Everybody wants to be happy, hence the mad pursuit of happiness, right from the cradle to the grave. From a small child vying for your mother’s attention to the scheming old scrooge changing his will just before his last gap, to get even with his ungrateful family; and so much more in-between…
Each day of your life has one thing in common – pursuit of happiness. Whatever it takes, at all cost. For most, money will do it. For a few, love (till it’s lost) does it. These are the ingredients of your happiness; officially, at least. Deeply inside, you know the race never stops and the finishing line lies always beneath the horizon. Yet, you carry on year after year in the relentless pursuit of your happiness. In the process, you compromise yourself for the smallest gain, betray those you love stab in the back those you declare to be your friends, steal from the weak and cheat the naive. Some 50, 60 years later, the happiness is still as illusory as ever. As the last resort, you buy into spirituality and expect miracles…
It’s never too late for us all, although too late for many. For indeed only a miracle will deliver something that was missing from your life from the day you knew its name. And before you start thinking: “Why should I listen to this silly sermon, by some unknown spiritual preacher?” read what follows, and see how it explains why today you’re where you’re.

“The breathless impulse to obtain and possess in the political, social and intellectual fields, which is rummaging the apparent, unappeasable passion in the soul of the Westerner, is also spreading continuously in the East and threatens to bear consequences not yet to be overlooked. The externalisation-culture of the West can truly clear away many evils, the destruction of which seems to be very desirable and advantageous.
But, as experience has shown, this process is bought too dearly with a loss of spiritual culture. It is undoubtedly more comfortable to dwell in a well-ordered and hygienically furnished house, but that doesn’t answer the question as to who is the dweller in this house, and whether his soul enjoys a similar state of order and purity, that is, like that of the house serving for external life.”
Does this describe your reality? Have you been foolish enough to seek happiness out there, whilst neglecting your inner abode?

The quote above, and the one that follows, are both words of not some spiritual guru or a religious zealot. Quite the opposite. Their author is Carl G. Jung, famous psychiatrist and the founder of analytical psychology. He knew human nature probably better than anybody else. Listen to his words:
“Once man is set to the pursuit of external things, he is never satisfied, as experience shows, with the mere necessities of life, but always strives after more and more, which, true to his prejudices, he always seeks in external things. He forgets entirely that in spite of all external success inwardly he remains the same, and therefore complains of his poverty when he owns only one motor car instead of two as like others around him.
Certainly, the external life of man can bear many improvements and beautifications, but they lose their significance to the extent to which the inner man cannot keep up with them. The provision with all ‘necessities’ is, without doubt, a source of happiness which is not to be underestimated. But, above and beyond it, the inner man raises his claim, which cannot be satisfied by any external goods; and the less this voice is heard in the hunt for ‘the wonderful things’ of this world, the more the inner man becomes a source of inexplicable bad luck and ununderstandable unhappiness in the midst of conditions of life from which one would expect something quite different.
The externalization leads to incurable suffering, because nobody can understand how one could suffer because of one’s own nature. Nobody is surprised at his own insatiability, but looks upon it as his birthright; he does not realize that the one-sidedness of the diet of his soul ultimately leads to the most serious disturbances of balance. It is this which forms the illness of the Westerner, and he does not rest till he has infected the whole world with his greedy restlessness.”

Wherever you live, in the West or in the East, hopefully the message is clear for you. Now, you should realize why the things are the way they are, with your happiness. Will you change your ways? I sincerely hope so, but I’m rather sceptical. There are too many beautiful things out there beaming at you, waiting to be had. There are new experiences and new possessions to be added to your life’s “treasures”. But, the day will come when all those will amount to nothing. Just before the life force leaves you, you’ll realize that this is indeed the end; the whole notion of happiness will seem so foreign to you…
And only hope will remain for another chance, another life, one more go.
But will you get it? Meantime, before you resign yourself to the mercy of God you’ve never truly believed in, do the opposite to what you’ve always been doing: ignore all that’s out there, for now you see it for what it is – a life-long illusion. Turn inward, look inside of you, into your heart. YOU are there and your nature is bliss – the Self found!