It is not acquired, it is in your nature, said Ramana Maharishi
By Jim Hatton
I am living in the eternally happy present. It is not a mundane happiness, which becomes boring after a while so that you welcome a little difficulty just for a change. The joy that has come upon me is 1,000 million times more intoxicating — ever changing, ever new. In that consciousness you feel all the happiness in the world passing through you.
— Paramahansa Yogananda
The only reason you’re experiencing that you’re unhappy is because you identify with an unhappy thought.
— Anonymous
You do not acquire happiness. Your very nature is happiness. Bliss is not newly earned. All that has done is to remove unhappiness.
— Ramana Maharishi
And what is the way out? Not looking to the world for happiness, but looking to the place where happiness is, right within us, within our own consciousness.
— Lester Levinson.
You need nothing to be happy, you need something to be said.
— Papaji
Thought comes first, then feeling, then emotion (like tears). It always happens that way, and often people first feel the emotion and don’t realize that there was a subtle thought first that created the feeling and then came the emotion.
— Bob Anderson
The world is full of Sorrow
The root of sorrow is attachment desire
The solution to a life without sorrow is the
dropping of attachment.
— Anthony de Mello
There is only one thing that causes unhappiness: attachment. Attachment comes when we hold on to something for fear of losing it because we believe that we can’t be happy without it.
My prayer: Oh my beloved God, show me my attachments, one by one, so that I may release them easily and gently and live a life of happiness. So be it!
Jim Hatton is an author, spiritual teacher and speaker. He makes his home in the Rogue Valley, Southern Oregon. Want to contribute an Inner Peace column? Email Hatton at [email protected].
