When you know true happiness, it’s something that isn’t temporary. It’s grounded in your real self — something that doesn’t fade. Life is full of fleeting and changing things, but there are things that don’t depend on the events of your life for their existence. There is a way to be happy without it depending on forces that appear outside your control.
It’s hard to just decide one day not to let things outside you have power over your state of mind. It’s hard to be happy “without a reason” because we are conditioned to believe the value of our lives depends on our possessions, relationships, and status in life. Stuff outside our minds. But this is how we achieve a happy soul.
It takes the cultivation of non-attachment to really find happiness. Actually, “happiness” may not even be the right word here. We could say it’s “bliss” or “inner stillness” instead.
When we identify our happiness with the state of the ego, we are giving up control. The ups and downs of life wreak havoc on the ego, causing great suffering and then happiness and then suffering again. From an ego level, there is simply no way to preserve happiness. It comes and it goes like waves.
The ego is concerned with this life, this role you’re playing, and the attachments of incarnation. It wants to create security with wealth, relationships, and material possessions — but these things are often unpredictable in the world. So, it’s a constant battle for the ego, and it gives in to constant fear. Happiness from the ego level is fleeting and hard to count on.
Living from a soul level means you see the good that is everlasting. You see the value in actions and choices that transcend this life or this moment. You may have experienced love once and it tragically ended, but from the soul level, you understand that the love will always be there because time isn’t real. Or, if you complete a soul mission in alignment with your soul purpose, it might not make you any money but it can add so much meaning to humanity as a whole. Perhaps you might even take some steps in the direction of enlightenment, which can give you great soul happiness even if it gets you no material possessions.
Let’s explore some of the ways soul happiness is different from ego happiness.
Achieving or Aligning With a Life Purpose
One way to connect with the soul is to identify and live by your soul’s purpose. The ego will try to replace the soul’s purpose with other purposes related to building walls of security as I mentioned earlier. It will try to make you think your purpose is to be a banker or a gambler or an account executive. Whatever offers security, the ego will run toward. And it will distract you from what you’re really meant to be doing here.
Just being in alignment with what you’re meant to be doing makes a huge difference.
Aligning with your soul purpose can be hard because you must get rid of all the clutter of the ego’s false purposes and find out what really thrills you here on Earth. And then you have to figure out how to achieve it. Once you’re in alignment, you’ll be happy, even if you haven’t achieved it yet. You may die before you manage it! But you’ll die happy. That’s because your soul will feel fulfilled.
Finding True Love
Love is of paramount importance in the universe. Fear is a separator and a destroyer. Love is the creator. You can find love with another human being, with yourself, or with all of creation. Once you do any of these things, you will be really happy.
Any expression of pure love is coming straight from the source of the divine.
The ego will try to pull you away from the soul’s level of love and the happiness derived from it. It will try to tell you that love is when you’re secure, satisfying others, and someone is showing you attention and affection. But that’s not love. Love starts within and it allows you to open your heart. The soul knows that love doesn’t depend on outside forces. You don’t need someone else to love you for you to be worthy of love. You need to prove nothing. All you have to do is cultivate the true love that always resided within you.
Releasing Expectations of Outcomes
One of the greatest things you can do — and which will infuriate the ego — is to release attachments. Stop expecting things to go a certain way, because then there’s no gamble involved. You can’t be disappointed or happy. You will just feel good no matter what happens in your life.
Stop feeling entitled to things happening as you envisioned. Life never ends up the way we thought it would. Literally never.
And time doesn’t matter, because time isn’t real. So, whatever has come to pass and whatever will come should be equal in your perspective of life. Loss shouldn’t be able to touch you.
Stop trying to predict the future. Stop being scared of the future — that’s what the ego wants.
Stop asking for answers about what’s going to happen to you. Many spiritual people, including myself, feel fear in their egos that make them want to ask psychics for answers about the future. We want to be prepared. We want to know how to act. But what if we just released the need to know? What if we just lived in the moment instead?
You can be happy from a soul level when you are just grateful to be alive and you don’t care how things unfold. This is the hardest thing to do, but it is stepping in the direction of enlightenment and it will bring about bliss from the soul level. Be a happy soul.
