Habits to happiness
Rise above your habits. The ego personality is a collection of habits, good and bad, yet the bad habits destroy you, producing nothing but misery, pinioning you evermore to its four psychological states: (1) sorrow, (2) false happiness, (3) indifference, and (4) false peace.
True happiness is the bliss-nature of the soul to be found when daily life is freed from the ego personality. True freedom is self-mastery, to be a master over the ego personality. True freedom is the ability to act at will whether the ego personality feels like it or not.
The fastest practice towards mastery through self-discipline is to meditate by concentrating the mind. The concentrated mind, gently and firmly disciplined, breaks free from the ego personality’s stronghold of buffeting, misery-producing desires.
Desires rise and fall, attached to the momentary happiness attainment brings. Break the spell by watching these want-and-get waves as they rise-and-fall, again-and-again. Your meditation will train the mind to watch but not engage. The ego personality’s engagement is a false desire cycle that has no end. It sorrows for what it does not have. It attains false happiness when it attains. It soon becomes indifferent towards its attainment. Then, when all sorrows for have-nots abate, a seeming peace arises, but it is a false peace, born not of the soul’s bliss-nature, but of the absence of the ego personality’s misery nature. Soon, the false peace erodes and the ego personality cries out, “Please knock me on the head so I can feel if I am still alive!”
False peace is a non-negative state. True peace is the uninterrupted presence of your soul’s God-nature: Sat-Chit-Ananda, ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss. The bliss-love-peace is a positive state, fully satisfying.
The soul, being individualized Spirit, can manifest all the fulfillment and satisfaction of the Spirit, if given a chance to unfold. It is through long-continued contact with changeable matter that material desires are developed. Desire is an impostor that hampers and encroaches upon the freedom of your ever-joyous soul and lures your ego to dance upon the crests of the four fluctuating, short-lived psychological states and the various moods they engender.
What man needs in order to live a successful and satisfying life is evenness of mind. That can be attained only by concentration, mastery of the mental faculties.
[Bliss] is not an abstract mental state. When bliss comes over you, you will recognize it as a conscious, intelligent, universal Being to whom you may appeal. When you are experiencing this ever new bliss, never doubt that you are contacting God. It is at this time that your broadcasting microphone of prayer-demand is ready to transmit your mental whispers to Him. Bliss is the surest proof of God's response; for God is this eternal, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.
Whatever your role in changeable mortal life, never forget that you are immortal, and endowed with eternal joy. This world is but a stage on which you play your parts under the guidance of the Divine Director. Play them well, whether they are tragic or comic, always remembering that your real nature is eternal bliss — nothing less. The one thing that will never leave you, once you transcend the four changeable mental states, is the joy of your soul.
The desire-infested individual is full of mental ups and downs and mind- corroding moods. Protect the soul from the mental disturbances created by the mad dance of sorrow-producing desire. Realize that you do not need material things, which create only misery. Learn to escape slavery to desire by searching within your soul, until you find there true happiness and lasting peace, or bliss. Thus you will become a "bliss billionaire."
The soul's nature is bliss: a lasting, inner state of ever-new, ever-changing joy. This bliss eternally gives unfading joy to those who attain it, even when they are passing through trials of physical suffering or death. You must attain self-control in order to regain the eternal heritage of all- fulfillment waiting for you within your soul. First, by meditating deeply, give your soul the opportunity to manifest bliss; and then, constantly living in this state, fulfill your duties to your body and mind and to the world. You need not give up your ambitions and live in negation; on the contrary, let everlasting joy, which is your real nature, help you realize all your noble goals. Enjoy uplifting experiences with the joy of God. Perform your God-given duties with divine joy.
Possession is not a sin, but to be possessed by possessions is wrong.
It is only when you discard your bad habits that you are really free. Until you are a true master, able to command yourself to do the things that you should do but may not want to do, you are not a free soul. In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.
If you are influenced by a bad habit, do two things: Avoid everything that occasioned or stimulated it, without concentrating on it in your zeal to avoid it; then divert your mind to some good habit, and keep it intensely engaged in cultivating that desirable trait until it becomes a part of you.
The best method for destroying all bad habits is to faithfully perform the soul-awakening good habit of meditation. When attachment to delusion has bound the soul, its only way to freedom lies in your using will power to meditate deeply each day until you achieve the actual, all-alluring, blissful contact of God, and can reproduce it in your consciousness at will.