Autor: Gustavo Rizzo

How Can We Be Happy? What Is Happiness?

Happiness is something internal. Happiness is feeling.

What is feeling?

Feeling is the quality of what consciousness processes from what it experiences. Therefore, everything we experience, our consciousness processes as a quality.

But we see people going through the same things and feeling completely different things. What explains this?

Experience is not absolute, but subjective. It is subjective because it does not depend on concrete facts, but rather on individual perception.

Is feeling, then, the quality of our perception? And what is perception?

Perception is the way we see the world. Perception is the filter through which we see reality.

What is this filter?

The filter is what each person has that is unique: their own consciousness.

What is consciousness made of?

Consciousness is a soup of all these things: beliefs, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, ideas, habits, identity, memory, the external collective, the internal collective.

But would this, in fact, be the ego?

True consciousness is the observer itself, which is capable of experiencing all these experiences. At the level of the observer, what is chosen to be observed is the focus on a certain identity. This identity unfolds into all of reality.

At the deepest level of creation, we define who we are. God is the “I am who I am.” The observer believes itself to be the identity.

Supreme liberation is not about shaping your ego, your beliefs, in order to become happy, nor about adopting another identity. Supreme liberation is the dissolution of identity itself; it is recognizing oneself as the observer itself and its nature: the focus on its self-identity.

Far from You and filled with the impressions of the world, my soul lives in a whirlwind of feelings and thoughts. Longings become anxieties, anguish, and pain; mistakes turn into regrets, guilt, and deep sorrow.

The world cannot heal us from either the past or the future; it only increases our pain even more, placing upon us a burden of expectations, impressions, and judgments. Upon reaching the limit of pain, unable to bear their own past and unable to glimpse the future, many succumb.

Pain seems endless to those who do not have You, Jesus. Only with Christ was I able to forgive myself for my past and understand that, no matter how much I may have done wrong, He is the God of redemption.

Neither my past nor my future haunts me anymore by Your side, Jesus. Your love made me understand that nothing I could ever do will make You stop loving me. You forgave me long before I forgave myself. And only because of that was I able to forgive myself, because Your love is so great.

You showed me that my future does not depend on my past, that everything can be made new and renewed. You made me understand that, regardless of the future or the past, I only have the present moment and, in every present moment, I always have Your presence.

And Your presence is all I need to be filled with Your grace, radiant with Your love, and infinitely grateful for the life I have, for having experienced this moment by Your side.

The love of Christ heals us from everything. There is nothing more powerful in this universe and in the infinite universes than His love.

Jesus is the remedy for all souls, leading them out of the dark mists of their own pain so that they may finally glimpse the redemptive, merciful rays of love from our infinite and good God.

The love we have with God should be like our daily bread.

Every day, we need nourishment for the body, but we neglect the most important nourishment, which is that of our spirit.

We must seek the love of the Most High every day to nourish our soul with the most powerful peace and the most beautiful joy.

Jesus is our Master. We must follow Him with our whole being, seeking to study His teachings, develop brotherly love within us, and always keep Him in our thoughts.

If we desire true conversion, we must make Christ our priority in every way, not only in our thoughts, but also by cultivating our feelings and obeying Him through our actions.

Jesus was the greatest example of obedience to God that this world has ever seen. Jesus surrendered His life in love and trust to God. We need to surrender ourselves completely—body, soul, and spirit.

Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”

The heart is feeling; your soul is what animates you, what gives you life and action; and your mind is your thought.

Christ taught us that it is not enough to love God with our eyes and our mouth; we must love Him with our whole body, in our heart, and also through our hands and actions.

Lord, bless all my days with Your merciful grace, so that I may persevere on the path of light and flee from the path of perdition.

Place within me the faith to endure difficult days and the hope to remain steadfast in the designs of Your providence.

I will seek the Lord every day, not because I am perfect, but because, far from Him, I am flawed and lose myself in pain. Only with Christ do I find peace in the present, in the trust that comes from surrendering the future, and the joy of living with a purpose that redeems my soul.

It has been a long time since I last wrote. Distracted, seeking what I thought would make me happy, I neglected what truly brings happiness: purpose.

