Inner Joy" & "Outer Happiness" : Aristotle

HAPPINESS VS JOY
The constant search that we have in this life is to find the true joy that we know we had sometime, and we remember it. What I mean is during our life we would search the manifested world to gain what it seems that is missing in our life. The important thing is we need to pay attention to a very important issue.



There are two kinds of goals, inner goals and outer goals . It will lead us to our inner journey and outer journey and eventually lead us to the path towards inner success or outer success.



In our life we need to reach to both inner and outer success. Reaching to all outer success in the price of our soul will not be a smart move. Our attention needs to be on both.


Spiritual Happiness Hierarchy

1) Inner success: Freedom from the identification with the mind and movement towards the ecstasy of the Truth . This will lead us towards our inner joy which is ultimate and eternal. It is not dependent of anything or anyone outside. It is relying only on the inner soul. It is an inner phenomenon. During meditation, the moment nothingness happens (we start witnessing nothingness), suddenly we are standing face to face with ourselves for the first time, and all misery disappears.

Receptive mode: We need to be in the present moment in silence. There is nothing to do, nothing to be or nowhere to go. Meditation is pure stillness and silence.

The inner success will bring us:


·Eternal Bliss--ecstasy and oneness with all. It is your innermost core. Joy is our true essence. It is the very stuff the universe is made of. That is what we feel for the first time.

· Spiritual Happiness –Peacefulness & unshakable faith.



2) Outer Success: This will lead us towards achievements such as college degree, title, fame, wealth and anything manifested in the world.



Active mode: We need to be in active mode at all the time. Work very hard to achieve all of the outer goals that we have.


The outer success will bring us:


Emotional Happiness - Love, service to humanity, devotion

Mental Happiness- work hard, create better life, gain more knowledge, entertainment. A little higher kind of happiness. A little more cultural, a little more human.

Physical Happiness-
Immediate pleasures, all physical needs. It depends on the outer world and others. It is the lowest kind of happiness. It is primitive.
Outer success is very simple: Just a little more technology, more science, and people can be rich. The real problem is how to be inwardly rich.