The Happiness that We Seek

Chapter 2 of "Get Your Power Back"

This chapter opens with these words:

Ultimately, the happiness that we seek is something called "the experience of love." When you are in this state, you automatically interact in a way that has life work.

To see this in your life, look at what happens when you feel loved and appreciated. You are happy, alive and free. You feel good about yourself and good about your life. Yo are confident and creative. You see life clearly and are very effective.

When we feel that way, isn't life wonderful? Can you remember when you last felt that way? When you felt loved, supported, accepted, and appreciated? Let yourself feel that for a moment ... just sit in it. Notice how the world around you seems to shine, how it seems "all is well" ... notice how your thoughts, words and actions feel infused with joy. Are you smiling? :)

Tune in and notice where the feeling is coming from ... is it "outside" of you, or "inside"...? Yeah, the experience of love is an inner state.

Ok, so what's the opposite of that experience? Fear and upset? Think of a time when you felt fear and upset. Painful, isn't it? Do you feel a tightness, a protectiveness, and do you sense yourself withdrawing from life ... shutting down? Can you feel how the world around you narrows, and how your perspective turns into "tunnel vision"? Notice how this experience tends to color the entire world, so that your thinking, speaking, and your actions become negative.

Notice how this state, this fear and upset, are also located within you.

We think that it's outer circumstances that dictate our emotional state, but it's really our inner perspective that does so.

What's interesting is that which ever energy we're radiating, whether love, or fear (i.e., positive or negative), life gives us that same energy right back. We actually create "more of the same" that we're focused on. When we're radiating the negativity from within, opposition and resistance comes at us ... negative things happen all around us.

These are states of *mind*.

And our state of mind is not determined by what happens to us ... it's determined by how we *relate* to whatever happens.

As long as we believe that happiness and upsets come from outside of us, we will go through life trying to force our circumstances to be a certain way... the more we try to force people and life to be a certain way, the more we create the exact opposite of what we want... instead of creating the happiness that we seek, we create more fear and upset. We destroy the experience of love. WE sabotage our lives and keep our dreams from coming true.

To understand this better, let's look at the "law of resistance."

One of the most powerful ways that we sabotage our lives is by resisting. When we resist, we magnify and give power to whatever we are resisting.

Or, as is stated in "Conversations with God (Book One)", "what we resist, persists."

Here's an example:

Let's look at fears. A fear is created by resisting a future event [or being unwilling to face/allow a future event]. If I have a fear of losing someone, I am resisting the future event called losing a person. The more I resist losing the person, the bigger my fear. The bigger my fear, the more I feel threatened, and the more I hang on. The more I hang on, the more I push the person away, which brings me my fear.

Notice that whatever you fear and resist keeps showing up in your life. By resisting, you create the very circumstances that you are avoiding.

Ohhhhhhh yeah..!

It may sound overly simplistic, but if I look at any area of my life that doesn't "work" -- I will find an area of my life where I am resisting (or being unwilling). If I look at any area of my life that *does* work, that's where I find myself flowing with whatever happens.

I love what Abraham-Hicks says about this ... they use an analogy of a flowing stream. Most of us have been taught to paddle furiously upstream, thinking that there is some reward "up there" for all of our frenzied efforts -- that we must achieve, and earn. But, in reality, the current is so strong that we "stay in place" and only exhaust ourselves. Sometimes the current is strong enough to actually take us downstream, but we are "facing backwards", paddling in a direction that "gets us nowhere", and we don't even enjoy the journey itself.

Instead, we are invited to let GO of the oars, allow the boat to turn around, and to just ride it downstream, encountering and enjoying each life-event/aspect that we experience ... trusting that we are being carried in the most benevolent way possible, and enJOYing the journey more than fixating on the "destination" ...

For the River of Life is eternal ... and NOW is all we have ...

Just for today, I am letting go of the oars of resistance, of unwillingness, and I am choosing to trust the river ... to trust the Source of Life ... and to allow myself to enjoy the journey, here and now ...

Next: The Nature of Upsets (i.e. facing reality)...

Shalom & Namaste~
Dena