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Happiness 6

How to Overcome Negative Emotions During Corona

May 24, 2020 Uncategorizedhappiness, human free will

For many people, the uncertainty surrounding coronavirus is the hardest thing to handle. We don’t know how exactly we’ll be impacted or how bad things might get. And that makes it all too easy to catastrophize and spiral out into overwhelming dread and panic. But there are many things you can do—even in the face of this unique crisis—to manage your anxiety and fears.

 

Most of our modern-day illnesses have a root cause in ‘stress’ and where do we feel stress developing first? In our mind and in our thoughts. We then witness it in the body as shortness of breath and after time it develops into something much more serious.

What we can do in the time of isolation?

Do more of breathing exercises, meditate, do yoga, connect to yourself and look at yourself as an outsider, introspect. If at any time you find yourself in a state of anxiety practicing the following techniques will bring instant effects.

In last month issue we share with you simple breathing exercises:

Pranayama (breathing exercises)

http://awakeningtimes.com/yogic-breathing-for-stability-and-calm-during-the-coronavirus

Meditation

Like the physical body, if inner space is not taken care, it may lead to various diseases and afflictions. The aim of meditation is to bring about deep inner cleansing which helps the practitioners to open up to ‘receive’ and ‘give’ love completely and enjoy the present moment with intensity by shedding the negative impressions in the subconscious mind.

Download these meditations in various languages for free:

Power of Purity: https://mohanji.org/power-of-purity/
And if you don’t have time this short meditation will bring you peace, and it’s suitable for kids also:

Freedom: https://mohanji.org/freedom-meditation/

Traditional Yoga

Yoga is a state in which the body, mind and soul are in unison. This leads to health and equanimity, a state where one is happy and without anxieties, anger or stress. Watch this video here.

Introspect. Connect to yourself. Feel yourself.

Mohanji advice to introspect, ask yourself “What exactly is annoying you? What is making you angry, and don’t blame outside entities, outside beings? That’s not important. That’s escapism. Instead, you should see what is hurting you inside.”

 

Introspection and contemplate on Gratitude:

 

 

Introspection and contemplate on Non-violence:

 

 

Introspection and contemplate on Harmony and relationships:

 

 

Introspection and contemplate on Selflessness:

 

 

“It is time to think beyond caste, country, culture, colour, community and religion. It is time to reconsider non-violence in thoughts, words, and actions. That lifestyle of love, compassion and kindness is essential today. This is needed for the future of earth and the future of man on earth.” – Mohanji

 

 

Authors: Monika Balenović, Nikolina Dragojević, Ivana Kodžić – Mohanji Acharyas are empowered and deeply connected individuals who represent Mohanji’s teaching through their life and work, channelling Mohanji’s consciousness during their public programs.

 

Interview with Sue Jones: The Heart, Science and Consciousness

July 25, 2019 Uncategorizedconsciousness, happiness

Sue Jones is a scientist who holds an honours degree in education and has specialized in mathematics and educational theory and practice for children. She is known for her research in mental mapping strategies in children between the ages of 4 and 11. She is an archaeologist, researcher, and healer, and her passion is exploring the link between science and consciousness.

We met this extraordinary woman in Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and here is her message to all of us.

You are a scientist, but that did not stop you from exploring beyond scientific boundaries. How did all of this start? 

In the past, I have worked with many scientists who came from different countries and backgrounds. I was lucky to meet one professor from England who was an engineer, and very interested in remote viewing. This was something that really opened my world.

I took part in experiments that involved looking at the time, space, biofield (which is like energy field surrounding the body), and how we can influence this information field. We realized that you cannot understand the time if you do not understand the energy of time.

As a scientist, I’ve tried to block my own gifts because I was trying to normalize everything. Just like everybody, when you are a child, you are very open, but then you start blocking things.

This experience taught me that if I pay attention to different aspects of myself, I can connect and cross beyond these senses, which are limiting us.

In our world, we are 100% limited by the inefficiency of our senses because our senses only govern such a small fragment of what we feel, see and experience. 

