Quotes About Happiness

Definitions

"Being happy is the natural result of being aligned with Knowledge within yourself and of being close to those who are meant to be with you and close to that which you are meant to do."

• Steps to Knowledge Continuation Training 12

"Learning to be happy is simply learning to be natural. Learning to be happy is learning to accept Knowledge today. Knowledge is happy today. If you are not happy, you are not with Knowledge. Happiness does not always mean having a smile on your face. It is not a behavior. Genuine happiness is a sense of self, a sense of wholeness and satisfaction. If a loss has occurred in your life, a loss of a loved one, you may still be happy, though you may shed tears. It is all right to shed tears, for this does not need to betray a greater happiness within you, for these also may be tears of happiness. Happiness is not a form of behavior. Let us remind you of this. It is a sense of inner satisfaction. Knowledge will give this to you because it will simplify your life and allow your mind to concentrate on that which it is given to do in reality. This will empower you, simplify you and provide a greater harmony than you could have known before."

• Steps to Knowledge 197

"When we talk about real happiness, we are talking about the satisfaction and the sense of integrity that come from really engaging yourself in your greater purpose and mission here."

• Taking the Steps to Knowledge (April 21, 2000)

Directives

"Look at all your comforts and conveniences and think of the people who created these so that you enjoy them. Be happy with what you have because you have so much already. Unless you are living in a state of extreme poverty, you have so much already. Look at your clothing. You have more than you need. You are rich....Be happy with what you have. Learn to recognize what you have. Deeply experience what you have as an antidote to this endless wanting and searching and yearning and all of the unhappiness, disappointment and aggravation that it brings to you."

• Joy and Gratitude (January 31, 2009)

Short Quotes

"When people are happy and self-satisfied, God is the last thing they are thinking of."

• What is Creation? (February 4, 2007)

"You are an individual unaware of your Source and your total inclusion in life. Your individuality is a burden now, but it will be a great happiness to you when it can express life itself."

• Steps to Knowledge 11

"In isolation you are miserable, but in relationship happiness is regained."

• Steps to Knowledge 44

"A Greater Will exists within you that wishes to express itself. When you experience this, you will finally feel that you are known to yourself. You will finally experience true happiness, for your life at last will be integrated."

• Steps to Knowledge 96

"You will only be happy if you are advancing and if you can experience this. And you will only be happy if your thinking and your approach are in keeping with Knowledge."

• Living the Way of Knowledge, chap. 5, p. 46

"The calling here is to serve the world, not merely to enlighten yourself, not merely to put yourself in the position of extreme happiness and contentment." The New Message on Fulfillment (August 24, 2007)

Mistaken Ideas about Happiness

"People often think that spirituality is about being happy, peaceful and joyful all the time, turning life into a sort of slumber party. This is not true. Spirituality is not a form of escape. It is not a form of intoxication. It is not an aphrodisiac. It is a way to empower you by bringing you into contact with Knowledge so that you may fulfill your purpose and your mission here."

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 16, p. 205

"Some people think that God guarantees happiness and satisfaction. When happiness and satisfaction do not exist, people are either being unfaithful or somehow God is failing them and their unquestioned and often unconscious expectations."

• Where Will You Place Your Faith? (June 28, 2008)

"The goal is not happiness but preparation, readiness, contact, reunion and ultimately contribution to the world, wherever it may be appropriate for the individual. That is why the pursuit of happiness is so deceiving because the Revelation will make you uncomfortable. It will challenge you."

• The Initiation (June 28, 2011)

"People want to retire into kind of a listless happiness, without a care, but when you see this, it is pathetic. It is sad. There is no intelligence. There is no inspiration. There is no honesty. There is no true connection with others. There is no service and contribution. They have cast themselves out of the meaning of life in their life of constant repose."

• The Shock of the Future (April 30, 2011)

"If you are truly honest with yourself, you must recognize that your experience of physical existence is predominantly one of suffering and uncertainty. You have moments of happiness, moments of reprieve, moments of enjoyable distraction. You perhaps believe you are happier than you really are, and many people suffer from this delusion, but if you are really honest about it, looking at your own experience objectively, you will have to admit that really it is not a very balanced experience. It is weighted far more towards suffering, uncertainty and anxiety than it is towards any real enjoyment of life."

• What is Creation? (February 4, 2007)

Processes

"People ... do not want to feel discomfort, uncertainty or anxiety, and so they have set up a series of defenses so they can stay preoccupied and feel better about themselves and their situation. But these defenses end up denying critically important experiences that they are having. Part of this defense mechanism is developing a whole network of fantasies that you indulge yourself in, in the attempt to create a happy or interesting set of dreams to replace how you are really feeling in the moment."

• Signs from the World (November 7, 2008)

"The pursuit of happiness becomes very self-deceptive because you only want to acknowledge those feelings and experiences that support your pursuit of happiness, while denying or decrying all the rest of your experience. This leads to a kind of self-avoidance and low self-esteem because if you cannot recognize and acknowledge your own experience, then you are really denying yourself. You are in a state of avoidance with your own experience."

• Signs from the World (November 7, 2008)

"After you have tasted the pleasures and the sorrows of this world, after you have tried to fulfill yourself with people and places and activities and holidays and hobbies and sports and every other form of distraction that may be available to you—when you finally come to yourself, whether it be from a great disappointment or a sudden realization or a lucid moment in your hectic life, when you finally come to this, you will realize there is a greater need within you and that it cannot be fulfilled by all the desperate attempts at happiness that everyone around you is attempting and committing themselves to."

• Freedom (February 3, 2008)

"The real wealth, the real happiness, will be attained by [Knowledge, the] means... God has placed ... within you to guide you and to protect you and to teach you how to live in harmony with your environment and with each other. It is oriented to the truth, to what is real and genuine and authentic, what is honest and what is compassionate. It is your relationship with your deeper nature that will enable you to re-establish a real functioning relationship with the natural world—to restore a sustainable life, a balanced life."

• Nature and Natural Disasters (September 8, 2008)

Long Quotes

"Spiritual practice is not here to give you happiness or to assure prosperity or to transcend you out of this world. It is here to connect you with the deeper current of your life—a current that is moving, that has direction and that has somewhere to go."

• The First Commitment (September 25, 2008)

"You can never find any real happiness or contentment if you are a stranger to yourself. This self within you is deeper and far beyond your intellect, beyond your beliefs and ideas, your habits and the nature of your personality. Your real nature is far deeper than this. So you build a kind of life in the pursuit of happiness, but it is not really an authentic life. It is not really a life that you are committed to wholeheartedly, for your soul is not committed to it, even if you are attached to it in your own mind."

• The First Commitment (September 25, 2008)