The pursuit of happiness inevitably leads to sorrow because it places happiness outside of ourselves. Rather than pursuing happiness on the outside, we should be givers of happiness from within; then happiness will always be ours and will come to us from all things in life. 

A few journal prompts:

• What is your real purpose in life? – not just short-term goals or desires, but what you wish to achieve in your life as a whole and leave as your legacy.

• Where does your true happiness and lasting dwell? – as apart from where we may derive the most pleasure or feel the most comfortable.

Meditations:

1. The Body Offering

            Visualize your entire body seated in the lotus posture, dwelling like a flame within the lotus of your heart. Your body is sustained by and assumes the form of this flame in which it is purified, energized and transformed.

Offer your body consciousness into this internal flame or fire body. Along with it offer all your physical pain, disease, discomforts and inadequacies for it to transform as needed or simply to render irrelevant in its purer light.

            Let your body arise radiant from the fire, full of lightness, joy and energy, itself a spiritual flame in physical manifestation, an embodiment of the light, no longer tied to the density and inertia of physical matter. Let your body feel like a flame of light that no darkness can limit.

2. The Breath Offering

            Inhale deeply and slowly, directing the energy of your breath downward and inward to its source in the fire of the heart. Offer our all your vital energies, instincts, urges and desires, all the movements of the life-force within you, into this core life-fire of the heart that is ever full, happy, radiant and content.

            Exhale, directing your transformed vitality as a force of health, creativity and energy to your entire body, filling every limb, joint and organ with renewed strength, vigor and capacity.

            Remember always to breathe with the light, making your every breath an offering of the light to the light. Let your breath be a sharing of your internal light with the light of all creation that is the life of all.

3. The Speech Offering

            Take any mantra or prayer that you like, such as OM or HREEM (the heart mantra, Hreem is a good mantra for both awakening and controlling the Kundalini.), and repeat or chant it softly at least one hundred times. Direct its energy downward from your throat to the heart. Let the flame in the heart repeat the mantra for you, carrying your wishes deep into the subconscious mind and into all your life experiences to transform your karma.

Let the flame in the heart speak the mantra back to you, bringing along with it the guidance that you are seeking from your higher Self. Learn to speak from the flame in the heart, to echo its voice of silence, and to articulate that flame of knowing within you as your true voice. It is the Divine Word within you that holds the key to all wisdom and grace.

4. The Mind Offering

            Offer your entire mind—all your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and sensations— into the fire of the heart. Merge your restless mind into the deep and boundless silence of the ocean of the heart. Sink the mind in the heart’s flame, and let all of your worries, doubts, and anxieties be consumed.

Keep your awareness centered in the heart, and let all your wandering thoughts dissolve back into it like flames from a fire or waves on the sea. Whenever you are confused or disturbed, simply return your mind to the heart in which there is neither dilemma nor duality, where no thought or worry can enter. Let your mind itself be an offering to the light within you. Let the flame be the knower, seer, and thinker within you, where the mind is no mind and memory is only of the presence of light.

5. The Self-offering

            Offer your human self, your self-image, your ego, your pride, and your ambition into the spiritual flame, the true Self within your heart. Let the flame consume all your karmas, attachments, fears and desires, from this or previous lives. Recognize that only what you have voluntarily given up can become permanently yours, not as your possession but as a gift of God. Your true Self is nothing and nobody, but only that pure light within you.

            Let your purified self come forth from the inner fire with a new mission of consciousness and enlightenment for the entire world. Learn to be your Self of light and radiate that Self in all that you do. Welcome all other-selves as different aspects of the light that is your true nature.

Cultivating Inner Happiness

The true spiritual alchemy, the way of Yoga and meditation, is to learn to extract the inner Soma directly, apart from any external stimuli, through the light of awareness hidden in our own hearts. This involves discovering deeper inner contentment, detachment, peace, and bliss through spiritual and creative practices, through our own individual experience, and direct perception of life that itself is a movement of cosmic joy.