It’s quite false to think that the way to deny the self is to cause pain to the self, to go in for abnegation, mortification, as these were traditionally understood. To deny the self, to die to it, to lose it, to drop out of the rat race world of the ego is to understand your true nature. When you do that, the self will disappear; it will vanish. To lose the self is to suddenly realize that you are something other than what you thought you were. You thought you were at the center; now you experience yourself as satellite. You thought you were the dancer; you now experience yourself as the dance.

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.