Sometimes I see books promising a happy, abundant life that seem kind of complicated to me. As we move into 2012 I offer a recipe for a happy life that is simple and straightforward — but which I guarantee works. I know it works because I’ve proven it in my own life, and I’ve seen its results in the lives of countless other people over the ages.

Just two ingredients — courage and compassion

There are only two ingredients for this recipe I’m going to share with you today, and they are courage and compassion. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this recipe is too simple to be any good. It actually requires considerable skill and attention to do it properly.

For example, it is important to make sure that you apply these two ingredients of courage and compassion in precisely the right proportion according to the need of the moment. One circumstance may be so gut-wrenching that it demands an immediate expression of courage on our part. Nothing else will do.

But then, as we all know, another moment may come along that doesn’t especially call for courage. It calls for a change of heart so that we can see another person’s point of view in a difficult situation. Or feel the pain of another person, or of nature — or our own pain – and act with new understanding and love.

 Personally, I think one of the hardest things in life is to be truly kind to ourselves. Let me remember the gift of compassion given freely to each of us at our birth, and if I am pushing myself too hard — as perhaps I am beginning to do right now — let me realize that and offer kindness and compassion into the situation so that balance is restored in my experience.

I have learned in nearly 80 years that these two virtues of courage and compassion are one. They are always together. They are the core of true character and we separate them — or attempt to separate them — at our peril. “A house divided cannot stand,” it was said long ago, and the words are as true today as they ever were.

I wish you success and joy as you meet the challenges and opportunities of the year to come. One of my own hopes or goals for 2012, by the way, is to get to know you better. What a pleasure this will be. Surely whoever we are, and wherever we live, we are all in this together.

PS JoAnn and I will be traveling south to the balmy (I hope) shores of Mexico for a few days this weekend. I will publish a new post after we return. Please know I love you and care for you and am delighted to hear from you anytime about anything.

If you enjoyed this post please share it with a friend.

Photo credit randomguru

How to make your life soar is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Do you believe in omens? I do, up to a point anyway.

I had just finished breakfast and decided it was time to go to work in my little office. As I got up from my chair I looked out the window and saw a beautiful little bunny sitting in front of the blue spruce tree outside our front door.

He (she?) looked so calm and contented. Of course, there was a ton of nice green grass around. No doubt another reason was that he felt safe — any sign of threat and he would be back under the blue spruce tree faster than a speeding meteor.

I thought to myself, “It’s going to be a lovely day and my post will go easily.”

Of course it’s not my intent here this morning to write about a bunny. I want to write about the seven gifts this loving universe gives to all of us when we come bawling and helpless into this world.

Perhaps we were not quite as weak and vulnerable as it may have seemed?

1. The gift of patience.

Patience not only makes it possible for us to bear the anguish and trauma of life. Patience also gives us the opportunity, if we will, to persevere — to follow our dream and discover who we truly are.

2. The gift of humility.

Where would we be without humility? Humility opens the door to wisdom and intuition. It makes it possible for us to change, and to grow. If we realize we have believed a lie, for example, or our attitude to someone was wrong — we can change. Humility makes it possible to find meaning and wholeness.

3. The gift of courage.

Courage is the vital creative power that makes it possible for us not only to meet the challenges of our lives but to follow our dream and embrace the unique gift we came into the world to give.

4. The gift of compassion.

Compassion is one of the most precious gifts this universe has to give. Compassion not only sees the pain of the world, but paradoxically sees the incredible beauty and oneness back of creation.

5. The gift of happiness.

The world has done a good job of convincing us that happiness is outside us and requires struggle and searching to be known.

But happiness was given us at birth. All we have to do is be still and remember our true inheritance – the authentic happiness that already exists at the core of our being.

6. The gift of freedom.

Nothing needs to change in your life or mine for us to be free. You can be free right now regardless of your circumstances and the truth is you are free right now as you surrender to the timeless presence of your own eternal Self.

7. The gift of love.

You are loved. The universe sees you, and admires you, and loves you, because you are part of Itself. 

