The Happiness Podcast

By Anthony De Mello/The DeMello Spirituality Center

Religion & Spirituality Christianity Buddhism

What's The Happiness Podcast about?

This series of 3 to 5 minute podcasts of Anthony DeMello awaken you to the simple truth that you possess everything you need right now to be living a happy, meaningful and rich life.

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The Happiness Podcast episodes:

02.14.2023
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...
02.07.2023
140 - What It Means to Be a Success
What I am about to convey in the coming 4 minutes could be the most important minutes in your life. If you could grasp this, you’d hit upon the secret of awakening. You would never be unhappy again. Nothing would...
02.01.2023
139 - You Want to Hope for Something Better Than What You Have Right Now
We love to hear that people have arrived. It gives us hope, doesn’t it? You want to hope for something better than what you have right now, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be hoping. But then, you forget that you...
01.26.2023
138 - The Problem Called You
Until we solve the problem called you, we’re going to get nowhere. The great mystics and masters in the East will say, “Who are you?” Many think the most important question in the world is: “Who is Jesus Christ?” Wrong! Many...
01.11.2023
137 - A Drug Called Approval
What your society did to you when you were born was NOT to allow you to enjoy the solid, nutritious food of life—namely, work, play, fun, laughter, the company of people, the pleasures of the senses and the mind. You...
12.08.2022
136 - What Does Self-Change Entail
What does self-change entail? I’m going to break it down into two segments for you. First, we'll address insight. Not effort, not cultivating habits, not positive affirmations, not having an ideal state to change into, not focusing on what should...
11.08.2022
135 When the Essential You Is Unobstructed
Transformation is effortless. It's like 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...
10.13.2022
134 - To Live Like a King or Queen
To live like a king or queen spiritually means you know no anxiety at all, no inner conflict, no tensions, no pressures, no upset, no heartache. Until you can transcend these reactions, your life remains a mess.
09.21.2022
133 - The Meaning of Enlightenment
Some people make awakening a goal. They're determined to get there. They say, “I refuse to be happy until I’m awakened.” DeMello tells a story of a disciple who leaves his guru for the hills to attain enlightenment. Years pass,...
09.01.2022
132 - Awareness, Awareness, Awareness
When there’s something within you that moves in the direction of greater inner awareness, that very awareness creates its own discipline. It is the discipline of waking up! Through awareness you wake up, and there’s nothing so important in the...
08.22.2022
131 - No Self No Problem
What few of us ever understand is that the problem isn’t the situation; the problem is that we are afraid of the situation. The situation is whatever it is. In itself, it's neutral. Nothing is happening to you, it is...
08.16.2022
130 - Understanding Anthony De Mello Part 4: We were born happy but lost touch with it
Researchers have found that happiness is what people want most. But researchers have also found that happiness is eluding most of us. It's hard to locate a completely happy person. Turns out it's only four percent of the population. The...
08.02.2022
129 - Understanding De Mello Part 3: From Awareness to Understanding
These things in you that you struggle to fix just need tobe understood. If you understood them, they would change.You see, you don’t have to do anything for enlightenment. You don’t have to do anything for liberation and spirituality. All...
07.27.2022
128 - Understanding De Mello Part 2: Awareness, Awareness, Awareness
Anthony De Mello encourages us to do cultivate awareness every day, throughout the day. If you remember to do his simple process throughout the day, you will get it. You will become more and more aware and as a result...
07.13.2022
127 - Understanding De Mello Part 1: Asleep to Awake
Spirituality means waking up. But most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, live asleep, and die in their sleep without ever waking up. Most people are so brainwashed that they do not even realize...
06.14.2022
126 - Radio interview with De Mello Center executive director on Anthony De Mello’s spirituality
A radio interview with Don Goewey, the De Mello Center's executive director, on Anthony De Mello's spirituality. It begins with the fact that only 4% of the population are completely happy. Happiness eludes most of us. The irony is we...
06.10.2022
125 - One Step to Freedom
It often takes a midlife crisis to realize that nothing of the world can make you happy or set you free. Through one step - the step called awareness - you come to see that you are free and happy...
06.07.2022
124 - The Vision
Sit on the bank of a river, in reality, or in fantasy, and watch the water flow. Or sit in a railway station and see the crowds go by. Or watch the sun shimmer in the trees. Or light a...
05.25.2022
123 - An Exercise in Enlightment
When I try to change what I dislike in me by fighting it I merely push it underground. If I accept it, it will surface and evaporate. What I resist will stubbornly persist. I consider the example of Jesus, who...
05.19.2022
122 - It’s Love or Fear. You Choose
Ignorance and fear, ignorance caused by fear, that’s where all the suffering comes from, that’s where your violence comes from. The person who is truly nonviolent, who is incapable of violence, is the person who is fearless. It’s only when...
05.13.2022
121 - Can Suffering Disappear Completely?
Is it possible that one would suffer because of one’s cultural programming mixed with one's toxic past and how it might've wired the brain and yet some day through an awakening one could rise above it all? This much is...
05.03.2022
120 - Does Dropping Attachments Mean Detachment from the World?
Does the dropping of attachments mean detachment from the material world? No. One uses the material world, one enjoys the material world, but one doesn’t make one’s happiness depend on the material world. You really begin to enjoy things when...
04.26.2022
119 - The Litmus Test of Enlighenment
