Happiness = Inner Peace

The type of happiness you should strive for is not temporary excitement. It is a deep peace and love inside. The type of happiness which will stand you in good stead through the remainder of your life, and which you can achieve without any change in outside events, is a feeling of deep connection with all that is, a reaching up into love, faith, connection and joy and a reaching down into peace, a well of peace deep inside that nothing can touch. Even in the direst outer circumstances, you can find that deep peace inside and you can surround yourself with the love of the benevolent and caring universe by simply stepping into it and allowing its grace and beauty to surround you.


Does this sound too easy? It is simple, but it may not be easy at first. It requires daily discipline. It requires that you shift your thinking from the future into now. It requires that you shift your emotional response from the outer-driven to the inner-driven. It requires that you connect with the world around you in new ways, taking from it what is beautiful and wonderful, connecting with it in compassion and caring, but keeping your own self intact, like a shining star inside that never dims. It requires that you reinforce your own star and shine every morning without fail and that you continually seek connection with beauty and wonder, letting the cruel remark and act of betrayal pass over you and allowing the wonder of one leaf, one rose petal, one song, to penetrate deeply.

You can learn to do this. And when you do, you will carry peace within you at all times, you will wear love like a warm cloak, you will shine with grace, you will glow with happiness that cannot be dampened, that does not come and go with success and failure in other people's eyes.

Inner peace, deep love, joy and light. These are your happiness. And they are yours, right now.

Carrie Hart