How to Get Lasting Happiness

This world comes with a guarantee—it will never give us lasting happiness.

The lasting happiness we seek is the indwelling spirit within each one of us. Cultivating a devotional and expansive spirit is key to having a rich spiritual life. Serving and living for others is the right way to live if we want our lives to work.

Swami Kriyananda said in one of his recent video series on the Essence of the Bhagavad Gita:

You might as well understand that the real battle is how to become peaceful right now.

The outward battle for gain, for fame — these things cause us ruined nerves and no satisfaction.

Before he died, Howard Hughes, who was the most wealthy man in the world, was asked by a newspaper reporter, “Are you happy?” And he said, “No, I can’t say that I am happy.”

Well, all that money won’t make you happy. All that pleasure won’t make you happy. All that power won’t make you happy, and all that fame won’t make you happy.

Nothing will make you happy except finding happiness within your own self.

Regular tithing is a tried and true method of reversing the contractive consciousness that can plague our hearts around money.

We pray before a meal and ask God to bless our food. We ask God to bless and guide us in any new endeavor. We also need to ask God to bless our flow of income.

Tithing is a tool “par excellence” for creating a magnetic current to draw what we really need at the time we need it. The spirit behind tithing is one of grateful worship of the Divine.

As the Lord Krishna promises in the Bhagavad Gita: “To those who meditate on Me as their Very Own, ever united to me by incessant worship, I will make good their deficiencies, and render permanent their gains.”