The universe would not exist if you did not exist. Again, there has been a lot of brainwashing done over the centuries to convince us we are miserable sinners, alone and rejected in a barren, hostile world.  But don’t you believe it. 

The universe is kinder, wiser, and infinitely more loving than our mind could possibly begin to imagine.

The trouble is what our mind doesn’t understand it tends to see as alien and separate from itself.

We will never understand the universe, of course. But we can love it and respect it and be thankful for it. And in some moment when we are still — when our heart is open — we can feel its deep, unshakable love for us.

A special thanks 

I want to give a special thanks to my friend Larry Deane, owner of Empty Cabin Media, who designed the new look for my blog. I’m so happy with what he has done. Larry is one of the most friendly, helpful, knowledgeable people you could hope to meet in the vast ocean we call the internet.

That’s it folks. Gotta look outside my window and see if bunny is still there.

I send you love and greetings from this little corner of Colorado, and I hope you have a very good day — or a very good night, as the case may be.

PS. Please note my free e-book, The Wisdom of Serenity, is now available for download on this site. I sure hope you’ll take a look at it.

Let me know, won’t you, if you have any thoughts about the book, or about this post?

What do you think about the notion of a loving universe? What gifts has it given you?

Picture credit:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3331/3201242485_1963620a5e.jpg

The 7 gifts of a loving universe is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I was wandering around the living room this morning — not long out of bed — probably looking a bit lost — when JoAnn sang out, “You look like a man looking for a hug.”

What a brilliant lady she is. Of course. That was exactly what I was looking for — I just hadn’t realized it yet.

We have a ritual in this matter. I stand at the bottom of the stairs and JoAnn stands one step up so as to compensate for our difference in height.

It was a good hug. We took a little time with it. It not only got me in the flow of life’s goodness and generosity, shall I say, but it also got me thinking about the importance of hugs to our lives and overall well-being. As the author and therapist Leo Buscaglia once said, “Everybody needs a hug. It changes your metabolism.”

I remember very well one of my first hugs with JoAnn. We weren’t married yet, heck we weren’t even dating yet. We had been corresponding for a few months though, and had agreed I would fly down from Vancouver to Denver for a visit so that we could get to know each other better.

JoAnn met me at DIA and we walked to the parking lot where she had parked her car. But before getting into the car I succumbed to an urge that was impossible to deny, and took her in my arms. It was a hug that went on and on and on, and I must say — speaking for myself — that it made me feel my visit was off to a very auspicious beginning indeed.

There is much more to hugs than “romance,” of course. A hug can fill a void in a way that nothing else can.

One of the most precious hugs of my life came in the extraordinarily tender and indescribable moment that followed the physical passing of my first wife, Joy.

Joy had suffered a stroke on an airplane as we were returning to Vancouver from a holiday in the Caribbean, and was rushed to hospital in a coma. The doctor said there was nothing they could do, and it was simply a matter of waiting for the end. Joy was moved to a private room — where for two or three hours I kept a lonely vigil as her life slowly ebbed away.

The fateful moment arrived. Joy breathed her last breath. The wonderful Australian nurse turned to me and said, “God’s got her.” Then, opening her arms wide — she gave me a hug of pure compassion and love.

I’d like to end this post with an excerpt from an article entitled ‘Importance of Hugs in a Marriage,’ at www.theprofessorshouse.com.

“When the man of the house — the breadwinner — gets downsized by his company, he comes home, looks at his wife and says, ‘I could use a hug right now.’ Or when the wife commits a serious flop during her piano recital and breaks down crying, the husband instinctively puts his arms around her, holds her close and says, everything’s okay. It’s only a piano recital. Your playing was brilliant.

“In his article, ‘Have you hugged anyone lately?’ Parveen Chopra quotes family therapist Virginia Satir: ‘We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth.’”

