Deep Happiness

There is a greater happiness and fulfillment awaiting you. It is a greater happiness and fulfillment that will be the result of being deeply connected to the greater purpose and meaning of your life.

It will not be a happiness that is momentary, such as the happiness you derive from pleasurable stimulation. It is not a happiness that you must go to great lengths to achieve through outward activities or recreation.

It is more of an abiding sense of being connected within yourself, of being a complete person, of being whole. It is a happiness born of realizing you are here for a greater purpose, and that even though that purpose remains as yet undefined and unfulfilled, you feel connected to it. And you have the freedom to follow it.

Trying to be happily stimulated all day long, trying to escape from your own deeper feelings and greater responsibilities in life, is very attractive for many people, of course. There are things within themselves they do not want to face. There are things in the world they do not want to face. There are Great Waves of change coming to the world that they do not want to face. And the happiness they are trying to secure and to protect is very fleeting and is fraught with much anxiety and much concern.

For when you are not really connected to the deeper current of your life, you are ill at ease, you are restless, you are agitated, you are uncomfortable. To be out of sync with yourself, out of relationship with your deeper nature, cannot produce any kind of real comfort or consolation. Trying to escape yourself, trying not to see what is coming over the horizon of your life, only adds to this discomfort.

Now happiness becomes a kind of drug. You want to take a drug or an escape that will relieve you of your constant anxiety and nervousness. You want to be frivolous, you want to be carefree, you want to be lighthearted. But you are living under a dark cloud of uncertainty.

Being out of relationship with your deeper nature makes it very difficult to have any kind of meaningful relationship with any other person, for you will want to avoid in them what you are avoiding in yourself. And you hope that your being together does not stimulate unpleasant feelings or painful memories. You try to behave well—not to be angry, irritable or critical. You have to restrain yourself. You cannot be at ease.

These afflictions are so common that people consider this to be a normal way of life, a normal state of awareness. People lose themselves in work, feeling that their overactivity is always justified. People lose themselves in their romances, in the difficulties of others. They lose themselves in their hobbies, or their overemphasis on trivial things, trying to be happy.

Trying to be happy leads to self-deception, for you will find yourself denying your own experience and much of reality around yourself in order to try to preserve this sense of being happy and carefree. People say they live for the moment, but what they are really saying is they cannot face the future, and they have not resolved the past.

For you have a relationship with the future and you have a relationship with the past, and to be able to be fully present in the moment, you must be present to whatever is really there. You cannot think: “I will only be present to those things that are pleasing to me, only those things that reassure me, only those things that meet my expectations.”

That is not being present. And being present is the foundation of being able to experience love and affinity and compassion. If you cannot be present with your own experience, you really cannot be present with another’s experience.

If you say to life: “I only want to see the good. I only want to see the happiness. I only want to see the pleasant,” then you are not in relationship with life, for life includes a vast array of experiences.

Being out of relationship with yourself, you will feel disconnected, you will not have any real confidence, you will not really know what you are capable of. You will not know your strengths and weaknesses clearly enough to discern them. It is a constant state of frustration, nervousness and anxiety.

Now happiness becomes a drug, and in many cases it is a drug. You take a drug to feel lighthearted, to feel creative, to feel energetic. You have lost your connection to the deeper Knowledge and awareness within yourself. And now the drug is there to relieve your pain and your anxiety. You have deep feelings, and they keep emerging, but you keep running from them.

This leads to ever greater forms of avoidance and addiction. It is a fundamental problem in life. But God has given you a greater Intelligence, deeper within you. This greater Intelligence is strong. It is not conditioned by the world. It is not threatened by the world. It is fearless. It is capable. And it is wise. It represents a deeper Knowledge within you.

To begin to take the Steps to Knowledge, to experience the power and the presence of Knowledge, is to rebuild an essential connection to the deeper current of your life.

Along the way, you will have to face your pain, your anger, your unforgiveness. You will have to re-examine your former relationships and exercise recognition and forgiveness. You will have to face all those things that perhaps you were trying to avoid in the past, but you are doing this now to build a real connection inside of yourself.

This makes you more open to others, more discerning of others, and more objective regarding your understanding of others. This brings you out of the shadows, out of the darkness of your own pain and avoidance. This leads you to a deeper happiness and a greater satisfaction.

Knowledge within you gives you the strength to face these things. And as you become closer to Knowledge, you will feel that a great strength lives within you, and that you are not weak or pathetic. This begins to erase any sense of low self-esteem. And it shows you that in your past, your mistakes, your errors in judgment, your miscalculations were all because you were not connected to this deeper Intelligence.

Around you, you will see people trying to run away from themselves, trying to avoid things, and you will understand their predicament. You will not be so judgmental or condemning. You will think to yourself, “Oh, yes, I understand what that is like. I have lived in that state of mind before.”

