Today's Quotation:

Happiness is the greatest paradox in nature.  It can grow in any soil, live under any conditions.  It defies environment.  The reason for this is that it does not come from without but from within.  Whenever you see people seeking happiness outside themselves, you can be sure they have never yet found it.

Forman Lincicome

Today's Meditation:

Many, many very wise people have written about the fact that the only way to find happiness is from within.  These people have observed human beings who have tried to find happiness in things and other people and money, and they've seen over and over again how these people have ended up feeling empty and incomplete, and certainly not happy.

Why shouldn't we take these wise people at their word and trust what they say?  Why can't we turn our "search" for happiness within, and allow that part of ourselves to be expressed fully and completely?  We may tell ourselves that we believe in this concept, but then with the very next car commercial we see, we may think of how nice life would be if we had one of the new cars being advertised.  We see our friends and neighbors falling victim to the allure of the promises of possession and acquiring, or telling themselves that having another person in their lives will help them to be happy, but we don't notice when we do the same thing ourselves.

You can be happy wherever you are, in whatever situation you find yourself.  And if your situation is a bad one, your unhappiness more than likely will contribute to making it worse, whereas your ability to find happiness in yourself can only help to improve the way things are for you.  Happiness can help to remind you that "this too shall pass," and better things are to come.

You have happiness inside of you, right here and right now.  You also have the choice of letting it free to be a major part of your life and who you are, or of keeping it inside out of fear or unwillingness to take a risk and trust life to let you be happy.

Questions to ponder:

1.  Have you ever found true happiness from anything outside of yourself?

2.  What might lead us to believe that we can find happiness outside of ourselves?

3.  How can we go about letting our happiness out to be a major part of our lives?

For further thought:

We have been accustomed to thinking that we have to get something from outside us in order to be happy, but in truth it works the other way:  we must learn to contact our inner source of happiness and satisfaction and flow it outward to share with others--not because it is virtuous to do so, but because it really feels good.

Shakti Gawain

more thoughts and ideas on happiness

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