By AIF Staff

We eat daily to gain strength. It’s not that you just eat on monday and comeback the next sunday to eat again. You have to regularly nourish yourself, or else you get weak. Similarly, regular association with people who uplift us is all important, and regular connection with the Lord of our heart is critical for maintaining our spiritual strength.

People often wish, naively though, for a life free of problems. Our desire for eternal happiness is not unnatural; the soul is by constitution, sat cit ananda, eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. However our attempts to seek this happiness are often beset with unrealistic expectations. We foolishly think our body or mind will provide us the much needed bliss. This hope is thwarted time and again for the body by definition is temporary. We can experience eternal happiness when we connect our eternal souls to the eternal spiritual principles through bonafide spiritual practices.

The unfortunate irony is even spiritual practitioners sometimes get discouraged when they encounter challenges, temptations, and obstacles on their path. At such times we need to remember the magic formula for eternal happiness; ‘persistence in practise’. We need to exercise our meditation, prayer and other practises daily. The regularity helps us connect to the divine and thereby experience happiness of a higher dimension.

Chanting God’s names every day, reading through the scriptures regularly, offering sincere prayers daily, and constant association of those people who inspire us makes spiritual life very simple. Thus it’s the consistency in our practises that’s the magic pill of happiness.