Paradigm shift Part One (Sept 22nd)

We live in a world where material things are worshipped,  success is measured in terms of (fickle) fame and (never enough) money, and happiness is always around the corner and always in the future.

 

I have had enough of this way of thinking!

It’s painful, pointless and basically madness! If money brings happiness, then why is it that so many people who are about to leave this planet, through a terminal illness can display such radiant and content personalities? If material goods bring happiness then why is it that children want their parent’s attention and love more than they want any present or gadget given them? If parties and glamour and fame bring happiness, then why is it that we have daily conversations with our mates about other people’s faults and misdoings, comparing and contrasting ourselves with other people’s successes or failures? Why do we spend years in therapy, live lifetimes on diets or try to lose ourselves in alcohol or drugs and still feel miserable, alone, discontented and yearning for something more? 

If the solution to sadness and pain is to be found in the physical world then why doesn’t it last?

Sometimes it is only when everything is taken away that we realize what’s important to us, deep down, beyond the superficial or the immediate physical want. Before we were married both my husband and myself wanted -someday- to be famous, myself as a singer and Ramin as a film director. We wanted to travel in first class, spend weeks in 5 star hotels, go on incredible holidays, look amazing, beautiful, healthy and rich, bring up our children in luxury and be fabulous for all to envy and admire.

We both thought this, along with living spiritually minded lives,  would bring us happiness and long lasting joy. Even as I read this statement back to myself I can see how silly and immature this idea was. Only a few months after our wedding, Ramin became ill and was eventually diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and his brain and body stopped functioning normally. Our imagined futures dissapeared amongst the reality of steroid infusions, hospital appointments and Ramin’s continual tiredness as his body was ravaged by attack after attack.

I still grieve for the pain Ramin sufferred and for the lost joyful years of newly wedded life but I am glad our paradigm for happiness has shifted – something we both learnt through the following years. We still have ambitions and hopes for the future but neither of us base our personal fulfillment on achieving success in the world of fame, celebrity or mass exposure anymore. Thank God!

I know this is a lesson some of us creative ones with ambitious tendancies need to learn as a part of becoming a mature adult, and most people achieve this understanding in a less dramatic way than the events of our particular story. But I feel blessed that through our particular life’s challenge, I was able to connect to a happiness, a contentment within me that was based on inner understandings rather than outward proofs.

I gained strength through my daily prayers, the spiritual and principle focused conversations with my parents, the support and friendship of my family and friends – as well as the strong and soppily loving bond Ramin and I always maintained. MS didn’t destroy us as a married couple, and didn’t destroy Ramin as a personality, a creative being or as a physical one. Many miracles have come to pass in the last five years, perhaps more than I have even realised.

My challenges have taught me that long lasting, true happiness is founded on spiritual behavior alone – on developing and demonstrating qualities such as patience, trust, positive thinking, appreciation for the now, living in the beauty of now and appreciating little things, commitment and generosity of course, unconditional love running like a golden thread through all of these. None of states of being have anything to do with what money can buy and all to do with loving and being loved.