Pray for Happiness

Transcript

Let’s talk about praying for happiness. I was just in an Uber coming back tonight from a cafe and got about two or three blocks into the journey and I noticed this Uber driver started praying.

He was doing the Catholic blessing so “father son and holy spirit” from the head to the belly and across the chest and I thought “How interesting” cause he did it like three blocks in a row. He did this little blessing and I thought “Hmm, this could be a man of great faith or really he just wants to get home safely tonight.”

I took his cue and I started praying within my own mind. And I thought “May we arrive safely, may we arrive happier and more grateful than we have been, amen.” And it was true actually.

When I arrived, I arrived safe. I also arrived happier and more grateful than I had been.

And it’s funny cause sometimes people will pray for big lofty things or material things. Mercedes Benz, a bigger house or perhaps a better meal. That’s cool, there’s nothing wrong with that. Its wonderful to have those material things that can help you find happiness and it would be very fulfilling. So that’s great.

It’s interesting because we actually have the power to change certain things right now. Like we can tap into our own divinity through the power of prayer. Through accessing deeper parts of our mind.

If you don’t like the word prayer we can call it self hypnosis or a sort of meditation. Whatever you want to call it, the point is we’re getting in touch with a deeper part of ourselves by talking to ourselves, basically. Or feeling things within ourselves.

I think we can all imagine a time where we were happy, where something nice was happening to us. A birthday party blowing out a cake and we feel great because we are among friends and family. You think about how nice it was to do those things for you and you start to feel grateful as well.

And gratitude can be this great key to happiness, so we get into this wonderful virtuous cycle like that.

So it’s cool because these are wishes which can actually be fulfilled right now. If we exercise our imagination and our intention we can access these emotional states and also these mental states or perspectives.

And we say to ourselves “I’d like to be more happy, I’d like to be more grateful.” And say “Please, me, be more grateful!”

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time about desire. When I was in Portugal, I took a month of my own personal meditation retreat. I stayed in the house in the country and meditated as much as I could.

I meditated more than I had in the previous year. Like 80 or 90 hours in the month, it was a wonderful experience.

And one of the things that happened or one of the insights I had about happiness is really a simple formula. Maybe I’ve mentioned this before the first step is to formulate a strong desire for happiness.

The second step is to make circumstances that are conducive to happiness.

The third step is to let go of the desire to happiness. Sometimes your desire can actually be a feeling of lack and that can interfere with you accepting the happiness.

On the surface this might seem like a simple formula. But actually it raises a lot of questions.

Like what are the circumstances conducive to happiness? To some extent that’s a question everyone has to answer for themselves.

What I’ve been wondering is how do you formulate a desire? It’s not always an easy thing to do. It’s not like picking up a pen or picking up a weight or something. Its not like I can just move my belly around a bit and turn my internal state into one of desire.

It’s a tricky things to do even for someone like me who tries to be honest about my own emotions and things.

But I did kind of get a little bit of an answer to that tonight when I was doing that prayer. I started to feel a desire for happiness and fortunately it didn’t take long before that desire was fulfilled and I felt happiness.

And I would say this is something a little magical. Like I said we can all imagine those times when we’re happy or grateful. We can change these things, these mental states and these perspectives in ourselves. WE can develop a desire and fulfill a desire as the Diogenes famously stated:

“I wish I could rub my belly and feel satiated.”

Well we can actually pray for happiness and be satiated.

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for thinking beautifully and opening your eyes and allowing divine grace into your heart to show you a finer path. Thank you, have a great day, I’ll talk to you soon.