Happiness is Within – But What Does that Mean?

Is it just a cliche, a dead thought? Or is it alive in and
as you?

What does “Happiness is Within” mean in your actual life?

If that is truth for you, then it means that

• there is no clinging; you do not need anything nor anyone outside of you,
• your movement of attention when you seek well being is inward, not outward,
• you stop seeking happiness in things, people, or events.

It means equanimity, and the unshakeable peace that comes with it.

When people do think or say the words “Happiness is within,” most are just giving it “lip service.” For those people, it is just a nice theoretical thought they use when it suits them – usually while counseling others. They say it just because it sounds good, and they generally only say it about themselves when things are going well. Few say and uphold it when things go awry.

This repeating of these words, of this information – called “knowledge” – is merely parroting. And like parrots, the words may be beautiful, but they are not intelligence. Neither are they living truth for you, it is just an idea, an ideal.

If you value integrity, then you will not parrot
what is not true and actual for you in your life.

If you value integrity, that can take you a long way to unveiling what this life is all about, who or what you are, how you came to be here, and what happens when the body drops. It can lead you to discover Truth.

Perhaps it was our reluctance to face the unknown and to seek such truths that led us, through fear, to accept and parrot words and thoughts that are just temporarily comforting concepts in our lives. But like a parrot that won’t quit, the spark of Truth is there, right now, nagging for each to see what has always been present and obvious. It just can’t be known while we believe in and parrot false knowledge that is not actual in your life.

While it’s “thoughts” are dead, the parrot is very much alive. It is a magical, delightful, mysterious, and colorful bird that is far more than the sounds it makes and hears. In the same way you are much more than mere thought, mere sounds, that we call words.

Yet concepts can be useful, provided they are recognized as concepts and not accepted as vague truth that you believe in, and not merely repeated as thought, and stopped at. Then it is a dead end.

So what to do instead? Hold faith, and prove it to yourself, with integrity. Stop. Turn away from the outside, turn away from outer need, fear, and thought, and turn within, every time. Learn to use the seven powerful questions of Alchemy to turn your attention inward, altering your experience “of” the “outside.” Remember to use suffering for the only thing is it good for, to wake you up out of unconsciousness and point you toward the joy within that never leaves you. Pain will remind you, and when in pain you have nothing to lose.

Except pain.

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