Helen Keller is reported to have given this pertinent advice: "Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you will form an invincible host against difficulty. Happiness cannot come from without. It must come from within."
We find happiness within as we awake to our spiritual identity as God's image, or reflection.1 Christ Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." Joy, satisfaction, and completeness are within the true consciousness and individuality of us all, because the real man expresses the qualities of God, infinite Soul. Real joy is eternal. No one gives it to us, and as Jesus said, "Your joy no man taketh from you." 2
Most of us appreciate our association with loving friends as one of earth's greatest privileges. Friendship is natural and beautiful. But for many years I looked to personal friendships for my main source of joy. I was plagued with a restless and discontented disposition. Unless I was constantly with friends or engaged in social affairs or entertainment of some sort, I was bored and lonely. Later, I came across this question in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank?" The very thought of being "without personal friends" repelled me. The statement continues: "Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of personal joys, spiritual Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth." 3
Even though this statement startled me at first, I found that the more I became involved in material pastimes, the less happiness they brought me. I began to learn that my seeming inability to be happy on my own was but another byproduct of the belief that man has a mind and self separate from God. I started claiming my right to true joy and satisfaction, realizing that God, divine Mind, is the Ego that creates and governs man's individuality. Before long I began to feel more of that quiet, inner illumination that flows from a knowledge of God and of man's unity with Him. I understood more fully the significance of Christ Jesus words "I and my Father are one." 4
Real joy
is eternal.
No one can
take it
from us.
I discovered that happiness and health are interrelated, for certain ailments that had bothered me for many years dropped away. I now began to find great joy in helping others demonstrate Truth's healing power. Selfish interests and pastimes were no longer so important to me. To be able to share in demonstrating the law of God brought me more satisfaction and happiness than anything I'd ever experienced.
Finding real joy doesn't require withdrawing from society or becoming an ascetic. But true satisfaction isn't attained from the standpoint of materiality. Science and Health tells us, "For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love; the Son must be in accord with the Father, in conformity with Christ." 5
My progress in this direction brought me fulfillment—that peace which St. Paul describes as "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding." 6