Connection with other people who were working with high vibrations helped a lot, and one of them unlocked the hidden potentials in me. I am very grateful for that. At the time, he was my guru, and his presence changed my life in many aspects. Being in his energy helped me tap into mine. This was something that was meant to be. I was able to witness many miracles and a lot of things that were channelled through consciousness. He was very gifted, he could transform atoms and particles.

We live in the world, thinking it is stable and static, and unchangeable in many ways, but it is not. Actually, we don’t need machines to change it. We can use consciousness and advance in how we work with the environment, influence the natural energy of the earth, and use that to accelerate our ability to live in harmony and synergy with the planet and each other.

 

At the age of 26, you were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and you had Raynaud’s Disease. Did that help you see things from another perspective and become a healer?

Raynaud’s Disease means poor circulation in the body. You feel cold, and your fingers go numb. It was so bad. Plus, I had a lung condition. It turned out that I had asbestos in my body. When I allowed my body and natural senses to work in full capacity, in less than a year, this was all gone. We don’t need to be dependent on medication if we are vibrating at the right frequency, because the body can self-heal.

In my understanding, it is all about distortion in our body. Sometimes a soul takes us on a journey, which is a journey just to witness something. Even then, the experience of whatever we need to face is amplified by all the distortion; fear carried in the body, and the different influences that come from our environment all contribute as well.

So, if we can get into the state of balance from inside, we can eradicate a lot of these things.

Is there a unique approach for children? How can we help them? 

Many children – and I used to be a teacher also, and I can recognize gifted children – are often diagnosed with things like ADHD, or other behavioural problems, because they did not know how to socialize with other children of their own age, and they were not understood. Often they refuse to do the work because it is too easy for them. So I developed programs that were expanding the capacities of more gifted children. I can tap into their perspective, and many of them can see auras, but they don’t know how it fits in this world, so by the time they’re six or seven they lose this ability because there is no place for this.

They were labelled, not just because of their abilities, but also because of wrong teaching methods. We create fears and blocks in them. I think it is imperative to change standards in terms of how the new generations should be treated. We have to be careful and stop imprinting this hard and linear way of thinking.

We always talk about how we need to create more creative thinkers, but how is that possible if we don’t allow them to connect with consciousness? We are limiting them with all the wrong concepts. We push them into addictions and all sorts of problems because they don’t know how to deal with their gifts. Many of them have psychic abilities, they are meant to be leaders in this world, but the system created limitations which don’t allow them to express themselves.

Within the education system, we need to open a bit more, and now I’m working with many scientist professors and leaders who are trying to change this approach in the world.

No child is born with a hatred for another child. No child is born with a program to be violent. Every child is influenced by what WE create around them, and this is something we have to remember, and we need to take responsibility for humanity.

We have to look at the perspective of an anomaly, and not be afraid of it. We have to find a way for them to become co-creators. We don’t have to immediately say ‘this was a machine fault or error of something or someone’. We have to look at it and ask: ‘Why is this happening?’ We don’t know the answers, and we should not be afraid to say it.

Let’s throw it in the circle and postulate some new ideas on how it is happening. At the same time, try not to be so limited in thinking that everything has to be proven in solid form. We have to explain this to future generations, and we shouldn’t put them inside linear boxes.

Channelling – does this word fit in science and how?

This is normality. And the sad thing is that the more I get exposed to science, the more I realize that within the scientific field this system was known.

It is used by many people behind the scenes. Many of them, however, are afraid to say how they got their ideas. I’ve spoken with many great composers and artists – ideas don’t come from their mind, from thinking. It comes as a flow through the heart.  Even science would support that the brain is actually receiving, it is not creating everything. And a lot of it happens in our energy field. We have to teach people that the body is really a receiver. How do we do that? By having confidence in each other, understanding each other, and by creating new options and vision for the ones that are coming.

This is what consciousness is about. We all have our own different gateways to get to that point of consciousness. We CAN have different beliefs, but we have to learn not to be afraid of these differences.

We have to harness life and recognize that consciousness is in all of us. It does not matter whether you have Islamic, Hindu or Christian background, it is just a gateway to open the Self.

