New Life #320 – Happiness and Sadness
Dr. Michael Laitman in conversation with Oren Levi and Yael Leshed-Harel

Summary

What is the special state of happiness, how is the feeling of sadness shown in a person, how does this relate to one’s development, and is it possible to constantly feel happiness?

Happiness: the result from satisfaction from a certain passion I felt. The bigger the deficiency was, the bigger the happiness will be.

Conditions for happiness: 1) I lack something, 2) I attain that thing, and 3) the ability to express happiness in attaining it.

Anything makes a small child happy. In this way nature pushes him to develop. An adult always feel lack and sadness. If I look at the people I love, like my children, when something good happens to them, I’m happy. But usually I’m surrounded by people that I have no urge to indulge. “When they feel good, then I feel bad.”

The media bombs us with advertisements that aim at giving us the constant feeling of deficiency. Do you want to be happy? “Then buy this product, and also this one, and that one….”

On the street, we are surrounded by unhappy people, tense people. On the road everyone pressures you. It is like this everywhere… What do you do? We have already become used to not being happy. Today from an early age children are under pressure and tension.

Joy brings expansion and eruption; sadness leads to convergence and contraction

In the past, both culture and sports made people happy. Today, for example, football results are manipulated, life is plastic.

Happiness is the completion of the soul, the sages said referring to happiness from attaining the essence of life. Why are we commanded to be happy? Because if I’m not happy, then it’s a sign that I am not, at present, living correctly. Why is it important to please others? Because worrying about myself brings sadness and worrying about others brings happiness. People who direct their lives to attaining perfection, see everything that happens to them as a means for advancement.

Today there all kinds of methods of how to be happy, but they are like applying a band-aid instead of doing a root canal. The real solution is to find the source of life, where all the pressures come from, in order to bring me closer to discovery. Life is one big game in which we are required to solve the riddle of existence. This is the big goal.

Happiness for the ego: my ego requires me to be higher than others. Thus when others fail, I’m happy.

The solution for happiness is simple: develop feeling for others as if they were my relatives.

10% of people naturally feel others as close to them. The other 90% need to develop this attitude toward others. Today it is a must because our world is becoming increasingly connected, we are all dependent on each other. If we develop a concern for the welfare of others, it will immediately fill us. And when we are as one body, all of us will be healed.

Envying others destroys me, I am constantly feeling deficiency, I eat myself.

How have the Jewish people suffered so much yet preserved happiness? Survival and vision: “light unto the nations.” Today, the Israeli society needs to connect, reach happiness, and promote this to the world.Through the connection between us, we will discover the secret of life. This will bring us true happiness and complete joy.
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From KabTV’s “New Life #320 – Happiness and Sadness ,” 3/18/14

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