How can you help people if you're already happy?

[Barna]

I want to express how happiness (while it's really pleasant) is irrelevant to having a deep unconditional love for Life itself.

From my perspective, happiness comes from your personal context (good career, loving relationships).

But if you want to feel love, you shouldn't focus on happiness, you should focus on loving Life unconditionally. But how can I say that to anyone when I already have a happy life? I can already hear people telling me "Sure, it's easy for you to love Life when you already have happy personal life...". 

How can you make people interested in spiritual values (like love) when they want to focus on personal context (like happiness)?

[Consilience]

Happiness is a fundamental quality of the spiritual path. Unconditional love is usually only possible once one begins to discover unconditional happiness. Further, the two are intimately linked, but how and why this is so is best to discover through direct experience. 

[Barna]

You are referring to a deeper happiness. What I meant is the superficial happiness of the ego. Originally I had wanted to call it "worldly success" but I didn't want to be perceived like I'm flexing 

[Barna]

17 hours ago, JoeVolcano said:

I'm not sure you can or should. Even as a truth seeker I never was the slightest bit interested in someone telling me to fall in love with life just the way it is. I was suffering too damn much, and not even because there was anything particularly wrong with my life. You don't tell someone like that to fall in love with it. They need to get cracking, not to get soothed.

You're are basically saying that people who have problems need personal trainers instead of spiritual masters. Is that what you wanted to express?

15 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

All you can really do is to live by example and inspire others to be the best versions of themselves. If someone doesn't want that path for themselves they can't be forced into it, but you can show them how beautifully effortless life can be, which might get their attention.

Yeah, I did exactly that. I lived my life, mindig my own business, expecting that people will notice how I live and how I relate so that I can lead by example. 

Now that I have a good life, I'm not relatable anymore because people can say "Sure, it's easy for you to love Life..." 

So I feel like I failed miserably in the "lead by example" process.

[axiom]

@Barna "living by example"... 

Life itself, in all its perfection, is already the example. Tying your happiness to material success is to build your house on quicksand. Would you still be a good example to others if your entire life went south due to mass bereavement, business failure, and the anger from all of this ended up consuming you?

Others are beyond help, just as you are. That is the true beauty of it.

You are not what you think you are.

[VeganAwake]

19 hours ago, DefinitelyNotARobot said:

@Barna It's because you still seem to cling to needing others to change. It's a big trap a lot of us fall into. The counterintuitive thing is that you first have to let go of trying to change others. Once you can fully accept a person with all their flaws they will experience some of that "love" you're talking about. Love is needed to open a person up. So instead of looking at it like you need to do something with them or to them (change them, convince them and even help them), you yourself have to open up to them FULLY and let them into your heart.

This is still no guarantee that it will work. Some people will be afraid of that kind of love. It will seem outlandish to them. And even if it does work it's not guaranteed to get a person to open up entirely and become open to spirituality. You might for example open a stage red person up to stage blue, but stage blue might then be their peak. That's something you'll learn how to do. I still struggle with it a lot, but when I pull it off I can see the power in this sort of love. It has the power to affect people on a very deep level. But again: This love needs to happen for its own sake, not because of the power it holds.

From my own experience, and you can tell me if it resonates with you, the reason I want to change people is because I fail to love their "darkness". It would be so easy to love others if they were perfect. The difficulty of loving others to me is a sign that I can still become more loving.

Edit:

I'm not saying that you can't try to help others at all, just that you have to open them up to a point where THEY will come to you asking for your advice. Once they connect to Love through the love that you share with them, they will come seeking it if that's what their hearts want.

❤