Since time immemorial spirituality has been a path towards a happiness, fulfilment and a well-balanced life. Happiness and spirituality are two sides of the same coin. My teacher Sri Chinmoy always used to say that happiness equals spiritual progress. If you are truly happy, it means you are making good headway along your spiritual path. Here are five ways to help you increase your happiness by becoming more spiritual
1. Always look on the bright side
Spiritual people are positive people. They know that life itself is inherently positive and that a source of spontaneous goodness lies at its core. Deep inside us is the soul, our divine existence. “The soul is a divine portion of God and is all joy and cheerfulness,” Sri Chinmoy states.
Being cheerful doesn’t mean being naïve. The world is full of suffering and sadness. Spiritual people know this better than anyone. But they also know that the only antidote to unhappiness and despair is to take the positive approach. Negativity can never cure itself, it just makes things worse. Only by staying in touch with the indestructible source of goodness deep within us can we conquer and illumine the ills of the world around us.
Mother Teresa was a shining example. Although she worked with the downtrodden and the destitute, she always wore a smile on her face and countered hatred and despair with love. By remaining cheerful and positive she conquered the hearts of people everywhere.
“Cheerfulness indicates the nearness of God.” –Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 27, Agni Press, 2002
2. Focus On Others’ Needs
When we start living in the heart, we discover a growing sense of connectedness to the world around us. Instead of feeling like we are an island unto ourselves, separated from all the other human islands, we start to become aware of the fact that all life is one. We all share the same divine roots, which actually makes us family – brothers and sisters on this beautiful planet earth.
Loneliness completely disappears from our lives when we become well-established in the heart. The feeling of oneness gives us a deep sense of satisfaction. The greatest joy we get when we can express our feeling of oneness. The best way to do this is by serving others – not with the attitude of a slave serving a master, but out of a genuine family feeling. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples with complete humility and oneness, to show them that service is the highest form of action. When we put others needs before our own, we transcend our human ego and become a true and universal citizen of the world.
At the same time we have to take care not to abandon our own needs. Serving others should be based on a healthy foundation of self-respect. When we make ourselves miserable to accommodate others, we are making a mistake. Altruism is good, but there is a tipping point after which it becomes unhealthy. Being overly altruistic will ultimately backfire. Make sure to take care of yourself as well.
“God sanctions real satisfaction when we care for others’ needs more than we care for our needs.” –Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 19, Agni Press, 2000
3. Try To Minimise Your Desires
Spiritual masters throughout the ages have told us that desires are the cause of suffering. Once we find the inner treasures that lie buried in the depths of our soul, we will not crave for anything outside of ourselves. The real happiness lies within and can never be sought, bought or caught in the outer life. When we fulfil a desire we experience pleasure, a short burst of gratification that is quickly vanishes and often is replaced by a sense of loss or frustration. Sri Chinmoy writes:
“The majority of human beings consider pleasure as happiness; but pleasure and happiness are actually two different things. When we have pleasure we feel that our pleasure is immediately captured by frustration and inside this frustration we see a real sense of destruction. But when we have happiness we see there is a constant and conscious expansion of the real reality within us.”
Sri Chinmoy, Consciousness: God-Journey To Man And Man-Journey To God, Agni Press, 1974
The more you can minimise your desires, the sooner you will discover the true happiness that lies at the fount of your being. How to do this? Tackle your desires one by one. Make a list of ten or fifteen desires you now have. Then choose one and physically cross it off the list. Feel that here and now you are giving up that desire. Consciously erase it from your mind. Every week or two cross of another desire. After a few months you’ll find that you have very few desires left! As a result, you’ll have become a much more spiritual person.
“Just because you have decreased your desires, your love for God and your need for God are increasing.” –Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy, Inner progress and satisfaction-life, Agni Press, 1977
4. Practice the art of self-effacement
Most people are experts at blaming outside factors for the things that go wrong in their own life. The circumstances or other people were against them, they say, and that’s why they didn’t succeed. This is the ego’s clever way to maintain its false feeling of perfection and superiority.
The more spiritual you become, the less you will blame others for your failings. The easy way is to ignore our own imperfections, but that will only prolong our suffering. Instead, we try to find the mistake in our own life. This can be painful and unpleasant at the outset, but it is the only remedy to permanently remove the root causes of our unhappiness. It’s like prying out a thorn that is stuck in our flesh by using another thorn. It hurts for a short while, but not doing anything will cause an infection which will hurt much more and much longer.
Self-effacement means to look for the causes of our suffering inside our own nature first and foremost. The Indian master Sri Aurobindo said, “Be alert when life deals you a blow and think: what have I to learn?” Adversity can be the greatest teacher if we sincerely try to learn from it and not ignore its hidden message.
“Where is the shrine of fulfilment? Inside the temple of self-effacement.” –Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy, Silence Speaks, Part 2, Agni Press, 1990
5. Value Self-Discipline
To become spiritual you do not need a special talent. Spirituality is inside everyone, we only have to open the curtains and windows of our inner life to see and feel it. To do this, we have to cultivate a little spiritual discipline and practice prayer and meditation on a regular basis.
Discipline is often a scary word, but it is not so hard to get. The secret is to value your goal – then discipline will automatically come. An athlete dreaming to participate in the Olympics doesn’t find it difficult to train; it comes natural to him. So if your goal is to become more spiritual, which means to become a happier, wiser and more loving person, and if that urge is strong, you will make it a point not to miss your daily prayer and meditation.
Some people confuse this inner urge with desire. But it is something entirely different, which Sri Chinmoy called aspiration. Aspiration is an inner cry to become a better person and to have peace, joy, love and all other good qualities. This can never be harmful. On the contrary, it is the foundation-stone of true and lasting happiness.
“When you don’t give countless outer things your attention, you will see that truth is looking right at you and giving you the strength to discipline your life.” –Sri Chinmoy
Sri Chinmoy, The hunger of darkness and the feast of light, part 2, Agni Press, 1974