Everyone is on the path to becoming a better person, some people might call this enlightenment — where everything in your life seems to fall into sync, even you. That means to be truly happy. And we all want to accelerate the process of being a beacon of light for those around us. Who doesn’t want to bask in loving energy all day? — it’s the ultimate sunbathing experience. My hope is this article will provide some direction for brand new seekers on the path to living a happy and fulfilling life.
Principle 1. You are not alone. All organisms want to escape pain and suffering.
When we do work on our minds, especially in mental health practice we say “You’re not alone.” This is to provide comfort that even though we might seem to be alone in a dark prison of the mind, others also experience suffering. The truth is, all organisms are also with you, every being moves away from pain and destruction.
All organisms are engineered to find an ideal environment to thrive — ants and bees build perfect colonies, worms are most comfortable moving through dirt in the darkness, where it is nice and cool and cozy…
We too want an ideal environment. We look around at the world and try to change everything we see. When the furniture sits in one arrangement too long, we move it.
We think that if we get a promotion or make more money, or have a large house and a lot of things — we will be happy after we get those things, we will be grateful after things are just right.
This is the way most people think.
So we are all on the same path to a better place. Everyone wants the same thing.
Principle 2. Happiness is real. Get to know happiness.
(hint it’s not in matter, it’s in energy)
To understand happiness, we have to understand where suffering comes from.
Suffering comes from delusion. Delusion is created because of duality, that there is both “good” and “bad” in the outside world. Because we just want the good. All creatures do. Life moves in that direction. The world we see through our eyes can appear to be a nightmare. Negativity thrives in news headlines, and people who live together can barely get along. One person can move the furniture, and the other has to be “content” with where it is for there not to be a disagreement about the way it should be.
Suffering also comes from selfish desires. Selfish desires are hard to recognize until one’s awareness is sitting on the other side of them. Selfish desires are “thoughts about the way the world should be, without compromise and gratitude for the way it is.” This is to say, an attachment to any idea about the way the whole world (or universe) should be without an appreciation for the way it is first.
Selfish desires come from how we see ourselves, if we view ourselves as perfectly individual and important, or if we see ourselves as a part of a larger picture at all times.
Henri Tajfel studied this personal identification in psychology as social identity.
Identification with ourselves is something very difficult to break out of, and this is where things get “spiritual” because to get outside of our body, means not identifying with it. This is the basic principle to realizing that consciousness expands outside of our body. Which in basic terms, means that our consciousness is eternal, everlasting, and constant phenomenon. This is frightening because forever is a mighty long time.
Principle 3. Understanding Negative Energy and Positive Energy
Everything is energy. Everything is made of atoms, atoms are mostly empty space, and they are “charged particles.” We know this because of science, and in our own thoughts, if we feel fatigued, we say to ourselves, “I need more energy.”
Negative and positive energy are necessary, this is the simple truth of the Universe. Think of a battery, it cannot exist without duality, so energy also cannot exist without duality. If our environment is made of energy, and our bodies are also made of energy — our consciousness must also be energy. This means, that our thoughts are energy.
Thought-Energy
If you’ve ever felt tired after a long test, you know that thinking takes an incredible amount of energy.
Becoming Aware of Thought-Energy
Many people think that happiness comes from outside of our bodies, that is why they want to move the furniture, but the truth is, that everything is perceived with our consciousness, so suffering can only come from our own thoughts.
Principle 4: Understanding Emotional Energy — Love vs. Anger
If we go back to our friends the earthworm, the ant, the cockroach, and the bee, these creatures are balanced by harmony in nature, by intuition, and their evolutionary designs are refined for their purpose. They move with a higher understanding outside of a thinking mind. This is the energy of Love, and it is what keeps everything in balance in the Universe.
Thought-energy is charged by two forces, love or anger (which is a similar frequency to hatred and fear). These are negative, downward-pulling thoughts. Now, thought-energy charged with love, these are uplifting thoughts. Try to cultivate ideas that uplift yourself and others.
A simple practice is to just come up with a mantra in your head, that says: I’m grateful for that. If you’re awake — and you’re grateful for everything you see, the Universe will start to open new doors to you.
Understanding Awareness.
Since we are more evolved than other creatures, we can only become aware of other creatures, as well as our thinking mind. When we become aware, we learn new things, when we learn new things, we create new thoughts, when we create new thoughts, we change our own energy through emotions (energy in motion — how we feel about anything we know.) Dr. Joe Dispenza explains how creating new thoughts rewires the neurons in our brain. We think 60–70 thousand thoughts per day, and most of them are habitual, based on our perceived environment, and what we think we know about ourselves. Many of these thoughts, for most people, are unfortunately negative.
Here are some simple truths about what we think learning is. As humans, we think we are always learning new things, but in truth, we are just becoming aware of ideas that already exist in the universe. Awareness is the process of discovering what is already there. This is why throughout history, there are important people who discover things like electricity and a way to split the atom.
Humans are engineered to be conscious, to explore our minds, and our ultimate purpose is to be happy — in fact, every single religious scripture in Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, all tell us this, with the basic concepts of “heaven” and “hell.” If all other animals escape suffering in the same way (try to pinch an earthworm, it will squirm to safety), we too want “heaven.” For a worm, heaven is outside of a pinching set of fingers into the moist dirt. For us, “heaven” is infinite potential based on everything that exists in the Universe. That means all possible outcomes, all scenarios. Anything we want it to be. Now, that is an incredible amount of responsibility, so this is why we are most afraid of discovering ourselves fully.
On any given day, we can think we are closer by moving the furniture, but one thing that needs to be understood for enlightenment to begin, is that all religions are designed to uplift human consciousness, so all of the work to find “heaven” begins inside of our own minds, doing work on our own thoughts. And today is a great day to start doing the work.
