The barn burned down: - now I can see the moon...

Japanese Zen poet.

I don't have to tell you that happiness is a state of mind having nothing to do with material reality. A little girl making mud-pies in a puddle or a little boy playing five-stones with peach pits in the dust can raise radiant faces to an understanding adult.

Happiness is letting the child in all of us indulge in the joy of oneness with the world, with nature, with make-believe and with beloved others.

We obtain satisfaction from a job well done and contentment from material security, but happiness is a knack of seeing woods amongst trees. We simply have to stand back and ignore some of the confusing detail of briars and brambles to be able to discern a larger reality, the forest, in all its untamed wilderness and freedom.

We are strange creatures. Composites of practicality and imagination, we try to force ourselves into a limited mould of rationality. For what?

Does it make us any happier to think of the world as a cosmic accident than a playground created by a loving father for his spirit children?

If you feel safer with certainty and accept only what can consistently be demonstrated, then you must live with fear in a fragile world. You are alone, separated from all other forms of life and manifestations of matter. You are alone, reliant on yourself for sustenance and survival. You are alone, and when you die the world ends. Life is a brief period of struggle, acquisition and decay, a flicker of light in remorseless, stifling night.

If you listen to your spiritual self, that part of your brain created to enhance survival by allowing you to be attuned to more ephemeral communications, you will perceive a different reality, one inhabited by artists, musicians and poets.

It is a reality increasingly acknowledged by science.

Children have always had access to this reality. They have to be trained to see consistency in a practical world.

We have allowed ourselves to be robbed of that reality and have to learn all over again how to let ourselves go, to feel, to be and to accept understanding by intuition.

One of my friends once mused about the reality of God.
Finally he decided that, as a good insurance broker, he must live as if God existed. "Because", he said, "If I live a good life, satisfying my better instincts and at peace with my fellow men, I can lose nothing but fear. "

"When I die, if He does not exist, I will never know."

" But if I live badly I will hate myself, fear others, become increasingly self-destructive in an impossible search for fulfilment and then I may have to face for eternity the knowledge that I was wrong."

It is easy to make judgements without all the facts. We can discount paranormal and paraphysical phenomena as unproven, as coincidence, as psychosomatic, as sheer imagination. But the fact that we name them at all is proof of their existence.

Scientific method discounts anecdote in favour of measurable results. But the paranormal and paraphysical - which include coincidence ,synchronicity, prescience, intuition, spontaneous healing, the placebo effect, the power of prayer and much, much more, these most powerful manifestations of our connectedness with all the energy of life promise great reward for study.

Those times when we appear to achieve least in material terms are often the most productive in terms of quality of life.

Have you never postponed a task to play with a child or listen to a distressed friend? Did it honestly feel like a waste of time?

I remember lying in a hospital bed, drifting in and out of a world in my head where I was learning to maintain the integrity of my being, to control pain, to heal my damaged tissues and to create peace of mind.

It was visiting time. Two women walked past, casting curious glances at my distorted head and immobilised torso and legs. "If I was like that," one whispered to her companion, "I would ask them to put me down."

Thirty years later, having survived several marriages, raised three children, travelled extensively and pursued three separate careers, I bless the lorry driver who was not paying attention as the traffic lights changed. I still use the techniques I learned during that period of immobilisation and have been able to pass them on to many clients who have since become friends.

I was even fortunate enough to have an out-of-the- body experience at a point where I was thought to have died. It was a watershed in my life. The euphoria of loving acceptance I felt then has changed my whole perception of the way things are.

I realised that I have always carried a spark of that love and chosen whether to experience it or not. Then I allow myself that awarenessthat I am a part of the whole of creation, a link in the chain of energy that forms the universe.

Through that link I can tap into energy in times of need, or form a nexus in the net, a focal point of love, radiating towards me and away to wherever it is needed most, freely channelled, freely given or gratefully received.

For me, happiness is the habit of cultivating awareness of that flow. Unhappiness is when I forget what I am and allow myself to be isolated, lonely, ill, afraid ... a wounded animal and nothing more.

Happiness is not a constant thing. It ebbs and flows. At times it is compounded by the lovely things that happen to me. At times it is augmented by my willingness to listen, to feel, to trust and be directed by an inner awareness. At times it seems altogether to have disappeared and at times it is too much to bear.

It is a wonderful gift. But I may spend the rest of my life learning, not to control it, but to let it happen.

When I am busy with the practicalities of day to day, it is a background of security. When I am unable to function normally, it is time to remember and renew an old acquaintance. Since I am human, I can forget, allowing myself to become discouraged before rediscovering the power.
Like a battery, I think I sometimes need to be completely flat before I can take up a full charge.

In religious terms I used to think that I was so headstrong that my Heavenly Father needed to bring me to my knees before I would pray. But those down times, when I berate myself for my idleness, "Come on, you lazy bitch, you could if you tried!" (knowing, all the while, that I could not) are, in retrospect, the times I need to switch off from being busy and productive in order to become aware again of the source and purpose of my spiritual strength.

So,for me, happiness. is the ability to find beauty, joy and purpose in everything, in every person and in every task; to feel connected to and sustained by a vast network of unseen purpose and to enjoy, without restraint, the simple pleasures, satisfactions and occasional triumphs of being myself.

It helps to start each day by saying thankyou for existence itself; to be aware of the priceless and irreplaceable gift of time - not as a pressure but a joy, to do with it whatever you want; to seek at least one experience of full awareness each day, whether of another person, a flower, an animal, or an ordinary object. (A soap bubble is a magical thing).

It also helps to cultivate the habit of wonder. To allow things to happen and to be able to think at times, "Whoever would have thought this morning that I would be doing this this afternoon?"

Allow yourself a new experience every week. Try things you did not think you could do, or feared you might not enjoy. Experience is all, to be alive, to be unafraid, to welcome every change.

Perhaps it is a little extreme for some, but I have never forgotten the advice of an old Yorkshire doctor. "If you want to live to the full", he said, "Go away, forget all that's wrong with you and say 'No' to nowt!"

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