Q – If you have to choose between the head and the heart, what would you choose to make you happy?
A.L. London
A – Happiness occurs rarely for the majority of human beings, this is because they are often in conflict with one another and with themselves. What does it mean to be in conflict with oneself? It means that there is a multiplicity of desires within you and that in satisfying one you are sacrificing another, which ultimately causes you confusion, dissatisfaction and pain.
Your values are the assets that you will assign to the 8 fields which sum up the entirety of the areas of your life, and personal growth which are; body & mind, health & spirit, career & wealth, relationships & community. They determine what goals you have in each field and and how you will achieve those goals. Your beliefs are the rules that you will live by whilst achieving your values and what you will judge your actions and the actions of others by. They will also determine your boundaries and your limitations in each area.
For each area of our lives, however active we think we may or may not be in that area, we have developed and are living according to our values and beliefs. Often in each area we have developed multiple sets of values and beliefs and sometimes these may be in conflict with one another causing a duality or multiplicity within us. Therefore when we act on them they cause us pain because we are sacrificing one set of values and beliefs for another.
When your centres are aligned, like the mind and the heart, they move forward together, in one direction, with clarity, precision and certainty towards a common goal. Then we can experience true fulfillment and happiness enrich our lives. For the most part the initial common goal of all your centers is self observation, a way of gathering enough data to be able to look at yourself and evaluate yourself objectively.
Like all things happiness will begin in your consciousness. A deep seated gratification for your very existence, for being and for acknowledging your being dwells in your heart, which must be expressed in your own individual way. Through practicing and understanding this gratification, which is an appreciation of your being, you will develop an honest picture of the values and beliefs by which you live and the values and beliefs which truly represent who you are.
In our natural state the bulk of what we think and do is determined by the external world to us. Television, media, schools, peers determine for us by showing us in example who we ought to be and how we ought to live . They educate us on our values and beliefs, the very dear values and beliefs which we hold on to and fight for with our lives, are often determined by external bodies and not by our own efforts. We would have to study ourselves and one another and then evaluate our findings objectively and without judgement before determining our own individual values and beliefs truly.
Instead our brain takes in all the data it is given and we become the things we think about, the dramas and the false ideas, the limited perceptions of our communities and environments and the negative and dark realities that begin to influence who we think we are and the world we think we live in.
The majority of people feel unfulfilled and detached from themselves. They feel a gap between who they are and who they wish to be, this gap is real and it is determined by actions that we take on a daily basis which distance us from ourselves.
If you are not happy, it is because whatever you are doing that is not aligned with your true self, it is causing you to move away from yourself and this distance from the self hurts.
When you are not aligned with your true self, your true desires are not fulfilled and you feel a deep dissatisfaction with the world and yourself in it. This alignment does not occur naturally, this alignment requires a constant work on oneself to become conscious, to re-evaluate ourselves and the world we think we live in and to create a new future for ourselves. It is possible to become completely lost and stuck in this great dissatisfaction for the entirety of our lives. It is also possible to relieve yourself of the great dissatisfaction with the help of those who have done so before you. Ultimately the choice is yours, to get different results, you must act differently.