This is the 4th in a 4-Part Series which offer a practical path to loving your life every day.
Click here to read Part 1.
Click here to read Part 2.
Click here to read Part 3.
 
This final happiness blog might seem to be about God. But it has more to do with happiness and perspective than with faith, and it will probably make sense to you even if you’re an atheist.

We live in an orderly universe that follows basic scientific principles. Most of them are about the physical world, expressing various forms of causality. But many nonphysical things are real, such as consciousness, purpose, free will, good, and true belief. They revolve around a separate scientific principle called intentionality. Causality is about how “laws” control physical events. But intentions are what make it possible to aim at what you want, instead of just doing what you are caused to do. And that is only possible because some intentions are better than others. For example, some beliefs are truer than others, which is why you can understand things. Some desires are wiser than others, which is why you have at least a little success in keeping out of trouble.

Intentionality is the foundation for true belief and wise desire, and for other things like minds, awareness, and your personal perspective. As far as science can tell, your brain is controlled by causal forces. But your mind does more, such as making choices based on your hopes for the future.

You have an intention whenever you use a mental meaning or visual image to be about something. For example, each perception or belief is an intention. You see an apple by using your apple meaning to identify it. Your desires are also intentions, about what you want or don’t want.

Wisdom is the standard for how adequate your beliefs and desires are, on an objective scale with an upper limit that we might call Ideal Wisdom, even though it is probably not absolute. Truth and Good can stand on their own as abstract ideas, but there can only be wisdom where there are intentions from a personal perspective. So it is not surprising that people conceive Ideal Wisdom in terms of a Being with a Mind and a personal perspective, usually named God. Ideal Wisdom is real, whether it is just our way of conceiving the scientific principle of intentionality, or is God as a Being. In other words, we can learn a great deal about Ideal Wisdom and what matters in life, apart from questions about God as a Being.

Wisdom is an alternative to being controlled by whatever feelings get triggered. Sometimes you are your higher self, using your enthusiasm and free will to do whatever seems wise. You were born with the ability to imagine being better. You have some tendency to be inspired by that vision. Watching people you admire, you can imagine still being you, and yet with the wisdom to experience and deal with things in a whole new way, ready to play with all that happens. With a little imagination, you can picture being an ever higher self as you grow in wisdom and enthusiasm.

Empowering your enthusiasm is very different from exercising self-control to suppress your foolish tendencies. In place of grim determination, you open yourself to your natural enthusiasm for expressing the best in you. In some sense this higher-self-power comes from within. And whenever you tap into it, you have a powerfully Welcoming Perspective that enables you to keep starting over from here, no matter what has happened. You can fail at a difficult task (such as juggling three balls) a thousand times, and be confident that the next time might be successful. Rather than pushing through your failures and discouragement with will-power, you enthusiastically give your best, confident that there are innumerable paths to happiness, starting over from wherever you are.

Notoriously, this sort of enthusiasm is extremely fragile. It disappears as soon as any foolish feeling gets triggered, or as soon as feelings of neediness or duty arise. If that keeps happening, you might become cynical. But buried beneath all your victim feelings and resignation, your natural enthusiasm will always be there. Wherever you are, there is the possibility of awakening your higher self.

I like calling the path to your higher self a spiritual one, available to atheists and believers alike. Distractions and victim feelings can easily pull you off that path, and you might be far more successful if you connect to (or create) a supportive community. A community can also be a source of broadening your understanding and tools for loving your life unconditionally.

If all this is attractive to you, take a look at the books offered on WelcomingPerspective.com. Path to Happiness is a simple factual approach to all this, and Mudhole allows you to experience it through the characters in a gripping novel.

This was the final blog on happiness, but there will be one more blog, about the revolutionary ideas behind all this.

If you like these blogs, please forward them to others who might like them. And if you don’t want to get the final blog, let me know.

Visit Chuck Turner’s website here: WelcomingPerspective