The key to Happiness

[akhanda]

[glow=red,2,300]THE KEY TO HAPPINESS[/glow]
Your ability to achieve your own happiness is the key measure of your success, of how well you are doing as a person.

You learn the key to happiness that has been the same through all of history. You learn how to dispel the two myths that may be holding you back and how to achieve more happiness in everything you do.

Dedicate Yourself to Your Best Talents
The key to happiness is this: dedicate yourself to the development of your natural talents and abilities by doing what you love to do, and doing it better and better in the service of a cause that is greater than yourself.

This is a big statement and a big commitment. Being happy requires that you define your life in your own terms and then throw your whole heart into living your life to the fullest. In a way, happiness requires that you be perfectly selfish in order to develop yourself to a point where you can be unselfish for the rest of your life.

Please Yourself First
In Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano is asked why he is so intensely individualistic and unconcerned with the opinions and judgments of others. He replies with these wonderful words: "I am what I am because early in life I decided that I would please at least myself in all things."

Your happiness likewise depends upon your ability to please at least yourself in all things. You can be happy only when you are living your life in the very best way possible. No one can define happiness for you. Only you know what makes you happy. Happiness is an inside job.

Your Happiness is Up to You
The biggest myth about happiness is when people say that it is not legitimate or correct for you to put your happiness ahead of everyone else's. Throughout my life, I've met people who have said that it is more important to make other people happy than it is to make yourself happy. This is nonsense.

The fact is that you can't give away to anyone else what you don't have for yourself. Just as you can't give money to the poor if you don't have any, you can't make someone else happy if you yourself are miserable.

The very best way to assure the happiness of others is to be happy yourself and then to share your happiness with them. Suffering and self-sacrifice merely depress and discourage other people. If you want to make others happy, start by living the kind of life and doing the kind of things that make you happy.

Action Exercises
Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, define for yourself the activities that you really love and enjoy, at home and work, and then organize your life so you do more of them.

Second, believe in yourself and trust your own feelings. Then, please at least yourself in all things.

Third, determine what it is that you do that brings the most happiness to others and then organize your life so that you can do more of it.

[babamani]

Five Truths that make you victorious
When those familiar feelings wash over us that we have somehow failed at something, or that we are sure to face defeat should we endeavour to claim some personal higher ground, we can do much better than allow ourselves to be carried away by these dark waves. We can call upon the following five light-filled truths to realize new self-victory. Study these friendly facts until they tell you why the whole idea of failure, including the painful sense of self it creates, is a lie you need no longer live with.

Truth #1

The truth is... nothing in life can stop you from starting your life all over, at anytime, because the true fabric of life is a cosmic weave of ceaseless beginnings. That's right. Your power for starting over is backed up by Reality itself, which will place its supreme strength on the side of whoever chooses it over self-ruinous states. All that is needed to put the power of this ever-renewing truth to work in your life is for you to consciously agree to view any unwanted or unhappy moment not as some unavoidable ending, but as the temporary and passing condition that it really is.

Truth #2

The truth is... just as the our own physical eye can't see itself other than by gazing upon a reflection of itself, we can't see our psychological self other than by gazing upon those mental images of our own creation. So, when "seeing" a failure in our mind's eye, we need only remember in that very moment this Truth: It is we ourselves who put it there! Now, instead of feeling defeated by how we picture ourselves, we can see through this defeated feeling itself by daring to see all the way back to how this painful painting came into existence in the first place.

Truth #3

The truth is... that just as it is impossible to feel ourselves a "failure" without having first condemned ourselves for some shortcoming, to do so tells of a secret self-duality that is the seed of defeat. Study the following truth closely: In order to see ourselves as being "small," we must be standing over ourselves at the same time. Now see that neither of these selves within us can exist in our mind's eye without the other, and that being self-divided like this, we must feel as though we are going to topple over and fall. But seeing the truth that we are neither of these inter-dependent selves unites us in a higher understanding that is fail-safe.

Truth #4

The truth is... the painful identity that results from thinking of yourself as a failure can exist only for as long as you cling to some self-created, self-sinking label. The only reason you won't abandon this sinking ship of yourself is because in its cargo hold is stored all your cherished ideas about what it means to be a success. The discovery of this truth reveals that the only weight dragging you under is your best ideas about how to sail through life.

