God is happy!

People focus on the story of Jesus in terms of sadness and tragedy, but Jesus was a happy person while he was walking among us.

It is OK to have fun and share a laugh with God! You do not need to be solemn and somber when you talk to God.

Authentic happiness is a state of being in which we achieve the peace that comes with being aligned with God’s will. It is a state where we are free to be happy without that happiness being conditional on attachments to such things as material possessions or relationships with other souls. In this state of happiness, we recognize the importance of unconditional love for all of God’s creation.

Happiness is our eternal birthright, but achieving happiness is dependent on whether we choose to use our freewill to develop along the lines of unconditional love.

In this physical dimension we need to balance our happiness with the understanding that we agreed to incarnate here to learn how to grow the love in our soul, and this learning might involve struggle and frustration.

The people who have been fully able to create “heaven on earth” are generally very enlightened souls who came to the physical world as teachers in order to help us in our quest for soul growth. Before they came to teach us, these teachers struggled through the difficult process of soul evolution that most of us are currently experiencing.

Authentic happiness comes from within because we are in control of our attitude and perceptions, and therefore we control our reality. Happiness is a choice that each of us makes. It is totally independent of and unrelated to our relationships or circumstances. You will never be happy if you are continually waiting for factors such as circumstances or relationships to change.

Your life experience is made up of your thoughts, so be careful of your thought patterns, because when taken as a whole, what you think about on a daily basis makes up the totality of your experiences in this lifetime. So, make a conscious effort to control what you are thinking, and give up unhappy or negative thoughts. Anger, fear, envy and hate do not make us happy when we are experience them, but we choose to experience them nonetheless!

People who live according to standards and values that are consistent with the Golden Rule are happier than those who lack a moral compass. When you have an internal moral compass grounded in the Golden Rule, your thoughts, words and behavior are congruent, and you are not attracted to arbitrary or fashionable rules of behavior.

A great way to achieve happiness is to practice loving thoughts and behavior towards God, yourself, and others.

Happiness is to be found in the simple things of life. It is to be found in:

• Knowing who you are, and in trying to follow the simple spiritual laws that lead to a life of love,
• Everyday acts of love, and
• Appreciation for the beautiful world that God has provided for us.

Do not worry about what you cannot control. Act with loving intent, but detach yourself from outcomes and surrender to God.

We will never achieve happiness if our definition of happiness is not in line with God’s will. This means that if we define happiness in material or selfish terms, we have little chance of achieving it.

The physical world is full of injustice, both personal and social. We are here to learn to counter this injustice without becoming worried, fearful or depressed. This is not easy, but it helps if we try to understand that those responsible for this injustice are ignorant. Karma will provide the lessons they need. You do not need to teach those who do not wish to learn, but you can lead by example.

Do not get frustrated if you are not as happy as you think you ought to be. Sometimes it is difficult to be happy in this world. Mankind has ignored God’s will and used freewill to create a world full of conflict and strife. It is our role to try to bring it back into balance with compassion and love. Take comfort in the thought that you might be unhappy because you are an advanced soul who understands that we are all connected.

Your mission during this physical lifetime may require sacrifice on your part. You might not consider your mission a “happy” one, but you can make it so by understanding that you are serving God and doing His will. Understand also that life in the physical world is temporary, and that the reward for choosing to love unconditionally is great.

Happiness and pleasure are not the same thing. Happiness is a state of being, but pleasure is more temporary and it is usually associated with actions or events. Be careful that your pursuit of pleasure is consistent with the Golden Rule, and does not come at a cost to others or your own body.

Try not to avoid life’s lessons through temporary escapes or pleasures such as food, alcohol or drugs.

You have to embrace life and all of its uncertainty in order to be happy. Without uncertainty and ambiguity, your use of freewill to choose between right and wrong would not be sincere.

Choosing between right and wrong is difficult, and it requires self-control. True happiness comes to those loving souls who choose the more difficult but loving and long-term path, putting their faith in God.

You will never achieve happiness unless you abandon fear and the associated need to control others. Fear causes anger. Most fear arises as a result of things that happened in the past, and which now provide a filter with which to view present and possible future events. Let go of these filters and you will be much happier. Another way of looking at this is to surrender your preconceived expectations of other people and circumstances. These expectations are often unrealistic filters, and usually end up with the frustrations that accompany judging.

If you try to trust God and understand that he commands us to follow the Golden Rule, you will develop faith and you will become happier.

If you ever lose hope, remember that you are already an eternal soul who is unconditionally loved, and sincerely and quietly ask God for help.

Joy is what makes life worth living, but for many, joy seems hard to find. They complain that their lives are sorrowful and depressing. What then brings the joy we so much desire? Are some people just lucky, while others have run out of luck? Strange as it may sound, we can choose joy. Two people can be part of the same event, but one may choose to live it quite differently than the other. One may choose to trust that what happened, painful as it may be, holds a promise. The other may choose despair and be destroyed by it. What makes us human is precisely this freedom of choice.