The only important thing is a belief that life force flows through everything, and that there is a higher intelligence that knows the pathway. It can help and guide us to optimize ourselves. But we should be careful of our ego. The real connection always comes from the heart. This is how I connect to people and the world around me. I feel love. Only love for all.

Changing the world is not only what can be done physically, but it is also more about how can we evolve energetically. If more and more people started opening, it would carry the field. The more we raise it, the faster people will awaken, and it will accelerate the process. We have to keep a high positive vibration.

 

Interview on Sue Jones conducted by Lea Kosovac

Sue Jones is an osteoarchaeologist, teacher, healer, and channel from the United Kingdom. Long term illness changed her view of life and what is important. Susan now explores aspects of health, mortality and experiences.

 

Is a Happy Life Different from a Meaningful One?

July 25, 2019 Uncategorizedhappiness, in pursuit of happiness

Philosophers, researchers, spiritual leaders—they’ve all debated what makes life worth living. Is it a life filled with happiness or a life filled with purpose and meaning? Is there even a difference between the two?

Think of the human rights activist who fights oppression but ends up in prison—is she happy? Or the social animal who spends his nights (and some days) jumping from party to party—is that the good life?

These aren’t just academic questions. They can help us determine where we should invest our energy to lead the life we want.

Recently some researchers have explored these questions in-depth, trying to tease apart the differences between a meaningful life and a happy one. Their research suggests there’s more to life than happiness—and even calls into question some previous findings from the field of positive psychology, earning it both a fair amount of press coverage and criticism.

The controversy surrounding it raises big questions about what happiness actually means: While there may be more to life than happiness, there may also be more to “happiness” than pleasure alone.

Five differences between a happy life and a meaningful one

“A happy life and a meaningful life have some differences,” says Roy Baumeister, a Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He bases that claim on a paper he published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, co-authored with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Stanford.

Baumeister and his colleagues surveyed 397 adults, looking for correlations between their levels of happiness, meaning, and various other aspects of their lives: their behaviour, moods, relationships, health, stress levels, work lives, creative pursuits, and more.

They found that a meaningful life and a happy life often go hand-in-hand—but not always. And they were curious to learn more about the differences between the two. Their statistical analysis tried to separate out what brought meaning to one’s life but not happiness, and what brought happiness but not meaning.

“A happy life and a meaningful life have some differences,” says Roy Baumeister, a Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. He bases that claim on a paper he published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, co-authored with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Stanford.

Baumeister and his colleagues surveyed 397 adults, looking for correlations between their levels of happiness, meaning, and various other aspects of their lives: their behaviour, moods, relationships, health, stress levels, work lives, creative pursuits, and more.

They found that a meaningful life and a happy life often go hand-in-hand—but not always. And they were curious to learn more about the differences between the two. Their statistical analysis tried to separate out what brought meaning to one’s life but not happiness, and what brought happiness but not meaning.

Their findings suggest that meaning (separate from happiness) is not connected with whether one is healthy, has enough money, or feels comfortable in life, while happiness (separate from meaning) is. More specifically, the researchers identified five major differences between a happy life and a meaningful one.

  • Happy people satisfy their wants and needs, but that seems largely irrelevant to a meaningful life. Therefore, health, wealth, and ease in life were all related to happiness, but not meaning.
  • Happiness involves being focused on the present, whereas meaningfulness involves thinking more about the past, present, and future—and the relationship between them. In addition, happiness was seen as fleeting, while meaningfulness seemed to last longer.
  • Meaningfulness is derived from giving to other people; happiness comes from what they give to you. Although social connections were linked to both happiness and meaning, happiness was connected more to the benefits one receives from social relationships, especially friendships, while meaningfulness was related to what one gives to others—for example, taking care of children. Along these lines, self-described “takers” were happier than self-described “givers,” and spending time with friends was linked to happiness more than meaning, whereas spending more time with loved ones was linked to meaning but not happiness.
  • Meaningful lives involve stress and challenges. Higher levels of worry, stress, and anxiety were linked to higher meaningfulness but lower happiness, which suggests that engaging in challenging or difficult situations that are beyond oneself or one’s pleasures promotes meaningfulness but not happiness.
  • Self-expression is important to meaning but not happiness. Doing things to express oneself and caring about personal and cultural identity were linked to a meaningful life but not a happy one. For example, considering oneself to be wise or creative was associated with meaning but not happiness.

