By prayer, I don't mean the endless repetition of a particular set of sentences or phrases until they seem almost meaningless. Prayer is a means of accepting our spiritual identity and seeing it transform our lives. As Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, explains in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love.''1 Since God is both Truth and Love - and all of us seek these qualities to at least some degree in our lives - a clearer understanding of Him and of His power can have a direct impact on all that we do. Instead of thinking of ourselves as material beings, striving to obtain material objects or relationships in order to be happy, we learn that we are completely spiritual, the sons and daughters of God. It involves a change in our outlook toward life.
It comes to us through prayer and has its roots within our understanding of God. There is, however, an effective approach - one that shows us how genuine happiness is possible. And however much we may try to tailor our needs and lives, we need genuine self-knowledge in order to bring permanent change and real happiness to our lives. Short-term efforts to ``program'' thinking or to fabricate a kind of happiness created by someone else won't enable us to understand our true selfhood. Even if it would seem to give us a lift, the change is temporary, and it also may become a way of covering our problems instead of solving them. Such artificial ``happiness'' tends to keep us thinking in material terms. We may lose our jobs, the car may break down, a relationship can turn sour.īut programmed happiness from tapes that act subliminally to tell us what good people we are isn't the answer either. But such happiness, if thought of in purely material terms, isn't permanent.
Often we think of happiness in terms of accomplishment, of relationships, or perhaps of obtaining a greatly desired object such as a house or car. This got me to thinking about what happiness is and where it comes from.
RECENTLY I saw a catalog that was offering to sell me happiness in the form of tapes that would instill subliminal messages into my consciousness.
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