Mass Density

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How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong, because someday in your life, you will have been all of these.

George Washington Carver

A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.

Lisa Kirk

A marriage is like a long trip in a tiny rowboat: If one passenger starts to rock the boat, the other has to steady it; otherwise, they will go to the bottom together.

David Reuben

Warmth, kindness, and friendship are the most yearned for commodities in the world. The person who can provide them will never be lonely.

Ann Landers

Our worst fault is our preoccupation with the faults of others.

Kahlil Gibran

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True happiness is such a rare commodity that the whole of the world is continuously seeking it and failing to find it. All the people, who we consider to be the best in their fields, are seeking it too and failing to acquire it. The most brilliant of the scientists, the most gifted of artists, the most talented of poets and authors, the wealthiest businessmen, the most powerful rulers, the greatest achievers in any field - all of them have been striving for it all their lives and failed to have it. Why is happiness such an elusive thing? Is it that it cannot simply be achieved? Or is it that it is not where all of us have been looking for it?

If you pause to give it a thought it is very easy to see that somehow we have all been missing the point. It is either that we have all been looking for happiness at the wrong places or that it is simply not possible to achieve happiness. The answer is not very easy. But it is obvious that if the whole of the humanity has been trying to find something throughout the history and failing to acquire it then something must be very wrong about the concept we have of happiness.

Let us try to delve a bit deeper. What is it that we consider happiness? This is how I see it:

Happiness is what you feel when what you want to happen happens.

And if this definition of happiness is correct then we can conclude that unhappiness is what we feel when what we want to happen does not happen.

These definitions look obvious enough but for the most of the people they are not. At least not so clearly defined in their minds. It would therefore be better if we stop to ponder over these definitions.

How can we achieve happiness?

We must realize that for most of the problems, the solutions are often simple and obvious enough if one understands the problem clearly. Even more surprising is the fact that the solutions mostly lie in the problem itself. It is true in the case of happiness too.

Let us consider the above definition carefully. The main keyword in the definition is “want”. The whole trouble starts when we want something. Every moment of our lives we keep on wanting something or the other. If we could make a list of all the things we want in our lives since childhood to death, including trivial as well as very important, all the paper in the world perhaps would not be enough for this purpose. Only a small percentage of all our wishes is fulfilled in spite of all our endeavours. The percentage of wishes, which remain unfulfilled, keeps on growing with time. As a result, as we grow older, we become more and more unhappy. We grow tired of life. The blessings, which our lives and the whole existence keep showering upon us, gradually lose their charm. The frustration, of failing to fulfill most of our wishes, sets in. We start feeling weighed down. The feeling that the whole life is somehow conspiring to keep us unhappy grows. Life becomes full of miseries. We keep stumbling from one failure to another.

The solution, then is very obvious. We must explore the possibility of a life of no desires or minimum desires. Desire is a seed which grows fruits of unhappiness. Actually the trouble is that we demand too much. We keep on demanding incessantly. It seems that we do nothing else but keep producing desires and then keep struggling to fulfill them. The only solution to this problem is to break out of this cycle of desires and struggles. If one does not desire anything, he has no chance of getting unhappy due to failure in fulfilling his desire.

One may argue that a life of no desires will be bereft of pleasures. That it will become colourless and dull. But this premise is not true.

Firstly, we must realize that the world does not and cannot function as per our whims and fancies. We are too insignificant in the scheme of the existence. We can have control only over our desires and not on the factors necessary to fulfill them. During winter, we may desire that the sun shines a bit more in the sky but sun has no obligation to behave as per our desires. We may desire that every other human being around us acts in such a way that his acts do not hurt us at all and only make us happy, but the other person has his own desires and compulsions and he will act accordingly. We may desire that whenever we ask for something we get it, but the person or the force who has the power to grant our wishes may not wish to do so or may not be able to do so because of his or its own compulsions. Are we ourselves always willing or able to fulfill the demands of others around us? If not, then how can we hope that our demands must always be fulfilled. In fact if we pause to consider it carefully then it will become obvious that there always is more probability of our desires not getting fulfilled. Then why keep desiring constantly and exposing ourselves to unhappiness?

Secondly, it is a blunder on our part that we consider happiness and pleasure to be the same. They are not same. Pleasure is there all around us for the taking. Since we have become obsessed with our desires we have ceased to notice sources of pleasure and as a consequence fail to grab it when it is available. Pleasure is the essence which we extract from things we have. We may desire to visit the most beautiful sea beach in the world. When we are finally able to make it to that beach we feel happy. This happiness is the consequence of the fulfillment of our desire. But when we look at the waves rushing towards us, at the golden sand spread over a large area, the wind on our faces, the riot of colours in the sky while sun is setting or rising, the feel of sea water on our skin, what we feel is pleasure. To derive pleasure it is not at all necessary to desire. When we pass along the green fields while traveling, we do feel pleasure looking at them though we had not specifically “desired” to see them. When we look at anything beautiful we feel pleasure. Pleasure is always around us without our asking for it. It is not a consequence of our ambitions and endeavors. It is simply waiting all around for us to pause and pay attention. It is only that we are always so obsessed with our desires and wishes and the struggle to fulfill them that we have forgotten how to pleasure ourselves. Almost all of the time we live inside our minds, either making plans to fulfill our present desires or ruing the desires which could not be fulfilled and in this process miss out all the pleasures lying all around us.