 

One of the more surprising findings from the study was that giving to others was associated with meaning, rather than happiness while taking from others was related to happiness and not meaning. Though many researchers have found a connection between giving and happiness, Baumeister argues that this connection is due to how one assigns meaning to the act of giving.

“If we just look at helping others, the simple effect is that people who help others are happier,” says Baumeister. But when you eliminate the effects of meaning on happiness and vice versa, he says, “then helping makes people less happy, so that all the effect of helping on happiness comes by way of increasing meaningfulness.”

Baumeister’s study raises some provocative questions about research in positive psychology that links kind, helpful—or “pro-social”—an activity to happiness and well-being. Yet his research has also touched off a debate about what psychologists—and the rest of us—really mean when we talk about happiness.

What is happiness, anyway?

Researchers, just like other people, have disagreed about the definition of “happiness” and how to measure it. Some have equated happiness with transient emotional states or even spikes of activity in pleasure centres of the brain, while others have asked people to assess their overall happiness or life satisfaction. Some researchers, like Ed Diener of the University of Illinois, a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, have tried to group together these aspects of happiness under the term “subjective well-being,” which encompasses assessments of positive and negative emotions as well as overall life satisfaction. These differences in definitions of happiness have sometimes led to confusing—or even contradictory—findings.

For instance, in Baumeister’s study, familial relationships—like parenting—tended to be tied to meaning more than happiness. Support for this finding comes from researchers like Robin Simon of Wake Forest University, who looked at happiness levels among 1,400 adults and found that parents generally reported less positive emotion and more negative emotions than people without kids. She concluded that, while parents may report more purpose and meaning than nonparents, they are generally less happy than their childless peers.

This conclusion irks happiness researcher Sonja Lyubormirsky, of the University of California, Riverside, who takes issue with studies that “try too hard to rule out everything related to happiness” from their analysis but still draw conclusions about happiness.

“Imagine everything that you think would be great about parenting, or about being a parent,” says Lyubomirsky. “If you control for that—if you take it out of the equation—then of course parents are going to look a lot less happy.”

In a recent study, she and her colleagues measured happiness levels and meaning in parents, both in a “global” way—having them assess their overall happiness and life satisfaction—and while engaged in their daily activities. Results showed that, in general, parents were happier and more satisfied with their lives than non-parents, and parents found both pleasure and meaning in childcare activities, even in the very moments when they were engaged in those activities.

“Being a parent leads to all of these good things: It gives you meaning in life, it gives you goals to pursue, it can make you feel more connected in your relationships,” says Lyubomirsky. “You can’t really talk about happiness without including all of them.”

Lyubomirsky feels that researchers who try to separate meaning and happiness may be on the wrong track because meaning and happiness are inseparably intertwined.

“When you feel happy, and you take out the meaning part of happiness, it’s not really happiness,” she says.

Yet this is basically how Baumeister and his colleagues defined happiness for the purpose of their study. So although the study referred to “happiness,” says Lyubomirsky, perhaps it was actually looking at something more like “hedonic pleasure”—the part of happiness that involves feeling good without the part that involves deeper life satisfaction.

Is there happiness without pleasure?

But is it ever helpful to separate out meaning from pleasure?

Some researchers have taken to doing that by looking at what they call “eudaimonic happiness,” or the happiness that comes from meaningful pursuits, and “hedonic happiness”—the happiness that comes from pleasure or goal fulfilment.

A recent study by Steven Cole of the UCLA School of Medicine, and Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that people who reported more eudaimonic happiness had stronger immune system function than those who reported more hedonic happiness, suggesting that a life of meaning may be better for our health than a life seeking pleasure.

Similarly, a 2008 article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, found several positive health effects associated with eudaimonic happiness, including less reactivity to stress, less insulin resistance (which means less chance of developing diabetes), higher HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels, better sleep, and brain activity patterns that have been linked to decreased levels of depression.

