Happiness, can anyone find it?

These days I’ve been reading a couple of books, and strangely enough, they both have similar themes, even though expressed very differently. The main message in both is that we get what we seek, from happiness/unhappiness, riches/poverty, to the people we meet.

The first book I just finished is ‘Illusions – The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah’. This book talks about the world and how everything around us are made of illusions; it is the story of two pilots who meet and how one is the Master who teachers the other about the world. He talks about how we magnetize into our lives whatever we hold in our thought, including the people that we meet, happiness, sicknesses and so on. It talks about the world being like a movie, and we can choose to watch what ever kind of movie we like, comedy, horror, sad, romantic, and we could even change and go to see a different movie in the middle of one if we don’t like it. That some people for some reason actually want to see horror or sad movies, while others choose the comedies. It gave some interesting food for thought…

“But why would anybody want to be horrified? Or bored?”
“Because they think they deserve it for horrifying somebody else, or they like the excitement of horrification, or that boring is the way they think films have to be. Can you believe that lots of people for reasons that are very sound to them enjoy believing that they are helpless in their own films? No, you can’t.”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “Until you understand that, you will wonder why some people are unhappy. They are unhappy because they have chosen to be unhappy, and, Richard, that is all right!”

The other book I read is ‘Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential’ by Joel Osteen. It is very different to the first book in the way it is written, as this is more of a self help book by a pastor talking about how to live a more fulfilling life by having faith in God. What they both have in common though is that we all can be happy if we choose to be…

According to this book first, you need to enlarge your vision for your life. Until you begin to dream God sized dreams, you will never live your life at its full potential. Secondly, you need to develop a healthy self-image. Learn to love yourself before loving others. Thirdly, you should realize the power of your thoughts and words. He states that if we continue to think and talk negatively we will not live life at our full potential. Fourth, we need to let go of the past. Next, we need to learn how to find strength through adversity. Everyone will experience difficulties, but learning how to capitalize from these trials will help you live Your Best Life Now. Sixth, we need to live to give. God commands us to be generous. Lastly, we need to choose to be happy. Everyone experiences circumstances that can depress them, but if you want to experience Your Best Life Now you must choose to rejoice and thank God for all the blessings he has bestowed upon you.

This book talks about how we should expect God to give us the best in life, to remember that we are his children and that if we have enough faith in him and live ‘favor minded’ he will answer our prayers, and though we may have trials and tribulations in the end everything will be good. As our priest in Sunday mass put it during one sermon, we should live like babies, see how they put their complete and utter faith in their parents knowing that their parents will take care of them, and just like that we should also have an unwavering faith in God, who wouldn’t let any harm come to his ‘babies’.

Looking at my life so far, it seems true… ever since I started to believe and have faith in God and expect good things to happen, they have been happening, its like a dream, but now and then I need to be reminded not to think of the world negatively and to have faith and dream :)… Other than that, these books give a lot of food for thought and I am going to try to have faith and believe that the best will happen, to dream and choose to be happy… will it always work? I don’t know... I need more guinea pigs to test the hypothesis! Maybe I can try to research on it for my phd! :)

As for the question in the title, I really do think that anyone can find happiness, though it may take more effort by some people compared to others…

I’ll end this post with a few more quotes from Illusions…

“Attached! I was whocking that cloud with everything I had! Fireballs, laser beams, vacuum cleaner a block high...”
“Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.”

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours."

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however."

“within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and to sickness, to riches and to poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these.”