Posts tagged ‘gratitude’

We Are All Beggars Until We Begin To Look Inward

This post is part of The Awakened Heart Project

Week 20: We Are All Beggars Until We Begin To Look Inward 

“Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.”

~ Henry Van Dyke

The External World Keeps Us Disconnected  

With all of the external stimulation we have at our constant disposal in today’s world, it has become difficult to spend any time, consciously stimulating our inner self. We spend time watching television, sitting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, (“googling” to our hearts content), reading on our computers or ereaders, watching movies, texting, emailing, shopping, -buying our way to happiness, building our ideal happiness on Pinterest…I could go on forever, but I wont.

It’s not hard to see that we’ve created a very external world where introspection is perhaps a rarity; where searching for happiness and inner peace are found outwardly. The problem with this is that happiness and inner peace CANNOT be found outwardly. The attempts we make to do this fail, -clearly they fail, or we wouldn’t be consuming as much as we consume. We wouldn’t be spending so much time disconnected from ourselves as we do.

We all want happiness, but we don’t understand how to get it. We spend our days in constant pursuit of happiness but never find it. We ask ourselves, “What will make me happy?” But we usually end up concluding that external items will answer this question. We think, maybe I need a new car; If only I weren’t single; If only I had more money; if I buy this, I’ll be happy. We also spend our days blaming our unhappiness on Read more