But happiness researcher Elizabeth Dunn thinks the distinction between eudaimonic and hedonic happiness is murky.

“I think it’s a distinction that intuitively makes a lot of sense but doesn’t actually hold up under the lens of science,” says Dunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Dunn has authored numerous studies showing that giving to others increases happiness, both in the moment, as measured by positive emotions alone, and in terms of overall life satisfaction. In a recently published paper, she and her colleagues surveyed data from several countries and found supporting evidence for this connection, including findings that showed subjects randomly assigned to buy items for charity reported higher levels of positive emotion—a measure of hedonic happiness—than participants assigned to buy the same items for themselves, even when the spending did not build or strengthen social ties.

“I think my own work really supports the idea that eudaimonic and hedonic well-being are surprisingly similar and aren’t as different as one might expect,” says Dunn. “To say that there’s one pathway to the meaning and that it’s different than the pathway to pleasure is false.”

Like Lyubomirsky, she insists that meaning and happiness go hand-in-hand. She points to the work of researchers who’ve found that positive emotions can help establish deeper social ties—which many argue is the most meaningful part of life—and to University of Missouri psychologist Laura King’s research, which found that feeling positive emotions helps people see the “big picture” and notice patterns, which can help one aim for more meaningful pursuits and interpret one’s experience as meaningful.

In addition, she argues that the measurements used to distinguish eudaimonic from hedonic happiness are too highly correlated to separate out in this way—statistically speaking, doing so can make your results unreliable.

As University of Pennsylvania psychologist James Coyne—according to Dunn, a statistical “hardhead”—wrote in a 2013 blog post, trying to distinguish eudaimonic well-being by controlling for hedonic well-being and other factors leaves you with something that’s not really eudaimonia at all. He compares it to taking a photo of siblings who look alike, removing everything that makes them resemble each other, and then still calling the photos representative of the siblings.

“If we were talking about people, we probably couldn’t even recognize a family resemblance between the two,” he writes.

In other words, just because it’s statistically possible to remove the influence of one variable on another doesn’t mean that what you end up with is something meaningfully distinct.

“If you parcel out meaning from happiness, the happiness factor may go away,” says Dunn. “But, in terms of people’s daily experience, is it actually the case that people face genuine tradeoffs between happiness and meaning? I don’t think so.”

Can you have it all?

Baumeister, though, clearly believes it is useful to make distinctions between meaning and happiness—in part to encourage more people to seek meaningful pursuits in life whether or not doing so makes them feel happy. Still, he recognizes that the two are closely tied.

“Having a meaningful life contributes to being happy and being happy may also contribute to finding life more meaningful,” he says. “I think that there’s evidence for both of those.”

But one piece of warning: If you are aiming strictly for a life of hedonic pleasure, you may be on the wrong path to finding happiness. “For centuries, traditional wisdom has been that simply seeking pleasure for its own sake doesn’t really make you happy in the long run,” he says.

In fact, seeking happiness without meaning would probably be a stressful, aggravating, and annoying proposition, argues Baumeister.

Instead, when aspiring to a well-lived life, it might make more sense to look for things you find meaningful—deep relationships, altruism, and purposeful self-expression, for example—than to look for pleasure alone… even if pleasure augments one’s sense of meaning, as King suggests.

“Work toward long-term goals; do things that society holds in high regard—for achievement or moral reasons,” he says. “You draw meaning from a larger context, so you need to look beyond yourself to find the purpose in what you’re doing.”

Chances are that you’ll also find pleasure—and happiness—along the way.

 

Article source: greatergood.berkeley.edu

Authors:

Jason Marsh is the editor in chief of Greater Good

Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Good’s book review editor and a frequent contributor to the magazine.

