Happiness in the relative world is a habit. Unhappiness is as well. It is a habit of mind, a habit of thought. Habits can be recreated.
Unhappiness is not a state of Being, beloveds. Unhappiness is utterly opposed to Being, beloveds.
Consider unhappiness a habit like nail-biting. You can stop biting your nails. In the same way, you can stop telling yourself that you are unhappy. Sense of unhappiness is an aberration. You don't need it.
This is not a question of talking yourself into happiness. Once you stop feeling unhappy, happiness will take over. I mean happiness as an evenness. Happiness will just be there. It won't be overtaken by or covered up with unhappiness any longer.
When something untoward happens, it makes you unhappy, troubled, worried. At the time, that seems to be the only way to feel. But who says so? Who says an event has to take away your state of Being called happiness? Perhaps you have thought of happiness as being overjoyed. You don't have to be overjoyed in order to be happy. Plain old steady happiness is good enough. It is very good indeed.
Notice your joy. Put the attention on it that you used to put on unhappiness. Haven't you turned unhappiness every which way? Haven't you dissected it and given all the reasons why you can only feel unhappy? And yet later happiness returns, even when the seeming cause of unhappiness hasn't gone away.
Beloveds, get used to happiness, nice easy happiness that stays with you like a loyal friend who stands beside you even in trouble. If you lose your money, your friend stays with you. Your friend doesn't come and go. Your friend has declared his friendship, and so it is. No matter what, your friend stays with you.
Cannot happiness be such a friend?
I am telling you that happiness can be such a loyal friend. It's you who forgets your friend happiness. You must think you can't have him. Happiness is perfectly happy to stay with you.
Yet you say, "How can I possibly be happy when I lost my job, I lost my house."
I say you can be happy when you have lost your job and you have lost your house. It's easy. All you have to do is think of what you have and what you can do and what you will find.
It really really isn't what happens that makes you unhappy. It is what you tell yourself that what has happened means. You interpret in a way that can only make you bring unhappiness front row center.
Losing your job is one thing. Maybe you didn't want it anyway. Nevertheless, the fact that you no longer have your job doesn't mean all the other things you may think it means. It doesn't mean you will never find another. It doesn't mean you are a failure. Even if you were fired, it doesn't mean you're a failure. What have you failed, beloveds? You can't fail life. You're not infallible, yet you cannot fail life.
Stick with the words. Stick with the facts. You lost your job. You don't have it anymore. That's all you know. That's all it means.
If your house has been foreclosed, your house has been foreclosed. Now you will lay your head down somewhere else to sleep.
A lot of what distresses you is ego-related, beloveds. It is status.
What if, to the world, losing your house, your job, was a desirable thing, how might you feel then? If it were desirable, everybody would want to be in your shoes. What if such loss made you like a star, how unhappy would you feel then?