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 happening in you.  Your pain or upset come from how you are seeing the situation through some form of fear.  Through awareness you can identify the fear, see it as mind made, not real, and let it pass.  The more you practice allowing fear into awareness and embracing it instead of suppressong it,  the less it will control you.   Practicing awareness is how we wake up from the unhappiness we are living.

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 irony is we have it already. We were born happy. Happiness is our birthright. It’s built right into our spiritual DNA. Our brain has evolved neurocircuits to generate it. It's there for the taking.

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 you have to do is see something, understand something. If you would understand it, you would be free.

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 more and more free. Before you believed what society's  programming told you, that once every worldly thing falls into place, I’ll find happiness and peace.” Through awarness you'll discover that finding the natural state of happiness and peace within you is how everything falls into place.”  You find that truth through awareness .

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 how unhappy they are. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing that we call human existence. It’s only when they make contact with joy that they understand how depressed they had been. https://demellocenter.com

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 were born happy but have lost touch with it. We were born free but have become trapped in limited thinking. We were born with an open heart that stress and fear so easily close. We were born gifted beings of immeasurable worth but often feel not good enough. There is a divinity of joy within us and surrounding us, there to make life meaningful and beautiful and rich, but we’ve become blocked from seeing it. It’s as if we are all hypnotized to see what is not there, and not see what is there. The good news, we can wake up here and now through a simple process of awareness.

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 already just the way you are and always have been but you didn’t see it because you are always focused on what you don’t have instead of what you have. Waking up is seeing that right here, right now you have everything you need to be free, happy and at peace.

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 candle and look at the flame.  It will speak to you, not to your brain but to your heart, creating a silence in your spirit, and a wisdom that your conscious mind could never grasp. Visit Anthony De Mello's personally engaging website at https://demellocenter.com

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 sets himself the task of moving mountains and battles with exasperating foes. Yet even in his anger he is loving—he combines a keen desire for change with an acceptance of reality as it is. I try to be like him. I start with feelings I dislike.

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 you’re afraid that you become angry. Think of the last time you were angry. Go ahead. Think of the last time you were angry and search for the fear behind it.