 

Rediscover The Essence Of Happiness

April 14, 2017 Uncategorizedhappiness
happiness

Have you ever wondered – what is the real essence of happiness, what is and what is not real happiness? Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that he has enough happiness provided. Happiness, joy and love hold different meanings for each individual. A person may find happiness in shopping and another may find the same kind of pleasure in social work. But there are some aspects which have the capacity to at least put on a smile on every individual’s face. Simple gestures like maybe a hug or a morning greeting. Going to each mate of yours at the work place or to each loved one at home every morning and greeting them with a huge smile on your face will bring you happiness as well as to the other person.

So, real happiness is not an external stimulation by watching an action movie or eating out or buying a new dress; it is not the result of acquiring something – whether it be a new car or a position, or of receiving some good news. True happiness is not relief from suffering – whether from an illness or a difficult situation, nor is it the achievement of a goal – whether personal or professional. All these are externally dependent, where happiness is confused with stimulation, excitement, achievement, acquisition or relief. Happiness is not all of these. You commonly say “Well, what I like best,” … just then stop and think. Because although each of the above episodes bring us happiness, there is a moment just before you begin to enjoy the episode which is better than when you are enjoying the episode, but you don’t know what its called or what it feels like to enjoy that. Each one of us can experience that joy, we just need to find it. Remember that happiness is not a future promise. It can only be experienced now, in each and every mundane action of the day.

Loving your life is about trusting your instinct, taking the odd chance in difficult situations, loving and experiencing joy, enjoying memories of good actions and episodes of life and learning through life time experiences. The birds chirping on the tree, a child nibbling on her mother or merry children spilling out of their homes, all have the capability to make a person feel happy. We just neglect most of these. Nowadays, we try and look for joy in bonuses, promotions or any monetary gain. But can money really buy happiness? Sometimes you see poor people laughing carelessly while they play with their children and experiencing happiness. On the other hand, children from well off families are surrounded with technology today. Technology has created such an influence in an individual’s life that people have almost abandoned their family time. The time of the day that bought so much laughing and giggling in the house is now substituted with members glued to television or mobile phones. Festivals that were the major joyful events have now lost their essence. They are merely days of more worry and tensions because of the new trends of exchanging expensive gifts or celebrating them lavishly.
happy-child
So what is real happiness – perhaps a better way to describe happiness in its true essence is contentment. This comes from a complete awareness and acceptance of the self as we are now at an internal level, and an acceptance of ‘what is’ at an external level. Sounds difficult? The highest happiness is bliss which can be experienced only when the self is totally free of all attachment and dependency. Sounds even more difficult? But this is a real understanding and definition of ‘happiness’, which is not difficult to accept and make a part of our life, once there is a deep understanding, absorption and appreciation of the divine wisdom of the self and others as well as the laws of action and time involving both of them i.e. wisdomwhich is accurate and complete in all aspects. Real happiness is a direct result of this divine wisdom.

When you feel stuck in a hard time, jump-start a pro-change attitude by letting go or shedding off your attachment to possessions and people (external attachments) and habits (internal attachments) that no longer work for you. When you get rid of your attachment to physical things and people and emotional habits that ‘weigh you down’, and start to feel lighter — you’ll witness how by letting go, you’re making room for new things, new values to enter your life. As a result, your subconscious will be relieved by letting go of emotional burdens or bondages. To achieve the above purpose, try the short meditation below. Think as well as visualize alongside the following thoughts:

I become aware of myself as a tiny sparkling star of light, an energy, situated just above the eyebrows – a soul… In soul consciousness, I experience the beauty of the many qualities like peace, love and joy; of the spiritual being that I am… Now, with the medium of visualization, I, the soul, travel beyond the world of 5 elements to the soul world, a non-physical dimension of the subtle light of golden red hue (shade)… Over there, I visualize, in front of me – a sparkling Sun of golden light – God, the Father and Mother of me, the Supreme Soul, the ocean of peace, love and joy, which is His eternal nature… He radiates the immense spiritual energy of peace, love and joy… I turn my mind and intellect to His light… I feel the warmth of His presence and the light of His love for me gently healing the wounds of the past that are buried deep inside me, the soul… wounds left by ego, fear, sorrow, jealousy, hatred, anger that have reduced my happiness all this while… I feel a deep feeling of emotional freedom inside me, I feel light and my happiness is restored…

Fortunately, being happy is a cakewalk but it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you better stop worrying about it and see what treasures (whether your internal ones or the external ones i.e. from the Supreme and others) you can tap into.

