What Is Real Happiness?

What is real happiness? It is being at one with your soul. So, then what’s a soul? Its everything that the ego is not. The ego tries to build you up. It makes you feel special and protected. But what’s really happening? You wind up being incredible insecure.

“I’m stuck on myself, on my way of doing things. I don’t love the way I am, but I’m addicted to it, and I don’t know how to stop.”

Your soul and your ego are as invisibly mixed as white wine and water. That’s why people are so confused. They wander through life searching for the soul when it’s right there. They all believe their soul will go to Heaven after they die, but the soul is everywhere already.

In other words, the soul is a mystery. It can’t be lost or found. It is neither here nor there. It belongs to you and yet it belongs to God. Without a process, no one would ever get to the bottom of it.

You’re searching for a label. Don’t. The process can’t be named. It’s invisible and yet all-powerful. It alters everything you say and do, yet nothing you say and do is part of it.

You can’t own the process. You can’t cling to it, any more than you could hold on to the smell of the ocean. The process happens entirely in the present. It’s here one second and gone the next.

You keep going back to your old self. That’s the worst addiction. As long as you crave the old self, you can never fully contact the unknown. Everyone is addicted to their old self.

You can’t have real roses, so you buy plastic ones. You can’t think sweet thoughts, so you gobble down sugar. You can’t figure out how to be happy, so you make other people laugh. There’s nothing wrong with what you do, but that’s not real happiness.

Adapted from Why Is God Laughing? The Path to Joy and Spiritual Optimism, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2008).

Read more: Spirit, Deepak Chopra's Tips, addiction, happiness, soul

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Kath R.

3:30PM PDT on May 3, 2012

"You keep going back to your old self. That’s the worst addiction. As long as you crave the old self, you can never fully contact the unknown. Everyone is addicted to their old self."
Words of wisdom...full of truth

send a green star

Harsha V.

10:53AM PDT on Apr 11, 2012

Happiness is feeling grateful to the present moment. That gives us calmness and ways to sublime if we wish

Jon H.

10:52AM PDT on Apr 11, 2012

Sorry for the triple post. internet problems due to weather.

10:51AM PDT on Apr 11, 2012

10:50AM PDT on Apr 11, 2012

Bravo Becky Y. You'd make a great teacher for you are very wise. Happiness can be acheived by being a set example for others to follow through love and caring. To many of us don't have guide lines when growing up and left to battle things on our own and we still stumble but learn from it. Learning to let inter happiness become your outer happiness is a major task.

10:46AM PDT on Apr 11, 2012