Thirdly, We do derive pleasure when our desires are fulfilled but for every desire fulfilled there are numerous others that remain unfulfilled. We have to consider carefully whether we are not paying too high a price, in terms of all the frustrations we experience as a result of failures, for a few fulfilled desires. If the answer is yes, then the conclusion is obvious.

Actually, happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. They are part of the same package. If one asks for one he leaves him susceptible to the other. The desire for happiness is like asking only for the light and not for darkness. But there is not much difference between light and darkness. It is matter of degree only. We choose and therefore get disappointed. What we should do is only look for the pleasures all around us. Whatever comes our way we should try to extract all the pleasure possible from it.

If we delve still deeper, we will realize that it is not really happiness which we should seek. We should try to avoid unhappiness. When we achieve something, the payoff is not as great as the pain we suffer if we fail to achieve it. It is this pain of failure, pain of frustrated desires which is of greater significance to us. It is actually like good health. One can only define health as an absence of diseases. In order to have good health we strive to avoid diseases. You cannot purchase or achieve good health directly. You have to take steps which keep your body free of diseases. Then only the organs of body keep functioning properly and you experience good health. Similarly, when one destroys the root cause of unhappiness the problems are over. And the root cause of all our unhappiness is DESIRE.

If one can stop desiring, if one can take life as it comes, Then only one can be free of unhappiness.

About the Author:
Ashok Kumar Gupta is a working engineer by profession, a programmer by hobby and a thinker by nature. He is the webmaster of http://www.akgupta.com/

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What leads to disappointing experiences in your life? Probably when things didn’t work out the way you wanted them to. Since the sixties we know already that we are our own creators. If we are - why doesn’t all our creations manifest? How come there is still a tremendous amount of suffering in the world? How is it possible that people can’t get rid of illness and diseases. Why would someone create a divorce or a bankruptcy or just being depressed?

Questions most of us have asked more than once…I guess.

Just look in your favorite bookstore and see how many books are written about topics similar to ‘how to get rich quick’, ‘getting things done my way’ and ‘you can do it’. I have even seen a bookstore that covers nothing else than self improvement books!

Can quantum physics shine some light on this precious topic?

Let start with the premise that we have free will. If we have free will then we can manifest whatever we want. It would only be limited by our own thoughts, beliefs, and concepts.

If you would make a broad study on how successful people are with their manifestations, you may find out that people tend to rate their successes by more than 50% and their failures by less than 50%. Now, if you take in consideration that most people are more identified with their successes then with their failures, the reality of the outcome is probably close to 50/50. That seems almost random to me!

On a personal level, we can almost say instantly why some things worked out and others did not. We are pretty good in ‘making up’ reasons for the outcome of our actions.

Now, what if I am telling you that the reasons you made up are just illusions!

If you investigate deep enough you will never know why things work out or not. Reasons lead to your own concepts about the world. If you go far enough backward you end up with blaming the ‘Big Bang’ for the ultimate reason. You think this is exaggerated - try it!

However, we like illusions so much that we believe in them as they satisfy our minds.

What Exactly Happens on a Quantum Level?

Fascinating studies have been conducted by Benjamin Libet. Libet’s experiments reveal a substantial delay - the “mind time” - before any awareness affects how we view our mental activities. The conclusion of his work is that unconscious processes initiate our conscious experiences. Freely voluntary acts are found to be initiated unconsciously before an awareness of wanting to act - a discovery with profound ramifications for our understanding of free will.

You may want to read this last paragraph again…

I like the example of how Fred Alan Wolf explains this study further. Just imagine, you are sitting on top of an elephant. The elephant is your subconscious and you are sitting on top (that’s your ego). Now, you want the elephant to go left? You touch the left ear and the elephant goes left. It would be great if it works like this every time… but it doesn’t. Sometimes, the elephant just goes in the other direction and thats what we call a failure!

Welcome to the World of Illusion!

In reality your subconscious is constantly collapsing wave functions. Waves are simply random possibilities of what can happen. The moment a wave is collapsed, it is no longer a wave, it then becomes a particle. Particles are what we call reality in space & time. This is the famous wave particle problem that gave most scientists grey hairs.

The amount of randomness is determined by your concepts. The concepts are setting the borders of your play field. Are you playing with one dice? Then the number can only be between 1 and 6. Are you playing on a larger scale with two dices then the number can be between 36 possibilities.

Here is a more practical example. You want a new car, it should be red, under $20,000 including a 6 year guarantee. These are the concepts and the possibilities you make up with your mind (ego). However, there are additional concepts in your subconscious. For example, your neighbor drives a new Mercedes and somehow that information sinks deep in your subconscious. Your subconscious has also stored the experience of all the other cars you previously owned. You see that the possibilities of what can manifest in reality is getting more complex.

