Too often, we find ourselves and people around us reading different books by philosophers that talk about how to find happiness in our lives. We strive to seek bliss in our relationships, contentment from our jobs and satisfaction from our lives in general. To really reach a state of happiness, we find ourselves going on vacations, working extra hard to get acknowledgment and going out of our way to please our loved ones. We feel that it is the most appropriate way to be simply ‘happy’.

A famous Sufi mystic Rabia, was once searching for something on the street outside her little hut, as the dusk approached, it was only getting more difficult. A couple of people got concerned and asked her if she needed any help finding what she was looking for. Rabia told them that she had lost a needle. One of those people inquired where she thought she had lost the needle as it would allow them to search a particular spot on the road.

“Well, it actually fell inside my house, so that is where I lost it” said Rabia. Hearing this, the people around her got baffled. “This is insane!” one of them exclaimed, “why would you look for a needle on the road that you lost in your house in the first place? We always thought you were strange.”

“For a simple reason, there is no light in my hut but there is some light on the road” Rabia
explained.

The people giggled and began to leave. Right then Rabia called them and said, “I was just following your example. All of you keep looking for happiness in your external worlds when you forget to ask the most important question: Where precisely have I lost it?” We seldom look for the needle inside our homes. Distracted by external excitements, we search for our bliss elsewhere.

Our senses are outward bound. We seek happiness in acknowledgements and validations from the people around us, we look for contentment in places and things. Therefore, we never delve deeper into ourselves where the source of life and true happiness are waiting to be explored and experienced.

Every single time we see a giggling baby, we are instantly reminded that we are all born happy and ecstatic. We learn about worries and sadness as we grow old and begin to externalize our sense of happiness.

Access Consciousness made me understand that very little is needed to truly create a blissful life. This is where ‘Be The Change’ came for me. I realised that if I could really be the happiness I was looking for in the world, I could be contented with everything that I was, which allowed me to create a reality I love to live in.

Often we forget, that joy does not come with the things that we do not have in life, but rather being conscious of, and appreciating what we have. To conclude I would like to say to all of you conscious beings, that all the raw material that is required to lead a happy life is inside of us. All we need to do is be aware and believe that we can develop it to be the happiness we are seeking.