I think the problem with us is that we are looking for happiness and peace in all the wrong places. We seek satisfaction where we may never find it because we do not even understand what it is that we truly desire. We misplace one thing for another. When we say we want something we actually mean that we need it and even that thing is mistaken for another thing entirely. It is a problem when we communicate things wrongly, whether to ourselves or to others.
We may not find happiness outside us. First, what we should seek is joy. When we accept the whole Truth and begin to live the Truth, we accept and receive God. Then we have joy as part of the package of the Truth that we have received because joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Joy is not Happiness. Though they are both spirits, being classed emotions, they are attracted and influenced from two different sources. The majority of us do seek happiness when we should actually seek joy.
While joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, happiness is tied to some carnal gratification: New car, new job, new house, new promotion in your job, and some other new acquisitions. Soon those things wear out. The satisfaction we derive from them fizzles out. Our connection to them wanes as time goes by and we only realise that they do not truly satisfy us because they do not endure. They are only for a season or some moment. Joy abides with you as much as the life within you endures and goes beyond. Joy is a portion of life eternal.
We are too fixated on job, on business, on those earthly and carnal gratifications. We wake up and rush to work. We close from work and rush back home. In between we are caught up in senseless traffic. We seek promotion and so we enroll in endless certification programmes. These things are good but they never endure, and so if you let them hold the ace to what you term personal fulfillment relative to your relationship with Life, you have missed the mark.
Do not lose your joy in search of happiness. This is the reality that stares many of us in the face. A friend who is a counsellor in an academic system wants to leave her job to manage a superstore for someone and she sought my opinion about the decision she was about to make. I said it is not about what I think. I cannot decide for you. You have to know exactly how it is within you. If you feel led that way because of the inclination within you, then you are good to go. The decision is yours. If you are driven by the pecuniary, you know what it is and how it is with you. I am not the one to decide that for you unless, of course, I have a sure word of knowledge for you. And this, I do not have at the moment.
I continued that, 'If you go that way and hit a brick wall, you would evaluate yourself and your experience better, no matter how cruel it is. But if someone nudged you, even if it is more of good and just a little hitch, you would blame that person for that little hitch.' It is the same way when someone points a female to a male or a male to a female for marriage. Matchmaking can be risky not because it is bad but people always pass the buck if they have a problem. People always look for who to blame for their mistakes. Blaming others for our errors is a sign of our weak personality and poor character strength.
Each of us has to find his or her own way. It may be gruelling and enervating but you will find rest in there because you build character through that process of growth. A successful egg is the one that the chic cracks from within. It is never the one that receives support from the external. Nature is not wired that way. You are strong from within and not from without, though arrows aimed at you from the external may help to toughen you if you handle it with discretion.
When people say they have lost hope, in what have they lost hope? What have they separated from and what have they joined themselves to? The God we speak of is a Spirit. He is the written and spoken Word. The spoken words can never conflict with the written one and the spoken preceded the written. There must be alignment and many times we make God say to us what He has not said. We do have a problem with waiting after we have asked. We want it instantly because of what is happening around us. We are driven by comparisons with others oblivious of the seeds we are carrying.
Talking about the seeds we carry. While some persons carry corn seeds, some others bear yam setts, some others are carrying cocoa seeds and some are bearing walnut seeds. Yet, some have pawpaw and some mango seeds. The problem is that we do not pay attention to the seeds we are carrying so we are mired in the game of comparison. We forget that the gestational periods are different. Self-awareness is an uncanny power that gives us rest as we push towards self-actualization.
A young girl feels that when she connects with a young guy, she will be fine, but as soon as she does, she offers herself to him. By doing that she puts the cart before the horse. The question is: What was the purpose of the engagement in the first place? Why did the two of them come together? You are more than biology. You need to consult within you to both seek and establish the purpose for everything you do. And funny enough she is going to go on to another guy and he will go on to another girl and the cycle is repeated over and over. And through it all, lessons are hardly ever learned.
Young boys and girls age to become grown adults having such undefined and unfinished hook-ups and they do not fully disengage because blood have been mixed and spirits have been involved and those things never go away. You become a part of him just as he becomes a part of you and both of you are parts of many others like that. Travel with that thought a moment. As young people grow, the program within them runs and updates, and unless something happens to cause a shift, it will run them to a disastrous end.
These things continue for a long time and you have different personalities within one person. The problem is that man [the human] is ignorant of who he is and the power he or she carries which he or she abuses to high levels of demonology. We demonise ourselves by the things we do and we drift farther away each time from the image of the Maker in whose likeness we are made.
What the problem is, is that we forget that we are spirit. We were made spirit before we got flesh. We still are spirit. But the problem is that we sow more to the flesh by living sensually more than we sow to the spirit and though we sow to the flesh more than the spirit, we seek to reap bountifully of the spirit. And to what spirit do we sow and invest? What seed are you carrying?
It is the same thing with our thoughts about life being short. I do think otherwise because the problem we have is that we waste our time doing all the wrong things and we never get to do what we are called to do. Because we waste time on the wrong things, we think that life is short when we actually invested wrongly. This is the problem. If we live our purpose by connecting with and developing our talents and the right skills that align with our talents, serving diligently with it, we should find fulfillment and accomplishments in the right purpose. If we miss out on this, we have a problem.
We must learn to grow strength from adversity and disappointments. This is what makes life what it is. We are toughened by the painful and difficult experiences we encounter daily. The problem is that we are wired differently from wrong parenting, upbringing and indoctrination. We therefore invest in all the wrong things that attract the wrong outcomes and we hardly ever learn. We know because we are often plunged into the repeat mode. This is the problem.
Some things are hard for us. In our finite minds, some things may not seem like they are the best for us, but when we view our situations with the mirror of the Infinite Mind, we should see that life holds much more than we ever imagined. Nothing could have been better. This is the problem for us many times. We can live life better if we can look at the unseen and accept its tutelage.
To overcome these problems we do need to accept the Truth and walk in the Way which is the Light unto our path as we navigate through these paths. It is Life. We need to drink from the Cup of Charity, the Cup from which flows the fountain of Living Waters. This is the solution to the problem.
