The Secret to Happiness

There has been much written in recent years on the subject of happiness. Buddha, thousands of years ago, set out to teach on this subject and came up with ten principles which have relevance even today.  The following is an outline of the main points he covered in his teachings.

1. Listen to the wisdom of your body - Your body is the messenger of your soul. If your mind is telling you one thing and your body is telling you another-your body is telling you the truth. The body is the visible soul. Most of us have learned to become so disconnected from our bodies. We have even learned to hate our bodies.  The greatest thing we can do as a humanity is to start connecting and loving everything about our bodies.  For more information on this check out the article Loving Your Body

2. Live in the Present - The present is exactly that-a gift from God.  In this and every moment we find pure bliss and peace as long as we don’t think of the past or the future. Amazingly, so many of us are caught up in our ego thinking most of the time without even being aware of it. Practise consciously living in the NOW and see what happens. You will be pleasantly surprised.

3. Embrace silence - This is a huge shift in our daily life.  Most of us run around distracted with life and never sit still long enough to feel anything.  Elizabeth Lesser, one of our great spiritual teachers today says to start out with the habit of silence by meditating for one minute and increasing this each month, so that by the end of one year you are meditating for a solid 12 minutes, which will likely increase to more.  The silence is a portal to Heaven.

4. Relinquish your need for the approval of others - This one is a personal challenge for me and I’m sure many of you as well.  Many of us, and I dare say the female audience especially, tend to be people pleasers. We think of others before ourselves, but in doing so we burn ourselves out and end up losing ourselves.  When we live our own personal truth whatever it is-the perfect people for us will appear and we can let go of the rest.

5. Get rid of toxic emotions - These are the emotions that eat away at us slowly, sometimes without us being aware of what is happening.  Many of us have deep-seated emotions built up from childhood that actually prevent us from moving forward.  Usually around mid-life, these feelings reappear and we get to choose how we will deal with them. Some people choose to continue to suppress these emotions and then they get very sick and old in the process.  Others face their fears and learn how to heal-often with the help of a therapist or other type of healer.

6. Get to a place of total self-knowledge - We have an awesome opportunity in this lifetime to learn more about ourselves on our spiritual journey or quest. If we stay open to possibilities, we will attract into our life what we are yearning to know.  The world is truly a reflection of ourselves. Some people perceive and thus experience the world as a bad and scary place, while others see the same world as beautiful and therefore, get an entirely different experience.

7. Live in non-judgement - This is so important and yet so hard for us to do.  The ego part of us wants to gossip about others to help us feel good about ourselves. When we do this we live in a state of ugliness.  Therefore, if we want to live as God has intended, we must choose to see everything in a very neutral way, as neither good nor bad, but as “just is”. There is such freedom in this way of thinking, however it takes tremendous practise.

8. Remove toxins from your life - There are many things that we consume and allow ourselves to watch that are toxic to the body, mind and spirit.  From junk food to violent TV, we need to be diligent in our pursuit to cleanse our systems and keep them pure for the Light to come in.

9. Replace fear-based thinking with love-based thinking- One question that keeps us on the “straight and narrow” Path, is asking continually, is this loving?  If there was one thing out of all things that would impact our lives the most, this check in question would be it.  If something we are doing or saying is NOT loving, it is based on fear-based thinking.  Turn your life around with this one thought, as the great Bible states, and the greatest of these is love.

10. Cultivate awareness at the end of each day - It is a wonderful spiritual practise to open and close every day with a prayer or meditation, turning to the Eternal Source for your power.

Ten new ideas are sometimes overwhelming to incorporate into an already busy life.  Try at #1 and when you are comfortable with that step go on with the next step.  Slowly over time your life will improve in some amazing ways.

Life was described by the Buddha as suffering.  None of us can argue that point. However, without suffering; the darkness, we would not recognize the Light, our happiness.