All the mystics tell us our life is in our hands. Okay, let’s suppose you want to grasp that. Let’s suppose you want to see it. What do you have to first understand about yourself? First, your life is in a mess....
04.12.2022
118 - To Live Like a King or Queen
I’ll tell you what it means to live like a king or queen. It means to know no anxiety at all. To have no inner conflict at all. No tensions, no pressures, no upset, no heartache. What are you left...
04.08.2022
117 -A Matter of Life or Death
Where there is love, there is no desire. I am referring to desire in the sense of attachment. Where there is attachment there is fear. Love begins where attachments end. You know what society will tell you? “Attachment is love.”...
03.31.2022
116 - What’s So Funny?
A Japanese master woke up each morning laughing a great belly laugh that resounded through the monastery, waking up the other monks. The monks wondered what made the master laugh but he wouldn’t say. For millennia, mystics have posed the...
03.24.2022
115 - Marching to the Beat of Another’s Drum
There is never a minute when, consciously or unconsciously, you are not aware of or attuned to the reactions of others, marching to the beat of their drums. When you are ignored or disapproved of, you experience a loneliness so...
03.03.2022
114 - Lent Series - The Desert
I look at Jesus in his agony on the night before he died. I stand quite close to him and watch him reaching out for human help, but no one now can reach him —he is entirely on his own...
03.03.2022
113 - Lent Series - The Darkness
I think of myself as quite a decent person, good-hearted and respected, with minor flaws and failings, until it dawns on me that the greatest spiritual failings are the ones committed in ignorance. I see the well-intentioned damage “love” inflicts...
03.03.2022
112 - Lent Series - The Center
I see how frequently I rush outside myself —to people, occupations, places, things—in search of strength and peace and meaning, forgetting that the source of all is here within my heart. It is here that I must search.
03.03.2022
111 - Lent Series - The Absolute
God says, “Give me your heart.” And then, in answer to my puzzlement, I hear him say, “Your heart is where your treasure is.” My treasures—here they are: persons...places...occupations ...things ... experiences of the past... the future’s hopes and dreams....
03.03.2022
110 - Lent Series -The Volcano
We look to gurus, writers, friends, surroundings to give us peace or fortitude or meaning in our life. But these external agents can never be a substitute for inner, deeper sources.
03.03.2022
109 - Lent Series - The Stranger
When the Messiah came his people failed to see him.He’s still around. When did you see him last?
02.23.2022
108 - Enlightened Self-Interest
Charity is really self-interest masquerading under the form of altruism. There are three types of selfishness. The first type is the one where I give myself the pleasure of pleasing myself. That’s what we generally call self-centeredness. The second is...
01.24.2022
107 - Let Whatever Happens Happen
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...
01.12.2022
106 - The Most Practical Thing in the Word
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,...
01.06.2022
105 - How Happiness Happens
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...
11.30.2021
104 - We Don’t Want to be Happy; We Want Things
A big part of why our life is a mess. It's because we don’t want to be happy; we don’t want to be at peace. We've been programmed by society want other things. Money, power, reputation. Admit it! You've been...
11.15.2021
103 - Where Does Self-Worth Come From?
Where does self-worth comes from, Anthony DeMello 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...
10.25.2021
102 - Working from Preferences
Do not suppress desire, because desire is energy and the more energy we have, the better. Don’t seek to fulfill desire so much as to understand desire. See them for what they are worth. Because if you just suppress your...
09.29.2021
101 - Arriving at Silence
Everyone asks me about what will happen when they finally arrive. Is this just curiosity? We’re always asking how would this fit into this or that system, or whether this would make sense in this or that context, or what...
09.24.2021
100 - A Strange Trick of the Mind
You are not your depression. You are not your anxiety or stress. That is but a strange kind of trick of the mind, a strange kind of illusion. You have deluded yourself into thinking— though you are not aware of...
09.13.2021
99 - Awareness Not Analysis
I want to give you a taste of the difference between analysis and awareness, or information on the one hand and insight on the other. I want to show how information is not insight, analysis is not awareness, knowledge is...
08.26.2021
98 - God is Only a Word
Dag Hammarskjöld, the former UN Secretary-General, put it so beautifully: “God does not die on the day we cease to believe in a personal deity. But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the...
08.19.2021
97 - Clinging to Illusions
When you cling, life is destroyed; when you hold on to anything, you cease to live. Desire breeds anxiety but we don't want to see it. But when you’ve suffered sufficiently, then you will be ready to see it.
08.11.2021
96 - Effortlessness in Change
If the eye is unobstructed, it results in sight; if the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing; if the nose is unobstructed, the result is a sense of smell; if the mouth is unobstructed, the result is a sense...
07.28.2021
95 - The Secret of Awakening
Listening to this podcast could be the most important few minutes in your lives. 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...
07.21.2021
94 - God is Found in Silence
"Silence is the great revelation, " said Lao-tse. We are accustomed to think of Scripture as the revelation of God. And so it is. I want you now to discover the revelation that silence brings. To take in the revelation that...
07.14.2021
93 - The Awakened State
One cannot say anything about the awakened state; one can only talk about the sleeping state. One hints at the awakened state. One cannot say anything about happiness. Happiness cannot be defined. What can be defined is misery. Drop unhappiness...
07.07.2021
92 - A Royal Road to Mysticism
Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. That is extremely important for the process of change. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds...

