For sure, we live in a
material world and guided by our senses, but within us a spiritual being is
always yearning to re-channel our sense perceptions into a realm of happiness.
For sure, pleasure is
around us and always trying to please our senses, but our spiritual being
yearns for a higher pleasure, a pleasure that leads us to success and much
happiness for a life well-lived.
The only requirement to
achieve success and happiness is that we accept this realm as if it was a
self-evident truth—a spiritual axiom. Happiness through human auto-realization
begins with this simple fact: it is always there, and it is as certain as the
animate and inanimate things we observe around us.
When Thomas Jefferson was drafting the American Declaration of
Independence, his first draft included these words: “We hold these truths to be
sacred…” Benjamin Franklin, in an attempt to keep the document free of religion
(though the word Creator could not be avoided) persuaded Jefferson to change
the phrase to read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”
So there’s nothing new in affirming that the pursuit of happiness is a
lofty goal that goes beyond material rewards, and that it exists.
Man —mortal being that he is— has the privilege of enjoying many physical
pleasures: money, affection, love, possessions, fame, glory, and other rewards which
are but of a temporary nature. We see them all around us and at all times. Yet
happiness transcends materiality; it conquers time and space.
Our spiritual development depends first of all in accepting that our
happiness is lasting, permanent, and unchanging, for in the realm of the spirit
change, mutation, space and time are surpassed.
While art may please our senses and –at times— transports us temporarily
into a realm of bliss, this oceanic feeling will soon wane, leaving us empty,
devoid of continuous enjoyment. In contrast, spiritual bliss is lasting, for it
makes us whole, engulfing us with a sublime feeling of goodness.
Happiness is indeed goodness. In the realm of happiness nothing bad ever
happens! No disasters,
catastrophes, or atrocities ever mar the realm of happiness.
Truman
Capote, a much underrated writer, wrote a novelette entitled Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In this novel
the heroine Holly Golightly loves to visit the famed 5th Avenue
super jewelry store. Although many scholars, critics, and commentators have
reviewed the novel and the film by the same name, no one that I know has
commented on what –to me at least—is the moral lesson of the book: that in that
super jewelry store –Tiffany’s—nothing bad ever happens there.
It
is there where Holly finds happiness. And we all carry in our hearts our own
Tiffany’s: in a good heart nothing bad ever happens.
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