The Atma Jyoti Blog

The fifth post in the series “Creating Your Happiness” by Paramhansa Yogananda

Do you ever think seriously of salvaging your treasure of happiness which is sunk beneath the sea of your tumultuous life? Can you make your half-dead rose plant of life bloom again?

We are usually born rich with smiles, youth, strength, beauty, health, mystic aspirations, and swelling, thrilling hopes. As we live and grow, we begin to lose those riches, and the roses in us begin to fade. Why is this? Are we to grow warm with riches and then suddenly be frozen by the chill of poverty? The rose blooms only to die. Does our happiness come only in order to vanish?

No, the rose usually dies on the bed of beauty, yet some roses, worm eaten encounter a premature ugly death. We want to bloom with good actions, fragrant with happiness, and to rest forever with the memories of those who appreciate us. We do not have to die devoured by poverty, sickness, or sorrow.

To guard our rose plant, we must attend to it properly with much digging, watering, feeding, and guarding it from pests and chill. The rose plant of our happiness can grow only on the abundant fertile soil of our peace. It can never grow on hard, stony, unfeeling soil of human mentality. We have to constantly dig into peace with the spade of our good actions. We have to keep our happiness plant well watered with our spirit of love and service. We can only be happy by making others happy.

The real food for the happiness tree can be supplied only through meditation and actual contact with God in daily life. Without our contact with the Infinite source, from which all our human faculties and inspirations spring, we can never grow perfectly and completely.

The worst pests which attack our plant of happiness are lack of the desire to progress, self-satisfaction, and skepticism. The chill of inertia, or lack of definite, constant effort to know the Truth, is the greater ill from which our happiness plant suffers.

We can never be happy until we keep progressing and seeking satisfaction in doing so, and guarding that happiness from all the influences which destroy it.

More from Paramhansa’s writing on happiness:

• Important Conditions for Happiness
• Discover Your Soul as Happiness Itself
• Happiness Is in the Mind
• Creating Your Happiness – Paramhansa Yogananda

Read articles by Paramhansa Yogananda as they are published. Subscribe to the Atma Jyoti Blog.

The fourth post in the series “Creating Your Happiness” by Paramhansa Yogananda

Happiness depends to some extent upon external conditions, but chiefly upon conditions of the inner mind. In order to be happy, one must have good health, an efficient mind, a prosperous life, the right work and, above all, an all-round all accomplishing wisdom. A man cannot be happy just by holding the inner calm, while completely ignoring the struggle for existence and the effort for success. Even Jesus had to eat and clothe Himself.

Then again, without internal happiness, one may find oneself a prisoner of worries in a rich castle. Happiness is not dependent upon success and wealth alone, but real happiness depends upon struggling against the failure, difficulties, and problems of life with an acquired attitude of unshakable internal happiness. To be unhappy in trying to find the hard-to-acquire happiness defeats its own end. Happiness comes by being internally happy first, at all times, while struggling your utmost to uproot the causes of unhappiness.

The habit of preserving an internal happy attitude of mind should have been started when you were very young, but never mind, it is not too late to begin now. From today on, make up your mind that when you meet your trying relatives, when you come in contact with your overbearing office boss, and when you contact your enemies and the trials of life, that you will try to retain your internal calmness and happiness under all circumstances.

If you persevere in carrying out this resolution in your daily actions, and do not forget after a few days of trial, you will find that internal serenity and happiness depend upon a right mental habit and upon resolving to be happy in spite of everything, but remember, when you learn to be happy at all times do not allow this independent mental attitude of inner happiness to make you lazy, and do not ignore the material causes which stand in the way of your happiness. Strive to remove them and go through all the activities of life with this calm happy attitude of mind.

More by Paramhansa Yogananda from the series “Creating Your Happiness”:

• Creating Your Happiness – Paramhansa Yogananda
• Happiness Is in the Mind
• Discover Your Soul as Happiness Itself

Read articles by Paramhansa Yogananda as they are published. Subscribe to the Atma Jyoti Blog.

The third post in the series “Creating Your Happiness” by Paramhansa Yogananda

If you have given up hope of ever being happy, cheer up. Never lose hope. Your soul, being the reflection of the ever-joyous Spirit, is, in essence, happiness itself. If you keep the eyes of your concentration closed, you cannot see the sun of happiness burning within your bosom, but no matter how tightly you close the eyes of your attention, it nevertheless remains a fact that the happiness rays are ever trying to pierce the closed doors of your mind. Open the portals of calmness and you will find a sudden burst of the bright Sun of Joy right from within yourself.

The joyous rays of the soul can be perceived if you interiorize your attention. This can be done by using the architect of your mind to enjoy the beautiful scenery of thoughts in the invisible, tangible Kingdom within you. Do not search for happiness only in beautiful clothes, clean houses, delicious dinners, and soft cushions and chairs. These will imprison your happiness behind the bars of externality or outwardness. Rather, in the airplane of your visualization, glide over the vast tracts of Fancy, beholding the limitless empire of thoughts. There behold the mountain ranges of unbroken, lofty, spiritual aspiration, for improving yourself and others.

Glide over the deep valleys of Universal Sympathy. Fly over the geysers of enthusiasm, and the Niagara Falls of perpetual wisdom, plunging down the hoary crags of your Soul’s peace. Soar over the endless river of intuitive perception, to the Kingdom of His Omnipresence. There, in His Mansion of Bliss, drink from His fountain of Whispering Wisdom, and quench the thirst of your desires. Dine with Him on the fruits of Divine love, in the Banquet Hall of Eternity. If you have made up your mind to find joy within yourself, sooner or later you will find it. Seek it now, daily, by steady, deep, and deeper meditation within, and you will surely find everlasting happiness. Make a steady effort to go within and you will find your greatest happiness there.

