© 1995 Seppo Niskanen
© 1995 International Urantia Association (IUA)
| Mr. and Mrs. Zebedee — A Most Remarkable Couple | Journal — December 1995 — Index | “No Sects Please, We're British” |
By Seppo Niskanen
Helsinki, Finland
Finland is currently going through the annual season of chill and darkness. People are visibly depressed and irritable. This circumstance prompted me to devote a few thoughts to happiness and to ponder what true happiness maybe is. The URANTIA Book, among innumerable other items, discusses even this subject, and does it quite frequently. Here a small number of relevant quotes and some modest observations by me.
On health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. UB 100:4.3.
This sentence is truly very telling. Do we grasp what happiness is? Does happiness mean different things to different people? Is happiness the same as a sensation of bliss? Does love generate happiness? Does wealth come with happiness? Questions are many. Answers we have to find out on our own.
The quoted passage goes on: The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding. UB 100:4.3.
The same could be expressed also reversely: Your degree of happiness reveals whether you are spiritually progressing. Down here, in experientiality, we may determine whether we are on the right or on the wrong path depending on whether we feel happiness or not. Profound happiness is a permanent state of being; and I want to stress that it is a state, not an ephemeral, fleeting moment of exaltation. Progress is the keyword, not our momentary spirituality. Evolution is progress. We cannot stand still: we either progress, or we retrogress
Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort. UB 48:7.10.
If effort does not produce joy, we may be sure that we are on a wrong track, we are pursuing wrong motives. All effort does not result in success, but every effort performed under good motives, generates happiness. The most profound sentiment of happiness is felt after an intellectual (an why not, physical as well) effort. After a wellperformed effort and the resultant achievement we may observe that some growth has taken place.
Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others. UB 111:4.7.
Even if happiness wells up in our inner life, it requires that there be others around us for it to become manifest. Loving service and an observation that we are able to minister to our fellows, yield constant happiness. Should we depend only on the external stimuli for us to keep going, joy and happiness will always elude us. We can have only limited influence on external circumstances; and it often happens that the plans which we had devised in exploitation of other people’s actions become frustrated. Within ourselves there dwells the Thought Adjuster who never fails. The Adjuster guides us faithfully, if we choose to do the Father’s will. To live with other people is difficult and exacting for an individual as well as for nations, but in the absence of those others we would feel lonesome and unhappy. In co-operation there is strength, and it is a prerequisite of progress. Team work is most difficult, but ultimately, most rewarding.
The tamed mind yields happiness. UB 131:3.6.
This is one of Buddhism’s insights. No mere spiritual progress suffices for one to be happy. Mind, too, has to progress. We constitute one integral whole, where all components interact. Moreover, each of us is a part of a larger group, where again the components exert influence on one another. A calm, and “tamed” mind makes for an excellent instrument and is the source of progress. Calmness promotes a sense of security and peacefulness also in other people.
… the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness… UB 91:6.3
Prayer is an outstanding promotor of growth in various domains. A genuine prayer, as we remember, does not ask anything for the self; all supplications to God concern the welfare of others. It is doubly more difficult, and it requires the greatest effort—and consequently yields more happiness—if we pray for the welfare of those who have cruelly treated us. It often happens that we expect too much from others, and view them from our premises, and we then become frustrated and disappointed because our fellows fail to perform and behave in conformity with our expectations and norms. As we learn to know better other people, we learn about their motives, and, who knows, maybe we even learn to love them. It may even happen that we realize that who was wrong was us ourselves!
Being sensitive and responsive to human need creates genuine and lasting happiness… UB 140:5.16
Sensitivity and responsiveness create lasting happiness because they protect us from negative and selfish thoughts, and from egotism, ego-centricity. If we directionise our thoughts towards other people and seek to serve them, we have no chance of becoming worrisome about our own adversities. And it happens, not infrequently, that our own adversities then assume their proper dimensions, and we find that we are, after all, actually quite lucky.
The happy and effective person is motivated, not by fear of wrongdoing, but by love of right doing. UB 140:4.6. All too often we succumb to indecision whether we should do this or that, and if I do this that one feels offended, and if I do that, my excellence goes unnoticed. The way out is again to be positive: I want to do right, it is my will that God’s will be done. Happiness, then, is a by-product if my actions are righteously motivated. Happiness is, we might say, a reward for doing right, doing the will of the Father. The quest for happiness is not the purpose of our doing right. If our exclusive motivation is that of seeking our personal happiness and luck, it is bound to happen that we shall never get thereto. If we are motivated by a search for our fellow man’s happiness, there will come a moment when we find that we ourselves have found happiness.
| Mr. and Mrs. Zebedee — A Most Remarkable Couple | Journal — December 1995 — Index | “No Sects Please, We're British” |