Joshua, what would you say about “happiness”?
Let us examine “happiness” and the underlying question of awareness. It is interesting that in the human condition, frequently you are aware of being unhappy, you are aware of not feeling well, you might be aware of so-called negative emotions much more than having awareness of the positive. The happiness, the health, the wellbeing, the peace, the calm. All of those emotions surround you mostly. There are naturally exceptions, there are people who generally dwell in the other tangent, the other aspect, but for the most part, at least contentment is the normal state for most people. You asked specifically about happiness. There is some subjectivity in the definition of terms here. What is happiness? What is joy? What is contentment, and so forth. Those terms fairly well describe a similar state of being where a person feel well, there is some level of enjoyment happening in their life. Therefore, they say, I am generally happy or I am generally content, what does that mean? How does one arrive there? How is one consistently able to stay in that place of contentment or happiness?
It has to do with a person’s connection to their soul. That happens when a person is acting in synchronicity with their soul’s desires, with that, which their soul has anticipated that they do, that they perform in a particular lifetime. When all of this is working together smoothly, then that person will feel content, happy, even joyous, for it is a deeper connection, is the underlying foundation that is very secure, is very stable. Their soul is fully supportive of their actions, therefore they feel it, they sense it. They may not know why they suddenly feel more happy than they did before, it is simply because their energy has moved in a direction that is more in line with that, which the soul has requested of them, that which the soul wants them to explore and to experience.
Sometimes people misunderstand happiness for something else. For instance, someone who has a lot of material wealth, they might say: “I am very happy, I have everything that I want, that I desire”, but in fact are they necessarily happy? If it is not their right path to be accumulating material objects and processions, then they might actually be quite unhappy. They might be always striving for more, they might be one purchase away from happiness. But you see, it will never arrive for them in that way, for that is not where their soul wishes for them to go.
On the opposite spectrum, sometimes a person who is seemingly living in terrible conditions, perhaps in poverty, or in ill-health or some other undesirable way, might say: “Oh, I am very happy”. The observer might question that statement as perhaps being untrue or perhaps misleading, however it is quite likely that the individual is happy. They are in sync with their karmic path, they are in sync with what their soul wishes them to experience. Therefore, the hardships of their life or their condition have nothing to do with their level of happiness.