transform Your Being

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.

39 - Is There Any Way to Know You Are In Touch With Reality?

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.

40 - Listen and Unlearn

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.