Only Your Self Can Make You Happy

There are two notions of happiness. One is the happiness we feel when we get what we desire, the other is the happiness and bliss we experience when we connect with our Self. When we get what we want we are certainly happy for a few days, but somehow this feeling of accomplishment is always transient. Deep down inside, our ego is only happy when we are perceived as special. In the ego's world everyone lives on a different island and king is the one who is located on higher grounds - someone everyone else looks up to. Only we know what exactly our hunger for specialness is; it might be academic, physical, economic, or professional. As a matter of fact, it might even be spiritual.

Sometimes we fool ourselves about our true underlying motives. A spiritual path is all about de-cluttering our preferences, about understanding where exactly we are coming from and about out-growing some of the desires that were dear to us at an earlier stage of our lives. For those who are agnostics and are more materialistic in their goals, at least the stuff they want from life is out in the open, so they are less likely to fool themselves over what they truly want. Yet, whether they will realize their dreams or not, running after ego goals can never lead to lasting happiness.  The ego always wants more, more and more. And even if you are successful as Napoleon was at the height of his era, you are still likely to feel lonely and abandoned amidst all the success.

We spiritual path travelers are probably somewhere in-between. We have disconnected with some of the drives that were meaningful at an earlier stage of our lives.  But then, we probably haven't disconnected from our ego completely. Despite our  spiritual aspirations, we probably still want our spouse to do well professionally, want our  children to enter a good college, we may also want to get acknowledged and perhaps even admired in the spiritual community. So we are not that different from everyone else. We certainly will experience our set-backs and experience transient happiness in some stages of our lives.

The only way to achieve lasting happiness is by connecting with our divine Self here and now. We don't need to go anywhere or achieve anything  to experience this happiness and bliss. Connecting with our Self can be done always. The Tao teaches us to recognize our Self in everything and everyone that comes our way. A spiritual path is about recognizing God everywhere, but you can do that only if you don't get fooled by the gold that glitters on the horizon. Let the Tao show you what is meaningful to you and why. The rule of thumb has to be, be happy here and now, or you never will.

By Christian and Su Zhen