God rescues you because God gives you something important to do in life. And this important set of activities involves important relationships with others. It begins to erase all of the unforgiveness you have with yourself and other people. It restores to you your strength and sense of real direction in life, and reaffirms that you have come from your Ancient Home bearing gifts for the world, and these gifts are valuable and unique to you, and that you are uniquely designed to render them and to carry and express them.

The deep pain of Separation from God and the deep pain of Separation from your own deeper nature here are erased.

Now life is just problematic, circumstantially difficult, occasionally very annoying, but within yourself, there is a deeper sense of rightness about your life. You are on the right track. You are not wandering aimlessly. You are not overcome with disappointment or agitation.

The difficulties of life are circumstantial. They are less personal to you. You still have weaknesses and certain predispositions that you have to be careful with. You still have certain tendencies that you have to manage wisely. But fundamentally you have reconnected with your greater purpose for being here. And you are following that purpose step by step, allowing it to reveal itself to you as you proceed.

This takes great self-confidence and great trust. Here you do not have to constantly reassure yourself, or prove to yourself that you have value, or that you are intelligent, or that your life has meaning because these things will just be self-evident.

God rescues you by giving you something important to do in life. This really is the healing, you see, because you were sent to the world to give something very unique to meet a real need in the world. And if you are fulfilling this mission and allowing it to reveal itself to you step by step, then you are satisfying the deepest need of your soul.

Whatever limitations you have within yourself, whatever little irritations you have with life, whatever disappointments you may encounter along the way, nothing can erase this sense of rightness that you are really doing what you came here to do. This produces a happiness and a satisfaction that is deep and abiding.

That does not mean that you are laughing all day long. It does not mean that every moment is pleasant. It does not mean that you are carefree. But it does mean that you are connected, that you are really connected to why you came here and to who you are. And you are beginning to be connected to the people in life you really need to know and to meet.

This undoes the source of your suffering, which is all the result of being separated or disconnected from your true nature, from your Creator, and from your real purpose for being here. If you have this disconnection, then no amount of pleasure or stimulation can erase the profound sense of loneliness and discontent that you will feel with you and carry everywhere with you.

You could live a life of ease, a life without overarching demands, and you would still be restless—pacing like a caged animal, back and forth, unable to sit still with yourself, unable to be with anyone else fully and completely—restless, agitated, confused.

God gives you the escape from these things by giving you something important to do and to know and to experience. Then you can learn to be serious and lighthearted all at once. At first, this seems like a contradiction. How could you be serious and lighthearted all at once? For anything that seems serious would be something you could not be lighthearted about. So it seems like a contradiction at the outset.

But when you begin to experience that you are taking your life seriously, that you are seriously evaluating what you really need to do, when you are really beginning to reconnect with the deeper current of your life and your greater purpose for coming here, which is a serious pursuit, then you begin to feel a kind of lifting of an oppression within yourself.

The darkness in your mind begins to lift, like the fog burning off in the morning sun. And when that fog begins to diminish, you are able to see and feel and know things that were too clouded before for you to experience.

People in the world, if they are wealthy enough, go to great lengths to have experiences of pleasure or happiness. They go to great lengths to try to feel connected to themselves in certain ways. They travel around the world, they climb mountains, they do extreme sports, they involve themselves in their hobbies and their interests to extreme degrees, trying to have some kind of deeper experience.

They are spending their lives, they are spending their fortunes, they are using the resources of the world to try to have an experience that they could have if they could learn to sit still, every day.

Sitting still requires that you be with yourself and your experience. It requires that you see the restlessness of your mind and face all of the influences that you have allowed into your mind. It shows you your discontent. It shows you your lack of self-discipline and lack of focus in your life.

This takes tremendous courage. You are going to face whatever is within you in order to reach a deeper current of your life. This is a serious pursuit. But when you begin to experience the deeper current of your life, then there is a relief and a lightheartedness.

You do not have to go around constantly searching and asking: Who am I? Why am I here? What must I really do in life? Because now you are beginning to experience the deeper current of your life, where these things are simply felt and known. You do not have to go out and try to define your life, create your life, set immense goals for your life, or try—with immense effort and great frustration—to carve out a reality for yourself.

For Knowledge within you is moving your life. It is carrying you in the direction you really must go. Here if you are involved in aggravating relationships, you will see that Knowledge will either take you into them or away from them. They are either meant to be a part of your greater journey or not, and this will bring tremendous resolution to your life.

People are struggling to have things, or to be something, or to do things that really have nothing to do with who they are and why they are here. So no matter how much energy or resources they invest in these pursuits, they are never satisfying. No matter how much they give themselves to try to make their relationships functional, these relationships simply cannot come into fruition.