What’s YOUR most memorable hug? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Ryan Hreljac was a 6-year-old first grader in a small Ontario town when he learned that there were people in Africa who didn’t have clean drinking water — and $70 would build a well that would give them that good water. Ryan began a campaign to raise the necessary money. Now, 10 years later, his message has reached around the globe and he continues to work towards his dream of clean water through the work of the Ryan’s Well Foundation at www.ryanswell.ca.

This remarkable story dramatically illustrates the potential that is in each one of us to make a radical difference in our world by reason of our presence.

However, what comes to my mind is that it is not only clean, pure water that is in such desperate need. There is also a critical need for truth itself — the symbol that water has so long represented for humankind.

Truth has something to do with love. It has something to do with integrity, and freedom. Truth is characterized by an open heart, fairness, and compassion and respect for others.

The debate that has been raging in the United States this summer about health care reform vividly underlines the great need there is for truth in our world. How sickening the lies and misinformation. How sickening the anger and even hatred revealed.

We cannot all be about the business of helping to provide clean water for people who lack this most essential of commodities.

But we can, if we will, do something about making some truth available — a continuous, dependable supply of purifying, life-giving, soul-saving truth.

We do not need to go anywhere. We do not need to wait for some future time, when perhaps the omens will be more propitious, or we will be more wise, or more holy.

We can drink at the well of truth any time. We can do it right now in this very moment — because truth is what we are, and when we are still, we sense the beautiful presence of that truth with us.

And we can reveal that truth in our everyday living, in our words, actions, and thoughts.

We can have an attitude of respect for other people, and for Nature, and for ourselves. We can be fair. We can allow a little bit of trust to come into the picture. We can stop seeing other people as demons.

As I say, probably the work that Ryan is doing won’t be for us. It won’t be for me, anyway.

But this is the beauty of truth. It will find its own form of expression in us if we let it – a form that is unique to each one of us.

Pure, clean water is essential to our survival. But Truth is essential to our survival also, let alone our happiness — and it flows ceaselessly from the eternal spring of our own being.

Water and truth — how much you are needed is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

How can you and I help America at this turbulent, critical time in her history, with the whole world dependent, in many ways, upon the course which this great nation takes?

I’ve been mulling this question over in my mind this morning after reading two very interesting stories in newspapers today. One story reports on a new Pew Research survey which finds that “The image of the United States has improved markedly in most parts of the world, reflecting global confidence in Barack Obama.”

The other story that caught my eye was very different in nature. It tells how six months after Obama’s inauguration, “A persistent and noisy legion of doubters won’t let go of an already debunked claim — that he is actually a foreign-born, illegal president.”

The AP story points out how the fears and lies surrounding Obama and his birth are being assisted and fanned by people like right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.

“I’ve stopped laughing,” New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis wrote. “Too many political and media leaders are deliberately fanning the flames of ignorance and fear, and they should be ashamed.”

People like Rush Limbaugh probably should be ashamed of themselves. They speak what is in their heart, and what is in their heart is not pretty. It is a destructive brew of prejudice, anger, and fear. But if I get upset by Rush Limbaugh, how does that help? It simply makes him stronger. He feeds not only on the energy of those who agree with him – he feeds on reaction too.

I am not here to feed Limbaugh’s ego.

The point is what can I do to help America? What can you do to help America?

We can offer the one thing America needs above all else at this time — the one thing our own lives need. And that is a calm, steadfast quality of character that is gentle, and yet strong. That spreads truth, not lies. That invokes compassion, not bigotry and hate. That reveals and propagates courage and wisdom and love, not anger and fear.

True character is trustworthy. It does not try to tear others down.

True character admits an error, a shortcoming, if it is revealed. It does not resist change, but welcomes it. And most importantly, true character is steadfast and calm in the midst of the emotional storms and distractions that break out in the world — or in our own lives.

Expressing the true character of our own timeless presence is our primary mission in this world.

People like Barack Obama, who are out on the front lines welcoming change and handling change the best they know how, obviously have a vital role to play in what is to unfold.

Much depends upon them.

But you and I have a vital role to play also. Much depends upon us, too.

“I am responsible,” says the voice of our own true character speaking from the depths of our own being.

How can you and I help America? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age