Life is a Banquet ...

... and the horrible tragedy is that most of us are starving to death.

All around us is joy, happiness, love ... but most folks are wholly ignorant of it, and immune to it. Why? Most are brainwashed. Hypnotized. Asleep. Comatose.

Anthony DeMello says,

"The first test of whether you've been brainwashed and have interjected convictions and beliefs occurs the moment they're attacked. You feel stunned, you react emotionally. That's a pretty good sign - not infallible, but a pretty good sign - that we're dealing with brainwashing. You're ready to die for an idea that never was yours."

Wonder how many of us would be stunned to see just how extensively we're influenced by our programming ... the conditioning, the hypnosis. The propaganda.

We don't want to look, to see, to listen.

If we do, we may change. We may lose control of the life we were clinging to ... the life we thought we needed. To wake up, we don't need energy, strength, youth, or even intelligence .. the one thing we need is the willingness to learn something new.

The chances that you will wake up are in direct proportion to 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 of something unfamiliar?

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."

Shalom, Dena