Thoughts on Happiness
At Christmas time we can be divided.
The wholesome grapples of friendship, love and connection soothe us but the trappings of consumerism means we can often forget what’s important. Ultimately we all want to celebrate the joy and more over the happiness that this time can bring, but it’s important to recognize that for many the pressure of exterior creations enforce on us a notion that we ‘should’ be happy and ‘should’ rejoice in the chaos of material luring and rather than being a time of happiness, it can often be a time of suffering.
Perhaps a change of thought can change the outer world and ease the pressures of the mind’s eternal quest for happiness.
Asking too much?
Happiness can never be achieved from outside sources. Outside sources can give us pleasure, without a doubt, but pleasure is fleeting. We crave a thing – happiness – with a will to attain it, on an ever-lasting basis. A continual state of ‘being happy’ is what we seek. So how can things which are fleeting provide sustained happiness? You would imagine that one would recognize this from past experiences. If one were always successful in gaining happiness from those exterior efforts, then the answer, i.e. sustained happiness, would be both provided and fulfilled. Then we would never have to seek again, we would ‘be’ in the state and therefore requiring nothing more.
What You Think You Know is Not the Same as Knowing
Many think they know what would make them happy but these are just thoughts and assumptions. Replacing the quality of a diamond with random bits of accumulated gravel is not going to amount to the diamond’s purity.
The mind has a magnificent capacity to fool us by determining to us, the supposed truth. How many times has a person with whom we’ve never met, manifest so clearly before our mind’s eye? Every little detail of the person’s make-up, we seem to already know. Only, when we meet them, we are somehow surprised, shocked even, because they aren’t how we presumed they’d be.
The same principle applies to the outside acquirement of happiness. It’s all assumptions. These assumptions never mirror the manifested truth. Assumptions always fail to meet expectation and ultimately to deliver. So don’t deliver disappointment to yourself continually.
Happiness is the Sister of Love
It comes from within. Simply smile to subtly test this. It will alter your biochemistry and brain functioning. Most importantly, what we are forgetting is that Happiness is the sister of Love, and true Love is condition-free, so why would Happiness be any different?