Realizing your true potential.
You are an amazing individual, and perfect the way you came into the world. Your environment, the family you were born into, and everything you experience is perfectly engineered for you to become the best version of yourself.
Take your mind off of what you want, or want to happen, to discover yourself.
Our awareness is trained to react to what we want, our desires. We cry when we are a baby, to get food. This process keeps going until we realize that food was going to come anyway, and we don’t need to cry anymore. Everything just is the way it is, for us to enjoy.
However, because we have to “discover” ourselves, we may never break out of the habit of questioning our existence. Why we were born into “this family or that” or “things would be better if my parents were rich,” or “man my life would have turned out so much better if my Dad wasn’t such an asshole,” we can go on and on.
Our thoughts always try to re-arrange the furniture, they tell us we should look different, and get plastic surgery to be happy, or buy things to be happy, our thoughts make us think we are not beings of infinite potential. Our thoughts, actually trick us into thinking that if we arranged the outside world — it would be a better place.
Now when you think about Adam and Eve being dropped into the garden of Eden, it has a whole new meaning, doesn’t it? Think of them both being like, “Hey, this is pretty, we don’t understand any of this… now let’s mess this up to see what happens.” No other creature does this to their environment, because other creatures don’t have the human potential of transcendent concioussness. (Man was made in the image of God).
We think we are part of the Universe, but we don’t realize we are The Universe.
The real crack in the ice happens once our identification shifts from thinking we are “our social structure” to realizing we are much more than that.
Principle 5. Becoming at peace with God, fully loving yourself.
Here’s where most people jump off this train.
But lets simplify things. You’ve seen the license plates and bumper stickers that say “God is Love.” I don’t particular like the word God — not to teach others about him in his true form. In Hinduism, the definition of God, is ever-present, ever new, infinite bliss, center everywhere, circumference nowhere.
Satchitananda (Sanskrit: सच्चिदानन्द) — Ever new bliss. This is infinite consciousness. Consciousness exists in your body, not your mind.
God is Everything. So Love everything, and you’ll take off. That’s all. Here’s where you might say, but I can’t love war! The world is messed up! That’s when you have to realize you can love the world, and everyone in it, as well as everyone who has made a mistake. Here’s where we get into biblical stuff like forgiveness, and so forth. But if you’ve made it this far — you’re on your way. But feel free to keep reading.
Loving God is a “difficult” one because we see God as causing all types of wars, and problems, but what we don’t realize is that social identification does that (our egos.) So we say, “If God exists, why do bad things like wars happen.” And this is why most people don’t understand religious scripture. Because they might pick up a spiritual practice, but hold on too tightly to social identification.
Also, the word God bothers people, because of the way it has been historically used. To understand the process, you can substitute God with a “higher self.”
Truly love yourself. This means love inward, anything you do, anywhere you are, radiate love. No matter what. We came from love. This is where the identification and the word God come from. Because love is expanding energy. It can only expand.
Principle 6. Gravity. This is where it gets heavy.
If you’ve made it this far — time to do some work. This is hard work, very hard work. Loving yourself and the whole Universe isn’t easy, because it requires us to have trust in the future. (Faith). Gravity is a force. It is strong. It is very difficult to break through. Our thoughts have weight, and if they are attached to our body, they stay right with it at all times, right on Earth, right in this duality. They can exist in the past, and we can even live in the past. And remain as limited as what we can see and discover with our senses.
The only way to break through gravity is to have a spiritual practice. Any spiritual practice to stop the thinking mind will do because once you start the process and ask the Universe for help, put emotion into understanding your true potential with loving intent, the process accelerates.
The process accelerates, as you direct more energy to the process. Acceleration in physics is velocity over time (m/s2). Velocity is the rate at which an object changes position.
This is the law of attraction and growth. All life moves towards light. We learn this from plants.
The process of being happy, and realizing true potential, or being stuck in the monotony of being unhappy is the same. We direct energy and emotion in a direction, either negative or positive, and we experience the energy we are generating with our thoughts. So our awareness which is inside our “body” is in the space according to where our consciousness is.
Also, now would be a good time to point out that if you are reading these words, you were meant to. Because it is exactly what you needed right now to move to the next step. Everything in the world is absolutely perfect. It all happens as it should. The process of growing awareness is discovering that things are perfect, the Universe is perfect, your place in it is perfect, and that you are on the path to enlightenment, and to realize your true potential.
Principle 7. LOVE and Gratitude.
The law of attraction works on two basic principles. Love, and gratitude. If we can train our brains to be grateful for where we are at this moment, and this moment is a starting point filled with love, and gratitude — we are where we need to be. This is being in the present moment.
Principle 8. Time and Space.
We are always in the stillness of right now. We don’t realize this until we can shut off our thinking mind, and just be present — to shut off our mind, we need a spiritual practice.
The basic principle of enlightenment is understanding that life wants to escape suffering (exist in peace). Everything is energy, and the reality we perceive in the visible universe is a reflection of our own thought-energy.
Principle 9. Meditation.
The key to realizing your full potential is to stop thinking. Illuminated Masters call this, “a one pointed mind.”
The best way to accelerate the velocity of consciousness is meditation. Discover a mediation process, and sit until you go through all of your darkest thoughts. Until you experience the worst of yourself. Once you do that, you will go to the other side. They always say the grass is greener on the other side right?
To begin a meditation process that will work for you, face east in the morning when you wake up or before you go to bed. Sit quietly and ask the Universe for guidance with a simple prayer. “Show me the light to my higher self.” Repeat this until you get an answer. You’ll then receive signs throughout your day pointing you in the right direction.
If you’d like a direct course to start that is affordable and highly effective. Try Ananda.org’s beginning meditation courses.
Many Blessings. One Love.