Back to our example and what happens on a quantum level. The elephant gives you a ‘telepathic’ sign that it wants to go left. Because of that ‘you decide’ that you want to go left and therefore tap the left ear… VWOLA! The elephant goes left.

So where does this all leaves us with our free will?

It is very simple, but also very challenging to put this knowledge into our ‘daily’ lives. Quantum physics and science finally proves what most religious people since hundreds of years have already told us. The ego is an illusion and only through practicing silence can you expand beyond the daily illusions and experience where your true power is and comes from.

Speaking of power - this is unlimited power versus force, which you need constantly to keep the illusion of your ego alive. That’s why a lot of people are constantly in stress and have no energy.

At one point in your life you are faced with an experience over which you have no control. Maybe an accident, a disease or a bankruptcy. You can resist this experience or you can surrender to it. Resisting means denying your own creation. Surrendering means you are finally listening to your true self instead of some beliefs or concepts you have adapted from society or someone else.

At this point, decide if you want to ‘improve’ your ego or if you want to connect with your true power. From my experience this is the only decision you can make and the only instance were you have free will.

Quantum physics is… in its core foundation… so simple that even most scientist cannot grasp its implications yet (myself included).

About the Author
Thomas Herold is the founder and CEO of Quantum Biocommunication Technology. A website dedicated to the exploration of quantum physics related to consciousness and biocommunication. For more information visit: Quantum Biocommunication Technology

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be motivated to achievement by such a lofty goal as benevolence? I must confess, however, that in the early years of my struggle to succeed, my motivation was a lot more down-to-earth. My reason for succeeding was more basic. In fact, it fell into the category of what I like to call “nitty-gritty reasons.” A nitty-gritty reason is the kind that any one of us can have — at any time, on any day — and it can cause our lives to change. Let me tell you what happened to me . . .

Shortly before I met Mr. Schoaff, I was lounging at home one day when I heard a knock at the door. It was a timid, hesitant knock. When I opened the door I looked down to see a pair of big brown eyes staring up at me. There stood a frail little girl of about ten. She told me, with all the courage and determination her little heart could muster, that she was selling Girl Scout cookies. It was a masterful presentation — several flavors, a special deal, and only two dollars per box. How could anyone refuse? Finally, with a big smile and ever-so politely, she asked me to buy. And I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to!

Except for one thing. I didn’t have two dollars! Boy, was I embarrassed! Here I was — a father, had been to college, was gainfully employed — and yet I didn’t have two dollars to my name.

Naturally I couldn’t tell this to the little girl with the big brown eyes. So I did the next best thing. I lied to her. I said, “Thanks, but I’ve already bought Girl Scout cookies this year. And I’ve still got plenty stacked in the house.”

Now that simply wasn’t true. But it was the only thing I could think of to get me off the hook. And it did. The little girl said, “That’s okay, sir. Thank you very much.” And with that she turned around and went on her way.

I stared after her for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, I closed the door behind me and, leaning my back to it, cried out, “I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’ve had it with being broke, and I’ve had it with lying. I’ll never be embarrassed again by not having any money in my pocket.” That day I promised myself to earn enough to always have several hundred dollars in my pocket at all times.

This is what I mean by a nitty-gritty reason. It may not win me any prize for greatness, but it was enough to have a permanent effect on the rest of my life.

My Girl-Scout-cookie story does have a happy ending. Several years later, as I was walking out of my bank where I had just made a hefty deposit and was crossing the street to get into my car, I saw two little girls who were selling candy for some girls’ organization. One of them approached me, saying, “Mister, would you like to buy some candy?”

“I probably would,” I said playfully. “What kind of candy do you have?” “It’s almond roca.” “Almond roca. That’s my favorite. How much is it?” “It’s only two dollars.” Two dollars. It couldn’t be! I was excited. “How many boxes of candy have you got?” “I’ve got five.”

Looking at her friend, I said, “And how many boxes do you have left?”

“I’ve got four.” “That’s nine. Okay, I’ll take them all.”

At this, both girls’ mouths fell open as they exclaimed in unison, “Really?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got some friends that I’ll pass some around to.”

Excitedly, they scurried to stack all the boxes together. I reached into my pocket and gave them eighteen dollars. As I was about to leave, the boxes tucked under my arm, one of the girls looked up and said, “Mister, you’re really something!” How about that! Can you imagine spending only eighteen dollars and having someone look you in the face and say, “You’re really something!”

Now you know why I always carry a few hundred dollars on me. I’m not about to miss chances like that ever again.

And to think it all resulted from my own embarrassment, that when properly channeled, acted as a powerful motivator to help me achieve.

How about you? What nitty-gritty reasons do you have waiting to challenging and provoke you into change for the better? Look for them, they are there. Sometimes it can be as simple as a brown-eyed girl selling Girl Scott cookies.

(excerpted from the book Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness) ——- Article by Jim Rohn, America’s Foremost Business Philosopher. To subscribe to the Free Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine go to here.