March 2016
There is no greater conscious happiness than alert, sustained self-dependent peace of mind. It lies at the pinnacle of life’s work; true success. After all, what is the state wished for along the path of action? Not the destination, a mere passing experience cursed with expectation rarely satisfied, whose proper value lies as a guiding star for direction and alignment. Attached to outcomes, everything in between is seen as an inconvenient necessity, including the people who help you get there, and the attributes of love and care along the way are lost.
The most productive thing you can ever do is to be consciously present, the natural flow in nature’s field will take care of the outcome. Your will to act will be knowingly at one with the eternal will of nature; the harmony, the joy of this moment. By learning to be here-now-present and attentive, your life purpose, at one, becomes clear. You rush ahead for objects of desire only to leave behind the ocean of peace and eternal joy.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 50 – Pleasure and Joy:
How heavy do I journey on the way, when what I seek my weary travels end, doth teach that ease and that repose to say, ‘Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!’
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, as if by some instinct the wretch did know his rider loved not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on that sometimes anger thrusts into his hide, which heavily he answers with a groan more sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind: My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.
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Following the inner journey, you cannot help find happiness – even amongst what you perceive as so much suffering. Inner happiness is overwhelmingly real. Like the sun in the sky, its expressions may be clouded but it is never absent. By discovering and cultivating your natural purpose, joy and fulfilment is inevitable.
Happy people cultivate the discipline to discover and follow their natural path. They live in the present, get organised and act on the here-and-now – ‘first things first’. Any Satnav user knows to faithfully follow immediate instruction once destination is set. Trust the destination built in to your very nature, your True Heart, the Hub of life’s work. Every moment so lived is a moment of joy. The great universal ‘Satnav’ will be your guide. How often do you hear ‘I just followed my intuition’?
Happy people feel as a valued contributor to something greater than themselves. Cultivate a passion for something permanent beyond people, things and events. Transient, attachment can only lead to loss and sadness. Great artists, poets and architects of every kind know this. When the job is done, lessons learned are left to grow and live in the mind, and minds that follow. Every child, who has had pleasure in building sand castles only to be washed away, knows this too. Yet, how soon we forget and suffer the misery of attachment and loss. The contented stone mason is not just cutting stone for a dollar a day, but helping to build a great cathedral. A great cathedral that will live in the hearts and minds, beyond the stone from which it is build
Understand the difference between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure depends on things; happiness does not. Fear is the only trouble. Know yourself as independent and you will be free, free from fear and its shadows. As long as we believe that we need things to make us happy, we shall also believe that in their absence we must be miserable.
Happy people intuitively cultivate harmonious connection with their inner and outer world. By being at peace inwardly, free of contention, the outer world is naturally attracted with the will to be at one. See how we naturally soften and feel drawn to innocent calmness of youth.
‘All rivers flow to the sea, in deep calmness, the lowest point’ ~ Tao-Te-Ching.
With vigilance, courage and kindness, inner happiness is inevitable. Anyone who has found their true craft in life knows this and can be said to be ‘In their Element’, performing a natural ‘Work of art’. Letting life unfold as your work of art is intensely joyful even in the face of great difficulty. Ask any great explorer. All great people of achievement know this, whether in the arts, sport, home-making or industry.
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood” ~ Marie Curie
The innocent mind knows the joy of learning and discovery. Any parent knows the joy of children with the toys with which they play, and the lessons they learn. Big children too! The toy business thrives on it.
Mind always shapes itself according to its beliefs. Hence the importance of convincing oneself that one need not be prodded into happiness. On the contrary pleasure, dependent on things, is a distraction and a nuisance, for it merely increases the false conviction that one needs to have things to be happy, when in reality it’s just the opposite. The natural world is nature’s playground for us to play, discover, build, learn and grow, and to pass on what we have learned.
Why think of happiness at all? You do not think of happiness except when you are unhappy. A man who says: ‘now I am happy’, is between two sorrows – past and future. This happiness is mere excitement caused by relief from pain. Tue happiness is beyond compare.
Real happiness is utterly unselfconscious. It is best expressed negatively as: ‘there is nothing wrong with me. I have nothing to worry about’. After all the ultimate purpose of meditation is to reach a point when the conviction, instead of being only verbal, is based on the actual and ever-present state of being free of clutter; of memories and expectations. It is like the joy of open spaces, of being young, of having all the time and energy for doing things, for discovery, for adventure.
The choice of oneness is blissful – B’Gita Ch: 9
What remains to discover is that the immensity of the universe is in reality in the boundless heart of the Universal, where lies the source and purpose of existence, the secret of suffering, and life’s redemption from ignorance.
Your true home; the true heart empty of all content; empty of all fears, desires, expectation, pain and suffering. You face emptiness cheerfully when you go to sleep. You can discover this for yourself when ‘fully awake’, a state of wakeful sleep, observing but not attached, and you will find it quite in harmony with your real nature. A kind of joyful bliss. Words can only give you the idea and the idea is not the experience. True happiness has no cause; not dependent on anything or anyone but itself for happiness, and what has no cause is immovable, which does not mean it is perceivable as pleasure.
The state of freedom from sorrow can be described only negatively. What is perceivable is pain and pleasure. To know happiness directly you must go beyond the addiction to causality, to things, people and events, expectation, and the tyranny of time.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 123. The Eternal Self, and the Tyranny of time:
No! Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change: Thy pyramids built up with newer might to me are nothing novel, nothing strange; they are but dressings of a former sight.
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire what thou dost foist upon us that is old; and rather make them born to our desire, than think that we before have heard them told.
Thy registers and thee I both defy, not wondering at the present nor the past, for thy records and what we see doth lie, made more or less by thy continual haste.
This I do vow and this shall ever be; I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.
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NaturesDestiny 