One does not find true happiness (a.k.a. inner peace) through externals such as money, fame, physical health, good looks, or good reputation. A similar but commonly overlooked external is the desire to make others happy and save others spiritually or otherwise. Sometimes it's even a desire to save the whole world. Where one person says, "I will finally be truly happy if I make a million dollars," another says, "I will finally be truly happy once I first make everyone else in the world happy." Both are equally foolish and wrong. Give an ungrateful person more of what they allegedly want, and you just make them more ungrateful. There is nothing wrong with desire, be it desire for money or desire to be a savior, just as there is nothing wrong with fear or hunger. Feelings cannot be wrong. What's wrong is the belief that fulfilling desires can or will make you happy. As my book teaches in detail, fulfillment causes desire to be replaced, not eliminated. There will always be more externals to chase, or figuratively speaking greener grass to chase in an endless cycle of greener-grass-chasing. Being a rebellious free-spirit with inner peace is, in part, about breaking that cycle, or at least transcending it to acceptingly notice its endlessness with an accepting spiritual smile. True happiness (i.e. inner peace) isn't found by fulfilling all your desires and eliminating all your fears and discomfort because that is impossible and silly. One with true happiness (i.e. inner peace) has it even while feeling desire, fear, hunger, pain, and discomfort, which are things that generally every single human feels every single day.
Those who seek to save the world as a means to save themselves do neither. You cannot fill other people's cups with your empty one. But you sure can make an effective scapegoat out of the futile attempt to do it. If you falsely treat true happiness as a zero-sum game you can scapegoat everyone else's unhappiness as the reason for your own unhappiness. In your futile attempts to fill other people's cups with your empty one, you can say, "my cup is empty because I am so generous and because everyone else is so needy and greedy."
Unhappy people tend to look for excuses and scapegoats for their unhappiness. They will often say something like, "I am unhappy because of X!" But, really, they would be unhappy even if X happened to not be the case, and perhaps they even purposely define X such that the alleged condition they set for their happiness is purposely impossible or unrealistic. In such cases, they might as well say, "I'd be happy if 2 + 2 equaled 5, but it doesn't so I'm not, and so I hate the world, and I hate life."
Many people claim to themselves and/or to others that they are trying to "save the world" and that they will be happy only if and when the whole outer world is saved. Thus, they thereby get to use the allegedly unsaved world as the scapegoat they so desperately want to have and cling to. Scapegoats are a common comfort to comfort addicts. If you would rather indulge in tempting comforts than have true happiness of free-spirited inner peace, I suggest you go find yourself some comforting scapegoats. They are easy to find because you make them up yourself.
In many ways, we always get what we want.
In many ways, we only and always see only what we want to see.
That's for many reasons, but one is that perception is at least mostly--if not entirely--a matter of projection. In other words, the outer world is much more of a mirror than we often realize.
Years ago, I found an infinite source of happiness, salvation, and invincible graceful inner peace.
In this human form, my absolute number one priority is to maintain and enjoy that wonderful free-spirited inner peace, every day until I die.
That takes priority, but, I am also happily eager to share it, just not at the sacrifice of it.
I am happily eager to share this wonderful thing with you and everyone primarily because of two reasons: First, I love you and everyone. Second, it's infinite. There's more than enough to go around. All our cups can be 100% filled. True happiness is not a zero-sum game. It's a game of dividing up something that's infinite. True happiness comes from an infinite source: No matter how much you take nor how much you throw back, my happiness remains fully intact, my cup still filled to the brim, infinitely overflowing. In other words, we can both be truly happy, meaning both have invincible graceful inner peace, day in and day out for the rest of our lives. In other words, we can both be saved.
But, if you are unhappy, I'll still be happy.
If you don't choose to have and enjoy wonderful invincible free-spirited inner peace, I'll still have it, and I'll still get to enjoy it.
If you choose to remain unsaved, I'll still be saved.
I love you, but my happiness (i.e. inner peace) does not depend on you.
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My book, "In It Together: The Beautiful Struggling Uniting Us All", is available for purchase from all major book retailers in both ebook and hardcover format.
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