What's The Happiness Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Happiness Podcast episodes:

141 - The One Thing You Need to Wake Up

140 - What It Means to Be a Success

139 - You Want to Hope for Something Better Than What You Have Right Now

138 - The Problem Called You

137 - A Drug Called Approval

136 - What Does Self-Change Entail

135 When the Essential You Is Unobstructed

134 - To Live Like a King or Queen

133 - The Meaning of Enlightenment

132 - Awareness, Awareness, Awareness

131 - No Self No Problem

130 - Understanding Anthony De Mello Part 4: We were born happy but lost touch with it

129 - Understanding De Mello Part 3: From Awareness to Understanding

128 - Understanding De Mello Part 2: Awareness, Awareness, Awareness

127 - Understanding De Mello Part 1: Asleep to Awake

126 - Radio interview with De Mello Center executive director on Anthony De Mello’s spirituality

125 - One Step to Freedom

124 - The Vision

123 - An Exercise in Enlightment

122 - It’s Love or Fear. You Choose

121 - Can Suffering Disappear Completely?

120 - Does Dropping Attachments Mean Detachment from the World?

119 - The Litmus Test of Enlighenment

118 - To Live Like a King or Queen

117 -A Matter of Life or Death

116 - What’s So Funny?

115 - Marching to the Beat of Another’s Drum

114 - Lent Series - The Desert

113 - Lent Series - The Darkness

112 - Lent Series - The Center

111 - Lent Series - The Absolute

110 - Lent Series -The Volcano

109 - Lent Series - The Stranger

108 - Enlightened Self-Interest

107 - Let Whatever Happens Happen

106 - The Most Practical Thing in the Word

105 - How Happiness Happens

104 - We Don’t Want to be Happy; We Want Things

103 - Where Does Self-Worth Come From?

102 - Working from Preferences

101 - Arriving at Silence

100 - A Strange Trick of the Mind

99 - Awareness Not Analysis

98 - God is Only a Word

97 - Clinging to Illusions

96 - Effortlessness in Change

95 - The Secret of Awakening

94 - God is Found in Silence

93 - The Awakened State

92 - A Royal Road to Mysticism