Monday, Mar 29, 2010 This week’s Food for Thought – March 29, 2010

No matter what you are doing, keep the undercurrent of happiness, the secret river of joy, flowing beneath the sands of your various thoughts and the rocky soil of your hard trials.  Learn to be secretly happy within your heart in spite of all circumstances, and say to yourself:

“Happiness is the greatest divine birthright—the buried treasure of my soul.  Having found it at last, I shall be secretly rich beyond the dreams of kings.”

…The joyous rays of the soul can be perceived if you interiorize your attention.  This can be done by using your mind to enjoy the beautiful scenery of thoughts in the invisible, intangible kingdom within you.  Do not search for happiness only in beautiful clothes, clean houses, delicious dinners, and soft cushions and chairs.  These can imprison your happiness behind bars of externality. Rather, in the airplane of your interior visualization, glide over the vast tracts that comprise the limitless empire of thoughts.  There behold the mountain ranges of unbroken, lofty, spiritual aspirations.  If you have made up your mind to find joy within yourself, sooner or later you will find it.

The nemesis of darkness must be driven away by the burning light of smiles.  You must find joy in the warmth of your smiles melting away the frost of others’ gloom.  Wherever you go, you should build a big fire of smiles in the souls of men.

Learn to throw the light of joy into all hearts, so that they may burn away the darkness and find the light within themselves.  You should spread the fire of smiles; and those smiles should be saturated with the smile of God, which comes through right meditation.  Your smile should be the laughter of the gods—the echo of the Infinite.

—Paramahansa Yogananda