Living Happily

It is not from lack of religion in the ordinary sense of the word that the world is suffering. It is from lack of love, lack of awareness. And love is generated through awareness—no other way. When the heart is unobstructed, the result is love. When the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom. Understand the obstacles you are putting in the way of love and freedom and happiness, and they will drop. Turn on the light of awareness, and the darkness will disappear.

Then you will understand what freedom is, what love is, what happiness is, what reality is, what truth is—what God is. You will see. In your heart, you will be free at last. Externally, everything will go on as before, and though you will continue to be in the world, you will no longer be of it. You will at last know what it means to see with a vision that is clear and unclouded by fear or desire. And you will come to union with God.

There are two simple attitudes that help maintain spiritual awareness in everyday life when difficulty arises, as it always does. The first attitude is called acceptance. It’s contained in a prayer most of us have come to know as the Serenity Prayer, which goes: “Lord, give me the grace to change whatever can be changed, to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

The second attitude is called perspective. Think of some of the things you detested and hated when you were a child, or things you feared. How many of those still persist today? What happened to them? They passed away. Now, think of things you are possessive of, that you are dependent on, that you don’t want to let go of, that make you fear for the future, and to each one of these things say, “This too will pass away.” How? With a ceaseless awareness. Because you don’t change yourself. You see change take place in you, through you, in your awareness.

“I can assure you of this: Get started, and you will quickly see the results. The upsets will still keep coming, depending on the depth of the programming, but I have not known a single  person who gave time to being aware who didn’t see a difference in a matter of weeks. The quality of your life changes. You’re different. You react differently. You are much more  energetic, much more alive. You see things you’ve never seen before. For you have discovered what people everywhere are searching for and rarely find, namely, the fountainhead of serenity and joy that hides in every human heart. All it takes is a little willingness to practice.”