The Healthiest Response to Life is Laughter…
Objective: On the spiritual path you come to realize certain
basic principles. As these principles unfold ,reality shifts. Mere belief cannot transform the events
around you, but self realization can… read the principle below and discuss how it can be applied to your
life. This principle serves as an
antidote to fear and sorrow by encouraging you to experience life as joyous.
As we begin on the path, joy may come and go in small glimmerings. Yet in the end, laughter will
dispel suffering like so much smoke and dust. Suffering is one of illusion’s most convincing aspects, but it is still
unreal.
A golden rule applies here: What is true in the material
world is false in God’s world, and vice versa. In this case, the material world seems to be dominated by crisis and
suffering, and therefore the sanest way to approach life is with worry, anxiety, and defensiveness. But
once your consciousness shifts, you realize that life itself couldn’t exist without an underlying creativity, and
that this continuous act of creation is in itself an expression of ecstasy. These qualities are the basis of your
life. In fact, the lens of materialism gives us the east accurate view of the world, because through it we see
consciousness as merely an accidental by- product of brain chemistry and the powers of the mind as a myth. To equate the deepest reality with inert atoms colliding with each other in the dead cold of outer space
denies all that sustains life and makes it worth living: beauty, truth, art, love, morality, community, discovery,
curiosity, inner growth, and higher consciousness.
What do all these qualities have in common – They depend on
intuition.
There is no objective proof that love is beautiful, or that
the truth can set you free. Rather, you must come to
these realizations through your own inner experience. On the
spiritual path everything depends on a shift in
consciousness; nothing depends on atoms colliding. What we have, then, is two opposing
worldviews
contending for your allegiance. Is it better to be spiritual
materialistic? Is God a mere add-on to
physical
existence, or at the very root of existence? This isn’t an
easy choice to make, because the evidence is
seriously out of balance. Most of us have extensive personal
knowledge of the material world, but scant
personal knowledge of God. God must prove that he’s present
and dependable, the same way a rock or a
tree is. If we want to claim that God sustains life, he must
sustain it as viably as air, water, and food do. In
other words, to realize God is no small thing. It may take a
lifetime— if you’re lucky.
To begin this journey, commit yourself to the possibility
that everything you see around you is far less real than God. You want to see the truth “with all your heart, with
all your soul, and with all your mind,” as Jesus says.
This is actually a commitment to joy. When you feel
momentary happiness, or you want to burst out
laughing, or you smile for no apparent reason, you are
glimpsing eternal reality. For a fleeting moment the
curtain has parted so you can experience something beyond
the illusion. In time these moments of joy will
begin to knit together. Instead of the exception, they will
become the norm. There is no better way to know
that you are growing in God-realization.
Be the
Change You Wish to See in the World…
Mahatma Gandhi