To be relieved of this hopeless attempt is a tremendous comfort to the soul. Now you do not have to try so hard. You do not have to win approval with others. You do not have to be beautiful or intelligent or charming or attractive to try to win the approval of others to get what you want.

Here you see that relationships will come into your life as you are ready for them and as you take the Steps to Knowledge within yourself and follow the true movement of your life step by step. This is such a great relief, and this is what brings a sense of lightheartedness into your life.

Here you are taking on the most serious and significant pursuit of your life, and yet inside you feel excited; you feel you have energy; there is a deep enthusiasm; there is a sense of rightness about your life. You are grateful to be free from your former pursuits, which could never bring you real satisfaction.

When you gain a greater vantage point in following this movement of Knowledge, you will look around you and people will seem like they are in chains, slavishly trying to have what they want and to avoid calamity, slavishly engaged with each other. And you will feel a kind of liberation within yourself, as if you have finally made a real connection, and your life is really moving, and it is moving in the direction it was destined to go.

The seeming contradiction of being serious and lighthearted all at once now is recognized as a cause and effect. You are seriously engaged in what is really meaningful to you; the meaning is returned to you; you feel lighthearted and relieved and enthusiastic. You can give yourself wholeheartedly to this, for this is your real direction. You can give yourself wholeheartedly without a sense of betrayal, confusion or relentless anxiety.

Giving yourself to things that have no future can only generate constant confusion and frustration. To be free of these things is an immense gift. It is a gift to yourself, and it is a gift to the world. For this will free you to find your real contribution to others, and that will give you a satisfaction that is unparalleled in the world.

People are struggling to be happy, to be free, to have relationships, but if their life is moving in the wrong direction, if they are not going where they really need to go or doing what they really need to do, then they are unhappy, they are frustrated, they are agitated, they are constantly discontented. You see the evidence all around you. It is the tragedy of the rich. It is a tragedy of the world.

Everyone has been given the gift of Knowledge. Everyone is here for a purpose. But when you look around, you do not see the evidence of this, except perhaps in only a few individuals. It is the tragedy of living in Separation.

But God has put Knowledge within each person, as the source and the power of their redemption. Then God does not have to manage your life, for God has set a beacon within you that will guide you to your greater contribution in the world. It is like a real inner compass, from which you can navigate your life effectively, regardless of the confusion of events around you.

As time goes on, events around you will become ever more confused as the Great Waves of change crash upon the world. There will be greater confusion, greater frustration, greater anger, greater dissonance in the world around you as humanity faces a world of declining resources, a world of violent weather, a world of ever greater political and economic instability, a world of increasing risk of conflict and war.

Here your former pursuit of happiness will become ever more threatened. Here the need for Knowledge becomes paramount. You need this inner compass. You need to re-engage with the deeper current of your life. You need to learn to still the mind so you can feel this deeper current and so that you can discern the right decisions to make, even if everyone around you is utterly confused.

This inner strength, this inner direction, this inner light, this inner navigation will be critical in the future, especially because the level of uncertainty will grow. And your life may have to take a thousand turns, which you cannot predict at this moment.

You may well wonder, “How will I know what to do? Where will I find the strength and the confidence?” Here even the Great Waves of change will bring you back to Knowledge, for only Knowledge can guide you through them.

Your ideas will not guide you through them. Your philosophy will not guide you through them. Your dependence upon authority figures in government or commerce or religion cannot guide you through them. These influences may be helpful or they may be disastrous, but essentially for you to find greater inner certainty and inner strength, you need the power and the presence of Knowledge. To make wise decisions in the face of great uncertainty, you need the Wisdom of Knowledge.

Here happiness is not a form of escape. It is not being foolish and indulgent. It is not a form of self-betrayal or self-denial. It is not an addiction or a dangerous activity.

Here your life has a deeper connection, and you can soar at great heights because you have a deeper connection. You can face immense uncertainty in the world because you have a deeper connection. You can trust yourself when you do not know what to do because you have a deeper connection. And you will not give your life away to people or places or things because you have a deeper connection.

This freedom is unparalleled in the world. Even the rich cannot buy it. It cannot be purchased. It cannot even be assured by a government. It has unparalleled value to you.

Your soul is yearning to have its mission discovered and fulfilled. You are looking, right now, for the real people and relationships you are going to need in the future. You are trying to find your real way even though perhaps you have been looking in the wrong places. You have an inner navigator that is trying to chart the course of your life but is only being held back by all of your plans and goals, schemes, attitudes and activities.

That is why when you practice stillness, you put yourself in a position to receive. But you must be very patient here, for five minutes of stillness will not reveal the mystery and the direction of your life. For that, you will have to learn to be still more often, on a regular basis. You will have to learn the wisdom of discernment and discretion and many other things. But this is your essential education in life. There is nothing more important than this.

