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KEY HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE: If
you pour love into what you do, love and happiness comes back to you
in excess.
One of the greatest sayings I ever encountered and which changed my
life the most at the time was that ‘True freedom is liking what you
do, not doing what you like’. As a number one unruly individual who
hated authority and conformity, it was a completely new way of
looking at the balance between independence and involvement in life.
Peter Caddy, one of the founders of Findhorn, was fond of quoting
his Rosicrucian teacher Dr. Sullivan: ‘Learn to love the place you
are in, the people you are with and the work you have to do.’ The
point is of course to find something you can love about the place
you are in, the people you are with and the work you are doing. Just
forget the negatives and smile. This seems to me to encompass much
the same philosophy.
But we can go further than that and say that everything in life
becomes wonderful, worthwhile, pleasurable and meaningful if we put
love into it. If you find that you cannot flow love into what you
are doing, then it isn’t worth being involved with. If your task
isn’t something you love doing, then it isn’t spiritually valuable
to you.
The computer people have the term GI-GO. It stands for ‘garbage in-
garbage out’. In other words, what you get out is only a reflection
of what you put in. Life is exactly the same as a computer in this
respect. If you can pour love into whatever you have your attention
on, it comes back to you. By that I don’t just mean the old idea of
someone will love you or the boss will give you a raise, though
that’s possible and a valid part of the formula. But what is
overlooked - and it spoils the beauty of this bit of wisdom - is
that: you get it back inside yourself. Something lifts and glows
inside that gives one a tremendous feeling of lightness, joy and
involvement that simply never comes if you’re in a grumbling
just-a-job mood.
What then of the mundane tasks, like washing up and shopping for
groceries? Well, they have to be done. So why not put love into
these too. You have a perfect opportunity to develop spiritually, so
these moments can become a sort of exercise in personal growth.
Instead of wasting precious moments of your life complaining and
trying to avoid needful assignments, why not cultivate the skill of
putting love into these too?
Of course it does help to know that your life is focussed. If you
are drifting from day to day, with no true purpose, then you cannot
see the web-like inter-relationships between each simple task of the
moment and your big life picture. If you haven’t got a bigger
picture, nothing makes sense any way.
So experiencing boredom, laziness and lack of involvement is a very
good pointer to the fact that you need to shape up your life and
make something of it; work out some meaningful goals and start to
work towards them.
The reverse of this is equally true: when you know what you want to
do and are working for it, every act becomes a statement of
commitment, achievement, satisfaction and SUCCESS! Every small task
becomes delightful as well as necessary, because it is taking you to
where you want to be.
FOOD
One of the great times to evince love is while you are preparing
food. There is a saying that the food tastes better if the chef puts
some love into it. Well, you can test this out for yourself and you
will find it is true! More than that, mealtimes are those moments of
the day when there is time to take a little pause and feel relaxed,
gentle and human. You can share it with friends where possible. If
you all involve yourselves in the meal preparation, that’s even
better: someone to cook, someone to prepare food, someone to lay the
table, put out candles, crockery etc, with LOVE. It all adds a great
deal to the pleasure of eating.
If all this is new to you, try one or two simple alterations in your
style while cooking. Put on music and dance while you peel
vegetables; or swirl round once, like a dancer, as you move from
place to place in the kitchen; or just make one or two graceful
gestures with your hands as you fling in the condiments!
PRACTICAL EXERCISE
If you are tired, inactive, lacking involvement or feeling resentful
about what you are doing, stop and look for love. It is vital for
the peace of your soul and the good of your heart and mind that you
find it. Sourness and hating what you do is the very opposite of
life’s true principle of happiness. It will lead to trouble in the
long run, and it can be BIG trouble - such as heart disease, cancer
and an early death. I’m speaking now as a doctor.
If you can’t find love in what you do and who you are doing it with,
then it is time for a change. In the meantime, find something that
you love; something to make you get up and do it before work;
something to rush home for at night, so that you can get started
with it. A really good hobby might fulfill this requirement.
CREATING LOVING RELATIONSHIPS
And of course, in a relationship, if it isn’t meeting all your needs
for love, it’s time you acted. Love between two people is something
to be tended and nurtured, like a flower. It is a complete and
deadly folly that love which is vivid and exciting will last for
ever. It will hardly last a month, if you don’t go on creating it.
Love running on auto-pilot isn’t love at all: a loving relationship
needs to be created on a constant basis.
This doesn’t mean you need to keep re-inventing it all the time. It
does mean you need to output the love, make a sign, an act, a
gesture, a word, SOMETHING which generates that magic. If you don’t,
then we have that unfortunate state that we label ‘taking things for
granted’.
Many relationships end this way. Sometimes one can sympathize-
pressure of work, lack of time, anxieties about money or some other
difficulty may mean that the expressions of love are forgotten or
almost obscured by the bigger problem that demands attention. The
fact remains that if love is not created constantly, it will begin
to die.
LOVE THAT PROBLEM!
Again, to reverse the view, if one flows love at a problem, it will
tend to vanish. Each individual must support the other and be part
of the solution, not part of the problem. There is nothing more
powerful about a loving relationship than the way that the two
together can conquer seemingly insurmountable difficulties. It is a
version of Buckminster Fuller’s SYNERGY; two people acting in one
accord are much MUCH more powerful than just the sum of the two
separate energies.
There is scientific truth to the saying ‘Love conquers all’.
Love is like life, it could be the same as the life energy itself.
As beings, our spirit nature is love. You will never see a spiritual
person who doesn’t emanate considerable love and tolerance. So to
love what we are doing and who we are with is simply to give life
and expression to our deeper nature. By the same terms, to not feel
love or have an expression of it is to shrivel and die as persons.
We are depriving our inner being.
I can sum all this up in fewer words than either of the key quotes
above by saying: being really truly alive is loving everything that
you experience.
The doctor in me is prescribing you love; lots and lots of it. Have
an abundance of this blessed feeling in your lives, so that you know
the true happiness that love can bring.
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