Eric Butterworth Speaks: Essays on Abundant Living #102
Delivered by Eric Butterworth on December 8, 1975
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May I ask you an impertinent question? Are you happy today? If you are not, then why aren’t you? Did you know that most of your happiness is self-generated?
Contrary to general theory, happiness does not depend on persons or things around you, but on what you radiate into the world around you and what takes place within you. Certainly, everyone appreciates the value of happiness. Happiness is not only a beautiful thing to see in others, but it is a marvelous experience in ourselves. How many of us enjoy watching the happy child, bubbling and running about enthusiastically with an ability to live and act spontaneously. “He is such a happy person.” This is just about as praiseful a comment as you can make about another.
Happiness might be defined as the instinctive consciousness of well-being. If we think about it, it is a pretty good sign that we do not really possess it. True happiness is something to be experienced actively. It is to be expressed and observed in terms in the way it determines our outlook and all that we think and do. Some of us kid ourselves that we would be happier if we had more money, or if we regained our health, or if we attained fame and applause, or if we married a particular person, or if we got the kind of job that we would like. When we think such thoughts, we are unconsciously emphasizing the need for change in our lives.
Jesus, you may recall, promised happiness to all persons when he said, “These things I have spoken unto you that your joy may be full.” Obviously it means that we can and must be happy even before we get the things. We have been putting the cart before the horse. We have underestimated the nature and true measure of happiness and put it in the wrong place. Jesus also said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added.” Many of us regard diversions, pleasures, and pleasant conditions as factors that make us happy and bring on bright and cheerful moods. Actually, these outer influences are undoubtedly desirable, but it is a fortunate time indeed when we discover that Jesus’ promises are not so limited.
One woman was sick and weighed down with a sense of responsibility she felt unable to meet. She was filled with trouble and discouragement, and she felt so limited and bound in every way. She wanted to have health in the worse kind of way; she wanted a sense of freedom, but she felt that she just didn’t know which way to turn. Then one day she read some words that startled her at first, “Until you are happy, you will not be healthy nor know a sense of freedom.” The words leapt out of the page at her. She had been studying truth, striving for greater faith, seeking desparately for a way out of her situation, looking for something to ease the burden of her enforced physical activity, for her restless temperment. But all of this stood in the way of her finding true peace and having true faith. Her world was tumbling down around her and inwardly she was a mass of questions, doubts, resentments, impatience—many unlovely torments which barred out all spiritual restoration.
At first she viewed somewhat ironically the words that compelled her attention. What in the world did she have to be happy about? How could she be happy before she was healthy or felt free? But the words wouldn’t leave her; they were burned constantly in her mental vision. So eventually she began to feel that they must have some kind of special message for her, and she decided to take some kind of action. Discounting her many troubles, she started out on the enterprise of trying to be happy. There were no startling developments, but her interest grew in this new game she was playing. Time passed, less burdensomely.
Gradually, it dawned on her that bound up somehow with the paramount issue of spiritual faith and material rewards was the equally important issue of just improving her disposition. Many persons would deny that their dispositions had anything to do with their happiness. Most of us would take the opposite stand; we may feel that health and the lack of happiness are among the multitude of things that make up our disposition. But this woman was wise in her discovery, and it dawned on her that this was the opportunity to improve some obvious defects of character. She had to learn to live more calmly, to see life more clearly in better proportions. She enjoyed her new game thoroughly and found that it tied in consistantly with the kind of lessons she had studied in Truth. As she normally tried to be more cheerful, more patient, more understanding, more forgiving of others, she was more full of joy.
It came to her that in her own heart and soul she had to feel something differently than she had ever felt before. She had to feel it before she had something to feel it about. It was to work from the inside out, not the outside in. So she changed her whole way of life as best she could. She began to act out the impressive suggestion, “Be happy.” Her changed inner trend, or changed attitude, became an important and brighter momentum that heightened her interests and quickened her inner processes so that something better, finer, and happier began to express.
This changing attitude brought about a change in her outer self, and before she knew it, she became a creature quite different from her former self. Not only did she feel happier, but she felt better in every way, stronger, kinder, more loving, more patient, surer of a good outcome, more confident and courageous, and more at peace. One day the thought came to her that it was the unseen power expressing itself through her in proportion that she could receive it, believe it, act it out in her inner most being. And it became manifest in her outer situations. Be happy, in other words. Such a wave of gratitude swept through her at this revelation, this picturing of Truth that she resolved from that time forward to accept the divine promises that met her needs, acting out the higher, finer possibilities of her whole nature. It is somewhat needless to say that happiness was established in the womans heart. And as it was, her health was no longer a problem, and never before had she experienced such a complete feeling of freedom. So she fulfilled the ideal, “When you are happy, then you will be healthy and free.”
We learn through spiritual principle that the creator is the divine law in action in us, the law that transcends and governs all external law, the law that operates through the universe, that attracts like unto like, and repels what is not like. If we want to experience good that is genuine and abiding, then in a way that I say so often, we must get into the flow of the creative process. Start being happy, start being harmonious, forgiving everybody in all adverse things, and invite universal love and goodwill to pour its blessings through you by tuning into it, by getting into its flow, letting it express through you. In this way you will attract your invisible good.
Just a little tip...a quick, sure way to start happiness working is an active principle of spreading it. Make someone else happy. Practice true forgiveness, practice love and good will, practice being accomodating and generous and doing good for other people. Be happy in whatever you do, in any chore or task, and you cultivate a frame of mind that entertains only the good, and you build up a defense against which no adversity or tragedy can prevail. Physical and material results will soon be in evidence. Be happy! And you can, for there is no limit to the vast reservoir of happiness and good that is sustaining you.
© 1975, by Eric Butterworth