Henri Nouwen

The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

Victor Hugo

Happiness is not a goal it is a by-product.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

Mildred Barthel

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes we have to "step over" our anger, our jealousy, or our feelings of rejection and move on. The temptation is to get stuck in our negative emotions, poking around in them as if we belong there. Then we become the "offended one," "the forgotten one," or the "discarded one." Yes, we can get attached to these negative identities and even take morbid pleasure in them. It might be good to have a look at these dark feelings and explore where they come from, but there comes a moment to step over them, leave them behind and travel on.

Henri Nouwen

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time Enjoying one moment at a time Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.

(Author is disputed, but it likely was Friedrich Oetinger, an 18th century theologian)

Nine requisites for contented living: Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

John Milton

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit. In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit.

Napoleon Bonaparte

This world is the prison of the believers and the paradise of the unbelievers.

Islamic Proverb

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

William James

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the law of the universe will be simpler.

H.D. Thoreau

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Helen Keller

Love for others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are: ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no doubt we will be happy.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Voltaire

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.

Adele Brookman

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

The Dalai Lama

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

The Dalai Lama

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith, but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

C. S. Lewis

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892 - 1971), in a sermon in 1943

In all things preserve integrity and the consciousness of thine own uprightness will alleviate the toil of business, soften the hardness of ill-success and disappointments, and give thee an humble confidence before God, when the ingratitude of man, or the iniquity of the times may rob thee of other rewards.

Barbara Paley

I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.

Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

The Buddha

There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience.

French proverb

You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

St. Augustine, Confessions

The things that will destroy us are : politics without principle pleasure without conscience wealth without work knowledge without character business without morality science without humanity and worship without sacrifice.

Mahatma Gandhi

He who laughs, lasts.

Author Unknown

We are all failures--at least, all the best of us are.

J. M. Barrie

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence...We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Mother Teresa

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Kahlil Gibran

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

Richard Bach

Happiness comes when you believe in what you are doing, know what you are doing, and love what you are doing.

Brian Tracy

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Productive work, love and thought are possible only if a person can be, when necessary, quiet and alone. To be able to listen to oneself is the necessary condition for relating oneself to others.

Erich Fromm

No pressure, no diamonds.

Mary Case

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

Hugh Downs

If I could wish for my life to be perfect, it would be tempting, but I would have to decline, for life would no longer teach me anything.

Allyson Jones

Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.

Buddha

Happiness and suffering come from your own mind, not from outside. Your own mind is the cause of happiness your own mind is the cause of suffering. To obtain happiness and pacify suffering, you have to work within your own mind.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Joy increases as you give it, and diminishes as you try to keep it for yourself. In giving it, you will accumulate a deposit of joy greater than you ever believed possible.

Norman Vincent Peale

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Thomas Merton

Worry a little bit every day and in a lifetime you will lose a couple of years. If something is wrong, fix it if you can. But train yourself not to worry. Worry never fixes anything. Mary Hemingway

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Carl Jung

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you are complaining that you have negative friends, unsupportive spouse, and bad luck. You need to take a good look at you.

Garrison Keillor

Anger can also be expressed passively, i.e. passive aggressively. One punishes the other without admitting one’s anger, e.g. tardiness, gossip, silence, refusal to cooperate, absence, rejection, malice to cause pain, etc. Passive anger is inappropriate and not an adult way of behaving. Strongly expressed anger is called rage. Strongly held anger is called hate. Unexpressed anger is resentment. Anger can be unconsciously repressed and internalized. It then becomes depression, i.e. anger turned inward.

David Richo: “How To Be An Adult”

One doesn't pursue joy. Joy is a deeper state than happiness, not dependent upon external circumstances for its ability to be experienced and felt. Joy is what you feel when you've told your deepest truths, even if those truths make you feel sadness in the telling. Joy is present in loss as well as in fullness. Joy is knowing that you have not compromised yourself, that you've lived up to your own standards of honesty and integrity. Joy is knowing that you've made somebody else's life a bit easier, that you've loved well, that you've looked your fear in the face and had the courage to do what you needed to do anyway. I think most people seek happiness, but really want to feel joy. Joy is a more permanent-like state. The Dalai Lama is joyful. Even in exile, even with his people suffering under the tyranny of China, his energy is light, playful, even mischievous. He doesn't take anything personally he does not carry burdens. His heart is clear -- he is at peace. Joy is a state born out of being at peace with yourself. Want to be joyful? Settle old scores and don't be attached to how it comes out. Let the other guy win. Finish your unfinished business. Don't leave any dangling participles behind. Clean up your act. Joy incorporates both the agony and the ecstasy of existence. It requires that you make a vow to yourself, to live your life for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part. I'll take joy any day over happiness, even knowing that in so doing, I open myself to the pain of living a full-out, no-holds- barred kind of life. But I'm not attached!

Dr Judith Rich