Happiness & Joy

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's # 1 New York Times Best selling autobiography "Eat, Pray, Love" in which she takes us on her quest for her own truth through Italy, India and Indonesia. If there is an excerpt from the book that has enduring value for me, it would be these two pages which she writes towards the end of her journey:

"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. Its easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.

Recalling these teachings as I ride my bike so freely in the sunset through Bali, I keep making prayers that are really vows, presenting my state of harmony to God and saying, "This is what I would like to hold on to Please help me memorize this feeling of contentment and help me always support it." I'm putting this happiness in a bank somewhere, not merely FDIC protected but guarded by my four spirit brothers, held there as insurance against future trials in life. This is a practice I've come to call "Diligent Joy." As I focus on Diligent Joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once - that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people." (2006, pp. 260-261)

~ Excerpted from "Eat, Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.

The Law of Attraction vs Coherence

"CosMos - A Co-creator's Guide to the Whole-World" is an inspiring book by Ervin Laszlo, Ph.D, recipient of the 2001 Goi Peace Award (Japanese) and the 2005 Mandir Peace Prize. He has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This book is co-authored by Jude Currivan, Ph.D. The authors offer these thoughts and caveat on the Law of Attraction:

"The principles of resonance and reflection are brought together in the Law of Attraction, which states that like attracts like - positive thinking and intention attract positive results, and vice-versa.

The power of our intention and the energy it unleashes are dependent on our levels of coherence and intensity. The affirmation of our positive intentions in thought, feeling, and action increases the power of our abilities. Nonetheless, it is important to appreciate that the matrix of physical, emotional, and mental levels of consciousness through which our personal and collective intentions and choices are explored and experienced require a "health warning" on interpreting the Law of Attraction too simplistically.

There are many reasons why our life circumstances are as they are. Expanding our awareness to understand them and our behavior patterns and limiting beliefs allows us to gain the perspective that enables us to become more balanced and whole. When we are willing to undertake this quest, we are empowered to "attract" our highest purpose to flow through us. This is the journey of developing deeper coherence. The most coherent ends are achieved through the most coherent means. In this context, "the means do not justify the end"; they become it." (2008, p. 105).

~Excerpted from "CosMos" By Laszlo and Currivan

Alchemy and the Imagination

Leading Jungian analyst, Nathan Schwartz-Salant's Introduction to Jung's work on Alchemy provides an inviting preface to the topic. This book brings together an essential selection of Jung's thoughts on the topic. The relationship between alchemy and imagination is not to be underestimated:

"The alchemists knew, from their own and from the accumulated experience of centuries of traditional cultures, that their personalities could be transformed. Through initiation rites they felt different, behaved differently, and grew in new ways. No longer bound to the compulsion of adolescent states of mind, or to the flights into promiscuity that wasted their sexual energies, people in traditional cultures learned that they could 'die' and be 'reborn.' And in their reborn form they actually did see the world differently. They could, in fact, see in ways they never could before. Their imagination could become a guide to truth instead of being a capricious trickster. And some alchemists could feel a guiding center that formed in their innermost being and which was strangely linked in feeling to experiences of their most ecstatic journeys. Alchemy developed within this respect for a human concern for the sacred. As a consequence, its very methods were intrinsically bound to the power of illumination and the imagination, and it especially applied the ideas of death and rebirth, so central to initiation rites and mystical experience, to material and psychological change. To understand the alchemical quest we must recognize the intimate relationship that existed between its methods and the transformation of the human personality, or else we shall miss its essential mystery." (1995, p. 5).

~Excerpted from "Jung on Alchemy" by Nathan Schwartz-Salant

Arundhati Roy's counsel.

There is such power in the writing of Arundhati Roy, author of "A God of Small Things". She is able to communicate her essence with her wordcraft. Here are a few inspiring words of counsel that she wrote for a friend of hers on a paper napkin. They made my day!

"To love. To be loved.

To never forget your own insignificance.

To never get used to the unspeakable violence

and the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places.

To pursue beauty to its lair.

To never simplify what is complicated

or complicate what is simple.

To respect strength, never power.

Above all, to watch. To try and understand.

To never look away.

And never, never, to forget."

~~~

~ Excerpted from a conversation with Howard Zinn in New York City.

The Power of Imagination

President Obama is no stranger to the power of imagination. Here's a brief excerpt from his inaugural speech:

"Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them ..."

President Barak Hussein Obama,
44th President of the United States of America

The Power of Dreams: "I have a Dream" - excerpts from Martin Luther King's Speech

"In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds."

"It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual."

"The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people. For many of our white brothers as evidenced by their presence here today have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We can not walk alone."

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'"

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

"This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

"Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children."

"Let freedom ring. And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring—when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Stephen Covey, respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher and organizational consultant earned his stripes with his acclaimed book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." Here's a quick recap of his 7 Habits:

1. Be Proactive: accept responsibility

2. Begin with the End in Mind: Create a mental vision

3. Put First Things First: Prioritize

4. Think Win-Win: Seek Mutual Benefit

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood: Balance kindness with courage

6. Synergize: Go for creative co-operation

7. Sharpen the Saw: Constantly renew yourself.