In that land of everlasting Christmas and Christ-Omnipresent-Festive-Consciousness you will find Jesus, Krishna, the Saints of all religions, and the great Guru preceptors, all waiting to give you a floral reception of ever-new, everlasting happiness.

Celebrating the birth of omniscient, omnipresent Christ-Consciousness in your consciousness, on the joyous Christmas festivity of your inner awakening, you will find the unbroken happiness of your dreams.

On the Christmas tree of Christ Consciousness hang your material desires, to remain forever. Give unto Christ all the gifts of love and devotion. Let Him, on the Christmas morn of your spiritual awakening, break open the gorgeous presents of your heart offerings, sealed with the tears of your golden joy and bound with the cord of your eternal fidelity to Him. He accepts only the gifts of sacred soul-dreams, and His acceptance will be His greatest gift to you, for, if He gives anything, to anyone, He gives nothing less than Himself, and in giving Himself He will make your heart big enough to hold Him, then your heart will throb with Christ in everything. Enjoy this festivity, the birth of Christ, in your mind and soul, and in every living atom.

This article is a continuation of a series Paramhansa Yogananda wrote during the depression about “Creating Your Happiness.”

Happiness is a will-o’-the-wisp which most people follow, and which oftentimes leads them astray until they drown in the marshes of suffering. Most temporary, easily attained, so-called happiness is nothing but suffering in disguise. It may be pleasant to the palate to eat a great deal at the table, but remember that such procedure is very likely to have many unpleasant after-effects, such as acute indigestion or stomach ache, so also is it with immoderation in your natural impulses. They generally give you sense pleasure in the beginning, but ultimately they produce satiety and unhappiness.

The greatest way to create happiness for yourself is not to allow sense lures or bad habits to control you, but rather be a stern, iron-like ruler of your habits and appetites. Remember that just as you cannot satisfy your own hunger by feeding some other person, so you cannot be really happy by trying to satisfy only the over-demands of your senses.

Too much luxury, instead of producing happiness, drives it away from your mind. Do not spend all your time in finding ways and means which you think will make you happy. Be contented always, equally in your struggle for prosperity, and also in your attainment of it., You can be a King of Happiness in a tattered cottage, or you can be a tortured victim of unhappiness even if you live in a palace.

Happiness is a mental phenomenon exclusively. You must first establish it firmly within yourself, and then with an undying resolution always to be happy, go through the world seeking health, prosperity, and wisdom. Remember that to battle failure and sickness and to seek success ever with a happy attitude will bring you far, far nearer to your desired goal than if with an unhappy mind you try to gain your heart’s desire, no matter what that desire may be.

“Bread the men of the world seek after–
Seek ye FIRST the Kingdom of God,
And His righteousness,
And ALL THESE THINGS
Shall be added unto you.”

Read the first article in this series, Creating Your Happiness.

Read new articles by Paramhansa Yogananda as they are posted. Subscribe to the Atma Jyoti Blog.

Today we introduce a new feature on the Atma Jyoti Blog: writings by Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi. Most of these early writings are taken from the East-West and Inner Culture magazines.

This article is the first of several on “Creating Your Happiness.”

(The following was written during the Great Depression, but its principles remain relevant today.)

It is easier to spend than to earn.
Also it is harder to save than to earn.

Most people spend thirty dollars a week when their income is only twenty. The extra ten dollars is acquired by borrowing, or by buying with promises to pay in the future, on installment plans, and such systems. You must not always feel that you have to “keep up with the Joneses.” To try to own more than your purse will allow is to live in constant mental worry, and under such conditions happiness, like a will-o’-the-wisp, has to be chased foolishly all over the boggy surface of bottomless desires.

To spend more than you earn is to live in perpetual slavery. To spend more now in the hope of making more later on is the harbinger of all material suffering. An expensive car, together with a good dress-suit, and a beautiful home are very pleasant to have, but the loss of your car because you cannot meet the so-soon-recurring installments due; foreclosure of the mortgage on your home, built and paid for by many years of labor and saving; the publicity, dishonor, and heavy heart that comes after such occurrences—all these are very unpleasant. Is it not better to have an inexpensive car all paid for, a cozy cottage, a low-priced, clean suit, and a comfortable bank account than to have a big outward show with only borrowed money in your pocket?

Remember that along with the art of money-making it is well to learn the art of money-saving, for a large income is of no lasting good to you if it creates only habits of luxury and no reserve fund. Think for a moment. If you should get sick suddenly, how would you continue your luxurious habits, without the usual income, if you have no savings put away? It is a bad thing to cultivate luxurious habits if you have only a small income. Is it not better to live simply and frugally and grow rich in reality? You should use one-fourth of your income on plain living, save three-fourths, and be at ease in your mind with a feeling of future security. Keep what you earn legitimately, and don’t gamble or lose it in trying to “get rich quick.”

The present depression has taught you to buy lower-priced things, to save for a “rainy day” and not to spend on mere material comforts more than you are earning.

Happiness can be had by the exercise of self-control, by cultivating habits of plain living and high thinking, by spending less even though earning more. Make an effort to earn more so that you can be the means of helping others to help themselves, for one of the unwritten laws decrees that he who helps others to abundance and happiness, always will be helped in return by them, and he will become more and more prosperous and happy himself. This is a law of happiness which cannot be broken.

• You can purchase Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi at Amazon.com, in the first edition facsimile by Crystal Clarity Publishers. The full text the Autobiography is available online here.
• Read the next article in this series, Happiness is in the Mind.

Read new articles by Paramhansa Yogananda as they are posted. Subscribe to the Atma Jyoti Blog.