Plain living and high thinking should be your goal. Learn to
carry all the conditions of happiness within yourself by meditating and attuning
your consciousness to the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Joy, which is
God. Your happiness should never be subject to any outside influence.
― Paramhansa Yogananda “Self Analysis: Key to the Mastery of
Life”
Prosperity that feels burdensome
is not prosperity. Life ought to be and can easily be a flow of joyful moments.
Even our recognition that we have erred before is an occasion for celebration
that we may live without that error now that we have seen it for what it is, a
natural action based on both ignorance of some truth and our desire to always
do our best.
Many of us live with the idea
that misery, sin, and unhappiness are the essence of human life and some on the
understanding that even desiring a better life is cause for suffering. When I
was born, my life expectancy was no more than 64-65 years. I am older than that
now and statistically have another 20 years but that figure increases with my
belief in and acceptance of the reality that I choose my happiness and I choose
the consequences of my thoughts when I choose the thoughts themselves. And, of
course, I choose my lifestyle.
Human beliefs predict human life and
our future is solvent and always subject to change. We may even change the
endings to the stories we tell about the past and recreate our feelings from
regret to gratitude in the process. Plain living and high thinking do not
require living in a monastery or an ashram and living in luxurious surroundings
does not mean living a complicated life.
We complicate life by either
demanding that life conform to us or abandoning our own feelings and needs to
conform to someone else’s desires. Knowing who we are and what gives us real
satisfaction are the beginnings of prosperity. Self-care, doing work that
matters to us and serves others, sharing our deepest feelings and thoughts with
others and listening to them, and expecting to always have enough fulfill our
promise of prosperity.
By selecting happiness first, we
ensure that all of the rest comes to us in increasing measure. Because
happiness includes freedom, everything we do includes the complete freedom of
others as well. As we realize that our happiness depends only on our own
contemplation of our life and our choice of relationship to the world, we allow
others their way of being in the world, knowing that there is no limit or
restriction unless we create it for our own self.
But, don’t just take my word for
it. For the next minute, think about some pleasant experience. Notice the smile
curling your lips. Notice the brightening of the light around you. Enjoy the
greater ease in your breathing and your lighter feeling as you sense some of
your habitual aches and pains fade away. Now, extend your recall of a happy
moment to include this one and continue for as long as you can. Repeat often.
I turn my attention to the
feeling of love that reminds me that Spirit is my life and that all I need to
do to enjoy my plain and simple high minded prosperity is to pay attention to
this loving feeling. It fills my whole awareness and transforms me and my world
into blissfully happy prosperity for so it does and so it is.
John
John Lusk
“First
you ask definitely for direction, then it will enter your consciousness as a
definite thought; then in your turn you give it back the thought and it will
give you back the thing. It answers every question, solves every problem; it is
the solution to every difficulty.” Ernest Holmes
1 comment:
Thank you for this John. I am a firm believer in "choosing" happiness!
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