Source: Awakening With Brahma Kumaris

In the pursuit of HAPPINESS

August 19, 2015 Mindhappiness, in pursuit of happiness, seeking happiness
hapiness

We search for happiness even before we know it.

We find it in the warmth of our first maternal embrace which we grasp with fear instinctively guessing that it might be the last time to hear the beating of her heart from the inside. After a while we are happy to stand on our two feet and to discover new things everyday.

That grass feels so funny under our soles. Mom is so beautiful. Mothers will never be as beautiful as they are in the eyes of their young children. The world is all mine when I ride on my father’s shoulders.

We find it in the games played with other children from the block. In the first school love. Back when love meant sharing homework, leaving secret notes and flowers and stealing innocent kisses on the cheek. Or holding hands and giggling on the school hallways.

We find it in the high school years parties and in the seaside getaways.

In our adult days we seek happiness in a well paid job that doesn’t suit us, dressed up with office attires much more expensive that we could ever afford- all to impress managers who only know our first names.

“Don’t let them change you! ” Smart woman my mom.
be happy

 

We seek happiness in our closest friends. We lose some along the way. With some we reunite. Real friends know your birthday without Facebook notification.

We seek happiness in other people weddings, in romantic movies, in the seasonal forest fruits, in the birth of a new family member, in the health of our parents. In a professional project, in the mirage of working abroad.

Some find it in white lies and in the next relationship, the next partner to fulfill their needs. In the money they spend. In the car they drive. In the competition, in their success or in the losses of others.

We never stop chasing. We chase it on dark dusty streets. Happiness hides from playgrounds and parks. Too many people would find it.

We always tend to locate it on the other side…Furthermore, in a morbid way we feed our joy with other people’s grief.

The day is almost over. We shall continue the search tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day. We found some footprints. Let’s call it a night.

We come back home full of doubts and uncertainties.

Same as you, I drag my feet on the staircase of my building. The elevator is out of order. Somebody stole the light ball again. I reach my apartment door and blindly start looking for the key.

Happiness opens the door smiling: “How was your day?”

 I wasted my time love..…really wasted my time!

 

 

 

 

Author: Alexandra Radulescu, medium.com/@aleradulescu

Story of a Sufi mystic: What do you want?

February 7, 2015 Consciousnesshappiness, remain happy secret, sufi mystic, sufi mystic story, sufi story

This is the story of a Sufi mystic who had remained happy his whole life — no one had ever seen him unhappy. He was always laughing, he was laughter, his whole being was a perfume of celebration… In his old age, when he was dying, on his deathbed and still enjoying death, laughing hilariously, a disciple asked, “You puzzle us. Now you are dying, why are you laughing? What is there funny about it? We are feeling so sad. We wanted to ask you many times in your life why you are never sad. But now, confronting death at least, one should be sad. You are still laughing — how are you managing it?”

The old man said, “It is simple. I had asked my master — I had gone to my master as a young man; I was only seventeen and already miserable, and my master was old, seventy, and he was sitting under a tree, laughing for no reason at all. There was nobody else there, nothing had happened, nobody had cracked a joke or anything, and he was simply laughing, holding his belly. I asked him, ‘What is the matter with you? Are you mad or something?’

“He said, ‘One day I was also as sad as you are. Then it dawned on me that it is my choice, it is my life.’

“Since that day, every morning when I get up, the first thing I decide is… before I open my eyes I say to myself, ‘Abdullah’” — that was his name — “‘what do you want? Misery? Blissfulness? What you are going to choose today?’ And it happens that I always choose blissfulness.”

It is a choice. Try it. When you become aware the first moment in the morning that sleep has left, ask yourself, “Abdullah, another day! What is your idea? Do you choose misery or blissfulness?”

And who would choose misery? And WHY? It is so unnatural — unless one feels blissful in misery, but then too you are choosing bliss, not misery.

 

 

Contributed by: Nilesh Parekh

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