This will teach you how to be in the world, who to choose to be in relationship with and how to be with them, where to go, what kind of work to do, how to live, where to live, what is valuable, what is not, what to become involved in and what not to become involved in and so forth.

This is a freedom that so few people have ever found. And this freedom creates a sense of well-being and rightness about your life that cannot be purchased or acquired in any other way.

God’s Will for you is perfect happiness, but perfect happiness has to be a real happiness. It cannot be a happiness that is only born of personal preference or ideology. It has to be a deep sense of purpose and meaning in your life. It has to be an acknowledgment and an expression of your deeper nature.

Here it is not dependent upon changing circumstances, or fleeting moments, or the wild and unpredictable nature of romance with others. It has a greater certainty and a greater strength and a greater duration. You can face anything now, for you know that a greater strength is within you.

You are freed from making foolish and life-determining mistakes because you are taking the time to look and to see, to feel and to know. You are not deceived now by beauty, wealth or charm. You will not give your life away for these things. This gives you strength and encouragement, confidence and a greater sense of presence and direction.

This is the happiness that you really need, and it is born of taking the Steps to Knowledge, of re-experiencing and engaging yourself with the deeper current of your life. It is the result of allowing your greater purpose to reveal itself step by step, without you trying to define it, direct it or control it.

It creates a greater sense of trust in oneself and in the greater spiritual powers that are in the world. Yet this gives you the ability to face the tragedy and difficulty that you see all around you, without succumbing to these things.

It is like you have to learn to be happy all over again, based upon a different approach, a different set of activities, a different understanding. It is like going back and starting all over again. Happiness 101. Fulfillment 101.

Here your earlier and previous notions have to be challenged and set aside. And you have to allow yourself not to know what the answer is. Because you do not, not yet.

This involves a deep evaluation of your life, a deep reconsideration of your life—who you are with, what you are doing, where you are going, where you have invested yourself, what is robbing you of energy, what is holding you back.

Here you must be very specific. Here you have to question everything and allow confusion to arise while you go through this reconsideration. For you do not go from confusion to ultimate certainty in one step. Everything does not become clear in one moment.

It is like taking a journey up a mountainside, a journey out of the valley and the woods below where you could not see where you were, you could not gain any sense of your surroundings, you did not have the lay of the land, you did not see the relationship of the features of the landscape.

It is to get you out of the woods and the valleys of your life to a higher vantage point where you can see clearly that really is the focus of spiritual practice. When you can see, you can know, and when you know, there is resolution. And when there is resolution, there is a freeing of your life.

Here happiness is not the goal; it is the result. You do not seek happiness for happiness’ sake, not if happiness is going to be real. You seek the deeper meaning and current of your life. You seek to know what to do next. You want Knowledge to guide you. This produces happiness and satisfaction. But here happiness and satisfaction are not the goal.

If people say, “Ah, I just want to be happy,” they are not really understanding what happiness is or how it can be achieved. If people say, “I just want to be at peace,” they do not realize yet they are here for a greater purpose, that they were sent into the world to do something, that God has given them something to do—to free them, to rescue them and to redeem them.

Happiness is a consequence; it is a result of being truly engaged with your life as it was designed and as it was meant to be. Happiness is not a goal. Peace is not a goal. Like happiness, peace is the result of an inner resolution, a reconnection with your deeper nature and your true direction in life. It is a result, not a goal.

If your goal is to find what you are really here to do and to engage yourself in that, that will produce peace and happiness for you because these are the result of an inner resolution, a reconnection, a rediscovery, a fundamental relationship.

Your values will change; your pursuits will change; your priorities will change. Instead of running around like a crazy person trying to have happiness and fun and excitement and constant stimulation, you will begin to settle down. You will not be driven by the fear of not having, by the fear of not finding. You will be able to settle down and become observant and wise, powerful and connected.

This will cast you apart from other people. It will distinguish you. It will give you a different journey to take. But this is entirely appropriate and is worth so much more than any difficulties that might arise, or any challenges you have to face along the way.

God is drawing you like a magnet. Knowledge is alive within you. It is counseling you every day. You have to leave the restless surface of your mind to find the quiet depths. Here stillness becomes not emptiness, but a luxury, a grace, a power and a presence. And this is what you seek for in all things.

Therefore, begin to take the Steps to Knowledge. Feel the deeper need of your soul. Begin the deep evaluation. Receive God’s New Message that provides you the pathway and the opportunity to experience this in everyday life, in all your circumstances, no matter who you are or where you are or what your predicaments might be.

God has rescued you because God has given you something important to do. You must find this and take the journey this will require, and the deep re-evaluation of your life this will require, and the deep resolution that this will give you as a result.