Benjamin Teixeira de Aguiar by the Spirit Eugênia-Aspasia
Happiness in not only your right: it is your duty to be happy.
Your distress reveals the dimension of joy you are denying yourself. Paradoxically, however, the pain, in itself, is not contradictory to happiness, even constituting part of it, as easily seen in the essential experiences of discipline, of effort, of work for the achievement of goals, and the ability to postpone gratifications – compulsory attributes in real mature personalities. Continuous joy – and, therefore, immoderate and irresponsible – constitutes the policy of life that crams asylums, prisons, and rehab clinics. Despite these assertions, meanwhile, a deep bitterness, the frustration of the soul, and the systematic and uninterrupted suffering, denounce the escape of route of one ́s own destiny, the break in the Flow with the Divine Will for oneself.
From a more analytical perspective, it can be said that happiness is the fulfillment of all needs and aspirations of the individual, considering all the constituent dimensions of his/her structure of being, beginning with the physical until it reaches the spiritual realm, crossing in between them, the emotional and mental levels. However, there is a hierarchy among these inner layers of the human creature, where the values of the spirit have to come first, the intellectuals values at the second place and then the emotional ones; in order to, only then, examine the physical urges of the body – exactly the opposite scale of priorities that often prevails, in the material realm of life, in today ́s world.
Happiness is not easiness, or even the fulfillment of the ego and its ambitions (least of all, the sub-animal self and its compulsions). Happiness is the full realization of the vocation, of the ideal, of the spirit.
Happiness does not consist of a permanent pursuit of irresponsible, superficial, and physical pleasures. It cannot be found in the field of the sensations, not even of the emotions, only in the field of feelings. There is only happiness where there is heart. There is only happiness in the service, in solidarity, in altruism, in detachment, in spirituality.
There may even be conflict, difficulty and challenge, but never loss of peace, balance, and thoughtfulness, in the circuits of the true bliss.
From the wise Latin expression “Fe-licitas” (legitimate faith), it is inferred that one cannot live happily without pondering about God and about the personal relationship of commitment to Him/Her. The faith that does not lead to a state of joy cannot be genuine, representing a mere belief, with a permanent risk of decaying into fanaticism.
Happiness is not exactly a goal, but a state of mind, experienced by those that are focused on their purpose – of serving and living for Something Greater than themselves.
(Message received on March 09, 2009)