Life is a banquet.
And the tragedy is that most people are starving to death.
See,
That's what I'm really talking about.
It's a nice story of some people on a raft off the course of Brazil who were perishing from thirst,
And they had no idea that the water they were floating on was fresh water.
See,
The river was coming out into the sea with such force that it went on for a couple of miles.
They had fresh water right there.
They had no idea of it.
So it's like we're surrounded with joy,
With happiness,
With love.
And most people have no idea whatsoever of this.
Reason.
They're brainwashed.
Reason.
They're hypnotized.
They're asleep.
Imagine a stage magician who hypnotizes someone,
And this person is seeing what isn't there and not seeing what is there.
That's what it's all about.
Repent and accept the good news.
Repent.
Wake up.
Not weep for your sins.
What are you going to do weeping for your sins?
Which you committed in the first place because you were asleep anyway.
Are you going to cry because of what you did in your hypnotized state?
Why do you want to identify with that guy?
Wake up.
Wake up.
Repent.
Put on a new mind.
Take on a new way of looking at things.
For the kingdom is here.
It's the rare Christian who takes that seriously.
Now I said to you,
The first thing you need to wake up is to face the fact that you don't like being woken up.
You'd much rather have all of these things which you were hypnotized into believing are so precious to you,
So important to you,
So important for your life and your survival.
Second,
Understand.
Understand that maybe you've got the wrong ideas.
And it is these ideas that are influencing your life and making it the mess that it is.
And keeping you asleep.
Ideas about love.
Ideas about freedom.
Ideas about happiness,
Etc.
And it isn't easy to listen to someone who would challenge those ideas of yours that have come to be so precious to you.
You know they've made some interesting studies in brainwashing.
And they prove you're brainwashed when you take on,
When you introject an idea that isn't yours,
Somebody else's idea.
And the funny thing is that you'll be ready to die for it.
The first test that you've been brainwashed,
That you've got introjected convictions and beliefs is that the moment they're attacked,
You feel stung.
You react emotionally.
That's a pretty good sign,
Not infallible,
But a pretty good sign that we're dealing with brainwashing.
And you're even ready to die for an idea that never was yours.
The terrorists.
Or the same.
So-called.
Takes on an idea,
Swallows it whole,
And is ready to die for it.
Not easy to listen.
Especially when you get emotional about an idea.
And even when you don't get emotional about it,
Not easy to listen.
Because don't forget,
You're listening from your programming,
From your conditioning,
From your hypnotic state.
And you're frequently interpreting everything that's being said in terms of your hypnotic state,
Of your conditioning,
Of your programming.
Like this girl who's listening to a lecture in agriculture,
And she says,
Excuse me,
Sir,
You know,
I agree with you completely,
Best manure is old horse manure.
Would you tell us how old the horse should be?
Look where she's coming from.
We all have our positions,
Don't we?
And we listen from those positions.
Henry,
Oh,
You've changed.
You were so tall,
You've grown so short.
You were so well built and you've become so thin.
You were so fair,
You've become dark.
What happened to you,
Henry?
The guy says,
I'm not Henry.
I'm John.
You changed your name too.
How'd you get this guy to listen,
Huh?
The most difficult thing in the world to listen,
To see.
We don't want to see.
You think a capitalist wants to see what's good in the communist system?
You think a communist wants to see what's good and healthy in the capitalist system?
You think a rich man wants to look at poor people?
You don't want to look,
Because if you look,
You may change.
We don't want to look.
We don't want to look.
If you look,
You lose control of this life that you're so precariously holding together.
And so in order to wake up,
In order to awake,
The one thing you need the most is not energy or strength or even great intelligence.
The one thing you need the most of all is the readiness to learn something new.
The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion the amount of truth you can take without running away.
How much are you ready to take?
How much of everything you've held dear are you ready to have shattered without running away?
How ready are you to think something unfamiliar?
Good news,
New,
New,
New,
It's new.
Ready for the new?
And so the first reaction is one of fear.
It's not that we fear the unknown.
You cannot fear something that you do not know.
Nobody is afraid of the unknown.
What you really fear is the loss of the known.
That's what you fear.
And I gave you my way of example,
This little thing about everything we do is tainted with selfishness.
That isn't easy to hear.
But think now for a minute.
Let's go a little deeper into that.
If everything you do comes from self-interest,
Enlightened or otherwise,
How does that make you feel about all your charity and all your good deeds?
What happens to those?
Want to think about that for a few seconds?
Just think.
Here's a little exercise for you.
Think of all the good deeds you've done or some of them.
Now,
Understand that they really sprang from self-interest,
Whether you knew it or not.
Refined tastes maybe.
What happens to your pride?
What happens to your vanity?
What happens to that good feeling you gave yourself,
That pat on the back,
Every time you did something that you thought was so charitable?
It gets flattened out,
Doesn't it?
What happens to that looking down your nose at your neighbor who you thought was so selfish?
The whole thing changes,
Doesn't it?
Well,
He's got coarser taste than you.
You're the more dangerous person.
You really are.
Jesus Christ seems to have had less trouble with the other guy than with your type,
Much less trouble.
He ran into trouble with people who were really convinced they were good,
You know.
The other guys didn't seem to have given him much trouble at all.
The guys who were openly selfish and knew it.
Can you see how liberating that is?
Hey,
Wake up,
It's liberating,
It's wonderful.