Truth #5

The truth is... even the most superficial glance at the world in which we live shows us, beyond any doubts, that there is nothing living that is not a work-in-progress. This encouraging fact of life reveals a great secret from which we can draw true comfort in times of our trials. Even when it feels like life might just break us, these same trying moments are only part of the Truth's broader plan to make us stronger, wiser, and more willing to delve into the truth of our existence.

[Tapan Mukherjee]

There's nothing worse than uncertainty. We live in a world where there is a growing tendency to make all absolutes taboo, to make everything relative. Many argue that there is no absolute standard for right and wrong, truth or untruth. They say that whatever you feel is right and true, is right and true for you, and whatever anybody feels is right and true is right and true for him. Sometimes they put a condition "as long as you don't hurt anybody." But the meaning of not hurting somebody is quite differently interpreted for example by someone who is against abortion as opposed to someone is in favor of abortion. Some people have no qualms about advocating kindness to animals while at the same time they eat them.

The problem is that when my "truth" overlaps your "truth," and we have a very disturbing distressful situation on our hands. Thus fighting is going on between family members, between neighbors, between communities, and between nations. This is all coming because there is no universally accepted standard of right and wrong/ truth and untruth.

If someone tries to impose their brand of relative truth upon others claiming it as absolute, this does not solve the problem. In the Kali Yuga, the age of quarrel and hypocrisy, this is a very common phenomenon. Whoever has the most clout economically or politically will put forward their "ism" and as an absolute and try to use their economic and/or political clout to get everyone else accept it as absolute. But this is artificial and therefore it can stand, it cannot remain.

If we are going to have actually solidity and certainty we must hear directly from God, without any distortion, as to what is the Absolute Truth. Out of His sweet kindness the Lord personally appeared on this material plane of existence 5,000 and carefully and clearly revealed what is the Absolute Truth to His most beloved disciple, Arjuna. After hearing Krishna's or God's revelation of the most confidential knowledge, Arjuna said to Krishna:

param brahma param dhama
pavitram paramam bhavan
purusam sasvatam divyam
adi-devam ajam vibhum

"You are the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the ultimate abode, the purest, the Absolute Truth. You are the eternal, transcendental, original person, the unborn, the greatest."
Bhagavad-gita 10.12

If the human society can follow the wonderful example of Arjuna, then were will be perfect peace and happiness throughout the entire globe. No one has to change his or her religion because religion is actually one, to love God. It doesn't matter if you call Him Krishna, Christ, Allah, or Jehovah. If one can give up the sinful activities of meat eating, illicit sex life, intoxication, and gambling and absorb themselves in chanting the names of the Lord, they will quickly achieve the supreme happiness of pure love of God.

[Tapan Mukherjee]

The Petromax does not talk, but it shines and sheds light all around. The jessamine does not speak, but it wafts its fragrance everywhere. The lighthouse sounds no drum, but sends its friendly light to the mariner. The Unseen beats no gong, but Its omnipresence is felt by the dispassionate and discriminating sage.
Behind all names and forms is the one nameless, formless Essence. Behind all governors is the one Supreme Governor of governors. Behind all lights is the one Light Of lights. Behind all sounds, there is the soundless Supreme Silence. Behind all teachers is the one Supreme Guru of Gurus.
Behind all these perishable objects is the one imperishable Absolute. Behind all these motions is the one motionless Infinite. Behind time, minutes, and days is the one timeless Eternity. Behind hatred, riots, and wars is the one hidden Love.
God is the totality of all that exists, both animate and inanimate, sentient and insentient. He is free from ills and limitations. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. He has no beginning, middle, or end. He is the indweller in all beings. He controls from within.
God is all in all. God is the only reality in this universe. The existence of things is by the light of God.
God is ever living. All depend on Him. He is not depending on any. He is the Truth.
God is the end or goal of all Yoga Sadhanas. He is the Centre towards which all things strive. He is the highest purpose or highest good of the world. You have the urge of hunger. There is food to appease the hunger. You have the urge of thirst. There is water to quench the thirst. There is the urge to be always happy. There must be something to satisfy this urge. This something is God, an embodiment of happiness. God, Immortality, Freedom, Perfection, Peace, Bliss, Love are synonymous terms.