Are you looking for a deeper fulfillment ?

SEARCHING FOR HAPPINESS by Gangaji (excerpt from The Diamond in Your Pocket)

I've just bought this book from Gangaji. I've already talked about her and her videos and audio clips available on www.gangaji.org and Google video.
Here is below an excerpt from "SEARCHING FOR HAPPINESS" in The Diamond in Your Pocket.

In the heart of every human being I have spoken with, I have seen a command to somehow find true happiness, true fulfillment. Sometimes this desire is even stronger than the instinct to survive. As you know from your own experience, the search for happiness can take many avenues. In instinctive ways, it can be a search for pleasure, comfort, security, or a search for some known position in the herd of humanity. Usually, when we have accomplished some level of success in terms of pleasure, comfort, security, and position, we recognize that none of it truly satisfies this deeper command, this deeper call for true happiness. We may have moments of beautiful revelation, and certainly moments of pleasure, yet usually underneath it all is the fear that we will never find permanent peace or true happiness. Or our fear of losing whatever peace and happiness we have attained causes a tightness and contraction as we constantly try to hold on. Usually we feel a deep distrust that peace and happiness are really possible.

Sometimes, in a blessed life, there arises the call of the spiritual search, the search for God, the search for truth. We recognize that the usual means "don't take care of this command." We put aside what we have called "mundane existence," and turn towards spiritual life.

Unfortunately, the same conditioning that directed the mundane life usually attempts to direct the spiritual search as well, and it then becomes a search for spiritual pleasure, spiritual comfort, spiritual knowledge, or spiritual security. Sooner or later, you have to become disillusioned with that search also. You find pleasure, obviously. You reach ecstatic realms. You feel secure when you sense that God or truth is present, and are comforted when you feel held by that presence. But until you recognize that you have never been separate from that, you will continually thrust to find it somewhere, to find God, based on the belief or the hope that God will give you happiness. This belief or hope is founded on a pretty infantile understanding of what God is-some thing, some force, some place that can deliver everlasting pleasure, comfort, and security to you.

I have discovered that it is actually impossible to find happiness. As long as you are seeking to find happiness "somewhere," you are overlooking where happiness is. As long as you are seeking to find God someplace else, you are overlooking the essential truth of God, which is omnipresence. When you seek to find happiness someplace else, you are overlooking your true nature, which is happiness. You are overlooking yourself.

I would like to offer you the invitation and the challenge to stop overlooking yourself, to simply, radically, and absolutely be still -to put aside, at least for a moment, all of your ideas of where God is, or where truth is, or where you are. Stop looking anywhere. Stop seeking. Simply be. I am not talking about being in a stupor, or going into a trance, but going deeper into the silence of your heart where the revelation of omnipresence can be revealed as your true nature. I am asking you to be still in pure presence. Not to create that, not even to invite it, but simply to recognize what is always here, who you always are, where God always is.

IN THIS MOMENT, HOWEVER YOU ARE SEARCHING, STOP. Whether you are searching for peace and happiness in a relationship, in a better job, or even in world peace, just for one moment stop absolutely. There is nothing wrong with these pursuits, but if you are engaging in them to get peace or to get happiness, you are overlooking the ground of peace that is already here. Once you discover this ground of peace, then whatever pursuits you engage in will be informed by your discovery. Then you will naturally bring what you have discovered to the world, to politics, to all your relationships.

This discovery has infinite, complex ramifications, but the essence of it is very simple. If you will stop all activity, just for one instant, even for one-tenth of a second, and simply be utterly still, you will recognize the inherent spaciousness of your being that is already happy and at peace with itself.

Because of our conditioning, we normally dismiss this ground of peace with an immediate, "Yes, but what about MY life? I have responsibilities. I need to keep busy. The absolute doesn't relate to my world, my existence." These conditioned thoughts just reinforce further conditioning. But if you will take a moment to recognize the peace that is already alive within you, you then actually have the choice to trust it in all your endeavors, in all your relationships, in every circumstance of your life. It doesn't mean that your life will be swept clean of conflicts, challenges, pain, or suffering. It means that you will have recognized a sanctuary where the truth of yourself is present, where the truth of God is present, regardless of the physical, mental, or emotional circumstances of your life.

This is an invitation into the core of your being. It is not about religion or lack of religion. It is not even about enlightenment or ignorance. It is about the truth of who you are, which is closer and deeper than anything that can be named.

In any moment, in a split second, there is the possibility of recognizing the boundless, limitless, eternal divine truth of yourself. Experiences of truth have been given different names by different spiritual cultures. Heaven, nirvana, resurrection, enlightenment, satori, samadhi -all are names pointing to this supreme, unnameable, divine beauty, empty of suffering and filled with grace.

The recognition of this truth is all that this book is about. If you can't hold a word of it in memory, then that's just right. My teacher told me that the truest teaching is like a bird flying across the sky: it leaves no tracks that can, be followed, yet its presence cannot be denied.