We Call the Real World-Daily Meditation 3.16.23

Today’s quotation:

As long as our self-identification centers around what we call the real world, no profound happiness is possible.  Happiness requires that we give up a worldly orientation–not worldly things but a worldly attachment to things.  We have to surrender all outcomes.  We have to live here, but we appreciate the joke.
   To become happy, we must become bigger than the worldly self. . . . Just as children play games in which they pretend to be adults and thus pave the way for adulthood, so you and I must pretend to be angelic, noble, enlightened spirits just visiting here, actually to become them.-Marianne Williamson

Today’s Meditation:

Discussions on happiness run the gamut of topics, from family to work to nature to success to relationships to food, and on and on and on.  “To be happy, we must __________.”  Marianne puts a different spin on the idea here. She focuses on something significant to our lives–the idea of identity and its connection to the world as opposed to the spirit.  We identify with sports teams that we like, with clothing brands that we like, with universities that we attended, with music groups that we enjoy listening to, with groups of people (religion, politics) who believe in things that are similar to the things that we believe.

But these are all things of this world–they’re not necessarily the most important things to us.  And I think Marianne has hit an essential nail on the head–we allow ourselves to get caught up in the things of the world rather than things of the spirit.

We worry about the clothes we wear (and that other people see us in) rather than the compassion we’re showing.

We worry about the car we drive rather than the love we spread.

We focus on what others think of us rather than how we treat others.

And doing these things keeps us from being as happy as possible.

This world is fleeting.  We’re here for only a few years.  Identifying with the world that we’ll be leaving anyway rather than our eternal selves keeps us tethered to the material rather than the spiritual, to the fleeting rather than the eternal.  Our happiness depends upon realizing that we are more than just materialistic creatures and then acting upon that knowledge.

It’s for our own good and the good of the world.

Questions to consider:

Why is it so easy to identify with our materialistic world?

How do we forget about our spiritual natures?  What keeps us from focusing on them?

How might focusing on our own spirits help us to become happier people?

For further thought:

We may think that happiness is a result of happy circumstances.  A more mature view of happiness is that it is a by-product of sharing our good and serving others.  It is a sense of doing a job well, honest communication with another, visiting someone who may be ill, or sharing a sense of humor.  Happiness is a spiritual principle that we can lay hold of and use, regardless of outer conditions or circumstances.
It isn’t necessary to wait for circumstances to bring happiness.  When we try to give it to others, it returns to us multiplied.  We can make our own joy and let it act upon circumstances!  One of the great paradoxes of truth is that a happy heart draws to itself what it needs for happiness.-John Marks Templeton

If you missed our last Daily Meditation, it is right here.