Writing may not bring me joy or pleasure, but it brings something much deeper, which is the fulfillment of a purpose. This brings true happiness, because it is by doing what has a reason behind it that we truly see value in what we do.

Recognizing the value we can bring is one of the only ways to free ourselves from the feeling of emptiness. My reflections are born from this: a soul searching for a fragment of consciousness that awakens within me the true meaning of all this, that allows me to feel true happiness and true peace.

It is all that we want and unconsciously seek: to feel happy.

I hope these reflections can bring this light to those who read them.

Amen.

Lord, my soul longs for a purpose, for something that truly has value within this entire absurd reality in which we live.

I now feel a small light: the purpose of working so that other people may no longer feel this way. I feel this emptiness even while believing in You. It seems contradictory to feel emptiness even while believing in You, and to resolve it by working so that more people may know You, because knowing You was not enough for my spirit, for my heart.

I know that I am much happier today because I know You; I have much more peace and confidence in the future, and I can have much more presence and fullness in the present. But even so, the emptiness still exists within me. Because it is not enough to know You; we must follow Your path, Your example.

Jesus, more than anyone, served before being served. Jesus walked the path of service, trust, and complete surrender to the Father.

The small light grows within me, because I understand a little more of what my soul asks of me. And I give thanks to Christ for revealing to me, in the midst of this prayer, what I needed.

Even while believing in God, I was still able to feel emptiness, not because I do not feel relief and the benefits of God’s graces, but because there is no value in living only for myself.

The value is in service. The grace is in being able to make someone happier with my words. The grace is in being able to make someone’s heart lighter through my actions. The grace is in multiplying love throughout the world.

The meaning of life must be this, because beyond this, nothing matters; everything is empty and illusory.

Thank You, Lord, for Your presence within me. Without You, I do not know where I would be.

I wished there were an explanation for everything: why are we the way we are? What would truly resolve our deep existential emptiness? To understand the reason behind everything.

When I think about love, I have come to understand it as the feeling we have toward that which we value. Jesus said to love God and that this was the greatest commandment. God is everything, because God is the true and only consciousness, and all consciousnesses are processed within His consciousness. He is the One who sees through our eyes, and He is everything, everyone, and anything.

To love God is to give value to life, to experiences, to realities, to people, and to oneself.

Today I know that I have a purpose, and my purpose today is to follow Christ, so that I may live on the path of truth and life. I may not understand, but I feel the difference, and to me, that is everything.

Nothing is more important than this. Nothing has importance without this. I suffered so much, but it was my responsibility. Christ allowed me to change and choose better behaviors and thoughts for myself, so that I could be happier.

Today, this is what I want: change. I want to transform myself into what Christ sees in me, into what I can become. I want to be who Christ can mold me into. Because I trust in Christ with all my understanding, with all my soul, and with all my heart.

I want to be filled. I know there is a happiness that does not depend on circumstances; that is what I want. I want the happiness that I know only Christ will teach me to feel.

The only thing we have in this world is our own company and God’s. Everything else is temporary, everything else ends, everything else is an illusion.

Life comes down to this: your relationship with God. That is what I understand from the first commandment. To me, it is what makes sense, and to me, it is what is right.

And, thank God, I can already feel this relationship. Thank God, I know that He is real.

Lord, I am tired, not in my body, nor in my mind, but in my spirit. My spirit cries out for the flame of life, but it lies in the shadow of the mists of apathy.

The suffering I feel is not from pain, but from emptiness. Life can be full of pleasure, but nothing satisfies the heart.

The emptiness of meaning, the emptiness of a reason why… We do not always feel the lack of it, but when we do, it speaks within us:

“Why? What is the purpose of all this?”

Lord, I thank You for everything, because I trust in You with all my heart. I know that nothing can happen to me without Your divine permission, and I believe in Your merciful and fraternal love for us, made known through the example of our Master Jesus Christ, who first embraced us with His ineffable, infinite, sublime, and transcendent love.

I trust in You, Lord. I thank You for everything, because You alone are able to see my future and understand how everything that happens to me will guide my life toward my greatest and most glorious dream of living in the wonderful heaven of Your presence.