Remember to lift up your eyes and so lift up your life. Your life is your attitude toward it. Life appears in guises, and it is for you to unmask it. Lift up the veil that has covered the face of your life. Your life is much more than its guise.
Your life, as you appraise it, is like veneer on a wood table. You see a thin sheet of wood, yet the real table that supports the surface is underneath. When it comes to life, the shiningest part is the underlay.
Or consider life like a table tiled in mosaic. So many colors, such intricate involvement of design, so many pieces presented. You can see the individual pieces. You can get stuck in looking at them. You can also see the whole design. It takes a little distance to see the whole layout. Your eyes have to focus differently.
So, in the matter of life, let your mind be conducive to focusing differently. Let your mind become like the sun that comes up over the horizon. Enlarge your horizon by rising higher. See the whole lay of the land.
The distance you need in order to see brings you closer to the core of life. You can look at an apple. You can eat the apple. The apple is the fruit of the whole tree. The tree exists as well as the apple. You can climb the tree. Your eyes can feast on all the apples of the tree. Climb the tree, and you will see the whole orchard. The orchard is yours.
The apple is the culmination of the tree. The tree is for the apple to grow on. We could say that you are the apple of the tree of life. You are in life to grow. You grow in understanding. Your perception grows. Your perception consolidates more pieces. You do not rearrange the tiles of the table. You rearrange your perception.
Whatever your view of life has been, there is another view.
When you are feeling happy, you have taken a view. Perhaps you received a great gift. You are happy because you like the gift you were given. It may even have been a surprise. It lit up your eyes. You may say that the gift itself made you happy, yet there has to be stream within you from which happiness comes. This stream is always there. It is always available to you. You have to avail yourself of it.
You may receive another gift that disappoints you. You may not even call it a gift. This gift or lack of a gift you structure as the assailant that makes you feel unhappy.
Happiness is not a veneer, beloveds. Do not wait for happiness to be handed to you. Dip your ladle in the stream of happiness that is yours. There are not two streams that run within you. You don’t have a stream of unhappiness within you. You have unhappy thoughts about your life.
You think life has to be just the way you want it for you to be happy. Not at all. Dependence upon outside events will guarantee only happiness short-lived. But the stream that runs within you is long-lived. It is an eternal stream that you dip into. Dip into it more. Spill the waters of happiness around you. Let this stream rise up within you. Let this stream bubble up like laughter. Let this stream overtake you. Waves of happiness form this inner stream will wash away the surface of perceived unhappiness in its wake.
Have you not had enough of unhappiness? Must you keep unhappiness to you? If you don’t want it, why hold on to it. Would you choose it over happiness?