Happiness Cannot Be Acquired

from Stop Fixing Yourself

by Anthony De Mello

You don’t have to do anything to acquire happiness because happiness cannot be acquired. Why? Because you have it already. How can you acquire what you already have? Uninterrupted happiness is uncaused. True happiness is uncaused. You cannot make me happy. You are not my happiness. You say to the awakened person, “Why are you happy?” and the awakened person replies, “Why not?” Happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of little children to whom the kingdom belongs until they have been polluted and contaminated by the stupidity of society and culture.

Then why aren’t you experiencing happiness?

Because you’ve got to drop something. You’ve got to drop attachments. We were born happy. We lost it. We were born with the gift of life. We lost it. We’ve got to rediscover it. The world is full of sorrow. The root of sorrow is attachment, desire. The uprooting of sorrow is the dropping of attachment. The great Meister Eckhart said, “God is not attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of subtraction.” You don’t do anything to be free; you drop illusions. Then you’re free. You don’t have to add anything in order to be happy; you’ve got to drop attachments. Then you’re happy.

How does one drop attachments? Through awareness. You only have to look and see that the attachment is based on a false belief that, without this, I cannot be happy. That’s false; that’s an illusion. The moment you see that belief is false, it drops, and you are free. That’s what it is to watch yourself.