From a Life of Limited Self to a Life of Love!

     

Every one of us desires to be happy. Normally, that is what we seek to achieve. Yet, most people are immersed in some kind of suffering. If at times they do get small instalments of happiness in their lives, it is neither unadulterated nor abiding. Even if one does not seek suffering, it comes as an inevitable outcome of the very manner in which one seeks happiness.

Most seek happiness through the fulfillment of desires but such fulfilment is never an assured thing. Hence, in the pursuit of desires, one is also unavoidably preparing for the suffering from their non-fulfilment. Goaded by multifarious desires, most seek the pleasures of the world with unabated hope. But the enthusiasm for pleasure is abated by suffering, which often follows in pleasure’s wake.

Man is subject to sudden moods and impulses. Sometimes he is happy and elated, at other times he is very unhappy and downhearted. His moods change as his desires are fulfilled or frustrated. Satisfaction of some desires yields momentary happiness, but this happiness does not last, and it soon leads to the reaction of depression. His moods subject him to ups and downs and to constant change.

Complete detachment is one of the essential conditions of lasting and true happiness, for he who has complete detachment no longer creates for himself the suffering which is due to the unending thraldom produced by desires. Desirelessness makes a man firm like a rock. He is neither moved by pleasure nor by sorrow. He is not upset by the onslaught of opposites. The steadiness and equanimity which remain unaffected by any opposites is possible only through complete detachment, which is an essential condition of lasting and true happiness. The state of complete desirelessness is latent in everyone, and when, through complete detachment, one reaches the state of wanting nothing, one taps the unfailing inner source of eternal and unfading happiness which is not based upon the objects of the world, but is sustained by Self-knowledge and Self-realization.

Mere desirelessness, however, cannot yield positive happiness, though it protects man from self-created suffering and goes a long way towards making true happiness possible. True happiness begins when a man learns the art of right adjustment to other persons, and right adjustment involves self-forgetfulness and love. From here one realizes the spiritual importance of transforming a life of the limited self into a life of love.

When true love is awakened in man it leads him to God-realization, opening up an unlimited field of lasting and unfading happiness. The happiness of God-realization is the goal of all creation. It is not possible for a person to have the slightest idea of that inexpressible happiness without actually having the experience of Godhood. Real happiness which comes through realizing God is worth all the physical and mental suffering in the universe. Then all suffering is as if it had never been.

Even those who are not God-realized can control their minds through yoga to such an extent that nothing makes them feel pain or suffering, even if they are in a distressing situation. However, though yogis can brave and annul any suffering, they might not experience the happiness of realizing God.

When one becomes God, everything else is zero. The happiness of God-realization is self-sustained, eternally fresh and unfading, boundless and indescribable. It is for this happiness that the world has sprung into existence.

-Avatar Meher Baba