Elizabeth Gilbert, in Eat, Pray, Love talks about happiness in the words of her guru's teachings. "People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, you 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." She calls the process 'Diligent Joy'.
This is a familiar concept for me. I see it reverberated in several other books and teachings, especially in Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Rhoda in her book mentions that one needs to consciously seek happy thoughts. She calls it a frequency which one has to constantly tune into. The moment we realize that our minds have wandered off to the unpleasant memories, we have to deliberately draw our attention back to happy thoughts…thoughts of abundance, love and gratitude. This idea is also mentioned in yoga and meditation. Our yoga instructors use breathing as a form of meditation and ask us to constantly bring our attention back to our breath…and to the awareness that our breath is a source of good energy cleansing away our body and soul.
If this be true, which I am most certain about…then the way to happiness is by leading our lives in constant meditation. Now it might seem like a very difficult task…I think it is, but still one can at least make the effort to stay away from brooding over distressing thoughts. I find the part very interesting where the author Gilbert, tries to meditate the first few times. Her wandering trail of thoughts, that go from one to another till they find that one thought which makes one finally quit, is often the case with anyone who has ever tried meditating. It often makes me wonder, how easy life would be if each one of us stopped trying to control the circumstances around us and instead focused on controlling our own minds…Pulling our own strings, instead of pulling others’.
This is a familiar concept for me. I see it reverberated in several other books and teachings, especially in Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Rhoda in her book mentions that one needs to consciously seek happy thoughts. She calls it a frequency which one has to constantly tune into. The moment we realize that our minds have wandered off to the unpleasant memories, we have to deliberately draw our attention back to happy thoughts…thoughts of abundance, love and gratitude. This idea is also mentioned in yoga and meditation. Our yoga instructors use breathing as a form of meditation and ask us to constantly bring our attention back to our breath…and to the awareness that our breath is a source of good energy cleansing away our body and soul.
If this be true, which I am most certain about…then the way to happiness is by leading our lives in constant meditation. Now it might seem like a very difficult task…I think it is, but still one can at least make the effort to stay away from brooding over distressing thoughts. I find the part very interesting where the author Gilbert, tries to meditate the first few times. Her wandering trail of thoughts, that go from one to another till they find that one thought which makes one finally quit, is often the case with anyone who has ever tried meditating. It often makes me wonder, how easy life would be if each one of us stopped trying to control the circumstances around us and instead focused on controlling our own minds…Pulling our own strings, instead of pulling others’.
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