Finding Happiness Within

What lies behind us and what lies before us

are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.  

 Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are a lot of unhappy people in the world. Many are angry and want to change the ways of the world to find what they believe they are missing. But it is not the world that is causing their unhappiness. Unhappy people are generally asking the wrong question, and then looking in the wrong place for the answer. Someone or something else is not the missing element that turns the world upside down. Happiness must begin within.

Discontent doesn't disappear on its own, and battling the world will not bring about contentment. Fate deals the cards, but it is we who must learn to play them. If you believe you have been dealt poor cards, you can still choose to play them well and win at the game of life.

There is a perfect loving intelligence innately present within each one of us. There is a level of mind that we know as the sub-consciousness that hides a level of unwitting conditioning by parents, school, peers, church, and society, a set of mental imprints that collectively make up our personality through which we live our life. Negative thought patterns remain active in deeper consciousness until we deliberately interrupt the cycle, the loop-feed to the conscious mind.

The sub-consciousness is not a separate mind but rather a submerged aspect of our full mind - the storage chip which contains every nuance of learned behavior since birth. Housing all of our fears, phobias and addictions, this sub-conscious content exists in a perfect state and depends on mental tension, physical stress, fear, and low self-esteem for its survival.

Mental stress, physical tension, and residual fear are prerequisite dynamics for maintaining the involuntary influencing of the conscious mind without our conscious consent. Unwittingly, through non-awareness, we block our own inner bliss, smother the very source of the happiness we each innately crave. Studies suggest we use only a fraction of our mental potential. As we undergo a shift to spiritual awareness, intuition reveals that a direct blissful experience results from a rebalancing of the deficit between being spiritually asleep and spiritually awake.

Practicing meditation can change one's life completely and help restore happiness. The practice awakens deeper regions of untapped consciousness resulting in intangible levels of bliss, harmony, and compassion, opening a level of awareness where happiness can be found in every situation, particularly in nature, and a realization that happiness is the innate status of each soul awaiting creative exploration and development. Furthermore, with continued practice, the benefits are cumulative, from a spiritual well-being perspective; the practice, as it matures, becomes even more noticeably rewarding and uplifting.

When we meditate and simultaneously tune into the universal life-force within, focusing fully on the now moment, the entire world takes on a renewed perspective. Suddenly things that may have seemed mundane or a chore take on new meaning. Instead of ‘thinking about’ some activity, we remain fully focused ‘on’ that activity. Thus, a tedious chore like washing the dishes can become an enjoyable means of deepening one’s spiritual awareness.

Connecting with the universal life-force can be one's greatest reward in life. Happiness is always there. We need only find it within. Remember, the sun always shines; it simply requires instruction on clearing the clouds to experience its direct warmth within.