Happiness Mirrors Happiness

All of us spend our lives in the pursuit of happiness, some of us more successfully than others. But what exactly are the essential components in the formula for achieving happiness?

It’s really a balancing act, and many of us as women in the twenty first century walk a tight rope, worrying whether the happiness that we find will elude us from one moment to the next. We carefully tread that fine line, strung between the demands of our career and the compromises of our marriage or partnership; between being mothers to our children and being daughters to our aging parents to whom some of us are becoming mothers as they age.

It’s about our frame of reference. It depends upon who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. It’s about who we grew up with, who we choose to spend our life with, who we choose as friends…who we mirror and who mirrors us. Have you ever looked in the three way mirror in a department store dressing room and noticed that there seem to be mirrors, upon mirrors, upon mirrors, going on seemingly to infinity? Isn’t it interesting the way the first mirrors create what seems to be an exponential increase of other mirrors? That’s the way that mirroring happiness works. Have you ever been in a bad mood and then stepped into an elevator and met someone who tells you they like your sandals or holds the door for you, and then felt a little uplifted by their brighter mood? That’s because they have mirrored happiness to you. Happiness can be contagious if you allow it.

It’s about expectations and accountability. Some of us expect to be happy and so we are. Others of us expect to be unhappy and attract unhappiness. When we expect others in our lives to make us happy or to bring us happiness, we often set ourselves up for failure because ultimately, it is solely up to us and how we frame it in our minds and in our hearts as to whether or not we successfully attract happiness.

Obviously, it would seem impossible to be happy all of the time, as life contains both yin and yang, lightness and darkness, ups and downs, good times and not so good times. If we never experienced the presence of darkness, we’d never know what light is. But the ancient people of India recognized over five thousand years ago that each of us contains sensory organs, or “chakras” that have a great deal to do with our sense of balance, peace, well being and happiness.

The word chakra is Sanskrit and means “wheel”. Many who are unfamiliar with the full meaning of the term dismiss chakras as being part of the “New Age” philosophy, or as spiritual mumbo jumbo. The truth is, however, that many notable scientists have studied chakra systems and have been able to prove using instrumentation that they are in fact a scientific phenomenon, measurable in light, color and sound. These chakras metabolize the energy around us and empower our sensations of groundedness, sexuality, connection to others, “gut” feelings, perceptions of well being, love, acceptance and our ability to interact with the world around us. They enable us to speak our truth, tell our story and share our version of reality with another. Chakras are portals to our longings and desires, our intuition and our connection to the Divine. When in balance, they spin clockwise, and are approximately six inches in diameter.

What does this mean for us in our pursuit of happiness? When we are not in a condition of balance, our chakras spin counterclockwise, and this wreaks havoc on our physical, mental and emotional states of being. It can lead to physical disease processes and problems with our organs and metabolism. We feel “out of whack” and we are. It is quite easy to realign, or rebalance our chakras in order to restore a feeling of balance and well being…and happiness. I urge you to explore and research this profound area of what I like to call “Happiness Maintenance”, as it is an area ripe with empowerment for each one of us… and the more of us that are happy can act as bright, shiny mirrors for the rest, lifting the morale and providing happiness, one person at a time!

© Cathleen R. Pratt 2008. All rights reserved.