How to Be Happy

[Lloyd]

Happy Bible
    I believe that's what the Bible was always really about. It was about how everyone can be happy and prosperous here on Earth, and it may not have been saying much about the afterlife at all. But power addicts always came along and twisted the intended meaning into ideology that suited their own selfish plots.
Commandments
    The Ten Commandments were the highlight of the Old Testament, but the meaning became twisted and the idea of Hell as punishment for sin in the afterlife was added over the centuries. Jesus explained the Commandments as meaning Love for God and for Mankind. And he talked about God's Kingdom being at hand and coming here on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Prosperity
    Despite severe persecution, early Christians prospered outside of mainstream Beast-controlled society. The Bible clearly refers to beastly-behaving rulers as the Beast. The early Christians appear to have been so blissfully happy that persecution did not bother many of them. People who do not fear pain or death seem not to be phased much by torture.
Communal Love
    In the late 1960s Jean Liefloff lived for some time among a tribe of native Americans in Colombia, I think, and found them to be quite different from most westerners. The tribe members always seemed to be very happy, living communally, and their children almost never cried, fought, or misbehaved. They weren't perfect, as the men sometimes fought with a neighboring tribe, occasionally killing a warrior and having one of their men killed. But nonetheless they reared their children in ways that Love for each other seems to have made everyone feel entirely secure and happy, no matter how much pain they might suffer. One young boy during play was hit by an arrow and went to Jean for medical treatment. He never cried and seemed peaceful the whole time. There were other examples too.
Parenting
    The main difference in their parenting was that infants under 8 months old experienced constant human touch, usually being held by whoever was most active at the moment. It appears that the touch satisfies the need for affection and being held by active persons satisfies the inherent need for excitement etc. The elders never scolded kids and the kids never had an urge to fight selfishly. Some parents in western society have applied such practices, calling it Attachment Parenting, I believe, with similar results. The woman on the Supernanny show, Jo Frost, doesn't teach quite the same methods, but gets very similar results, namely very happy, loving families. She teaches not to hit kids or use verbal abuse etc, but to have ground rules and to simply put kids in time-out for a few minutes if they disregard the rules. The time-outs do not involve ridicule of or pleading with kids, but merely explaining that they violated a rule and need to stay alone in the time out place for a few minutes to think about it, then apologize, then hug and kiss and return to normal proper behavior.
Societal Progress
    The early Christians seem to have lived like this for several centuries, maybe 700 years or so after Jesus' time. Something similar to the Anabaptists survived in Russia thereafter. Some of the Christian societies, like St. Francis' and others', helped carry on such loving traditions too. In the 1400s some Christians, starting I think with Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa, Italy, developed the idea, based on the Bible, that science and government were meant for the benefit of all of the people, which is what commonwealths, republican government, public servants and government ministers were initially about. One of the early English Bibles opened with words to the effect of "This Bible is for government of, by and for the people." When these progressive efforts hit roadblocks in Europe, it led to colonizing the New World for the purpose of establishing such government.
Self-Help Groups
    The Bible says when the people are moral they prosper and when they're immoral they self-destruct. Though our government was often progressive at times and the country prosperous, it seems to have gotten increasingly beastly after JFK's death (and was also beastly before and after the Civil War and in the early 1900s). Nonetheless, there's always some progress under the radar. In 1935 Bill Wilson learned from a Christian movement, called the Oxford Groups, some principles that he applied to overcome alcoholism. I think the most helpful principle is not part of the 12 Step program, but is the practice of meeting weekly with others facing similar challenges. CDs, LGBTs and others have inherited aspects of such self-help methods. But what I think is the key principle of the 12 Steps is "self-correction".
Childhood False Beliefs
    I think "Original Sin" is naivete' accompanied by early trauma. Children raised by Attachment Parenting or by Supernanny's methods avoid most early trauma and learn healthy ways to overcome whatever traumas do occur. But other children experience many of the traumas of emotional neglect or abuse, which produces in their subconscious minds false beliefs or self-deceptions. The beliefs are that they will always be alone and sad, or are worthless or inferior, or are superior and others are worthless, or must get or take all they can from others one way or another, etc.
Emotional Relief
    Practices like the 12 Steps help people discover the false beliefs they developed in childhood (and sometimes later in life). By discovering them it becomes easier to see that they're false and then let go of them. Such false beliefs cause emotional pain, so by letting go of the beliefs the pain is relieved. This reduces the stress that can otherwise lead to "self-medicating" addictions.
Summary
    I personally think the 12 Steps are needlessly complicated and that many people would benefit if the steps were greatly simplified. I reduce the 12 Steps down to one step, namely Step 10, which says "continue to take personal inventory and when we're wrong promptly admit it". Step 11, prayer and meditation, is good too, but I incorporate it into Step 10. Also Step 12, which is sharing with others.
    The Bible says by shining light into darkness, the darkness disappears. Our unhappiness and our subconscious false beliefs that produce unhappiness are our darkness. Knowledge or awareness is light. Shining our light on our unhappiness shows us our false beliefs in our subconscious. The Bible says to repent to be saved. By making amends for past wrong-doing to others we repent (change direction) and are saved from a mostly miserable, loveless, unhappy life.
Salvation from Loneliness
    I started to be saved from a miserable life in 1984, when I first started getting results from the 12 Steps. I started letting go of fears at that time. I thought salvation was nonsense until I experienced great emotional relief through the Step meetings and practice. That's when I started to think that salvation might actually mean something real. In 1988 I had my best breakthrough, I think. I'd always suffered from periodic loneliness, but I didn't think to shine the light on it until that year. Since loneliness is unhappiness and since unhappiness generally is due to false beliefs, I decided to ask myself if there's a false belief behind my loneliness. Just by asking, I could see immediately that the answer was yes. It was false that I was alone, since God is alwasy with each of us. Shining more light I asked why do I feel alone, if I'm not.
    And the answer was that I was afraid to get close to God. I asked why again, and I realized I thought God had the same stifling attributes as my Dad. I thought God was a perfectionist, a domineering slave-driver, who had a list of never-ending, difficult, unpleasant tasks for me to do with practically no reward or relief in store. I thought God would expect me to be a virtual robot or automaton with no will of my own, that I would have to mindlessly obey God's every whim for me. I felt that I could not respect myself as such a slave. This had all been in my subconscious previously. I had not been very conscious of it.
    Realizing that much or all of this must be false belief, I could see that God was not like that at all. God doesn't want to dominate me or be my boss. He wants to be my best friend and best advisor any time I think to ask for advice. So, since then, I've felt free from my former internal demon of false belief about God and have sought God's advice almost every day. And I've felt like that must be what salvation really means. And after studying the Bible more recently (starting about ten years ago) from the perspective of various Bible scholars I could respect, I feel increasingly confident about that. And I think the Bible is really talking about salvation for all of society, not just for individuals, though it comes one individual at a time.
    (P.S. You can thank my insomnia last night for this nearly endless verbiage.)

[sheila]

   He's not named WONDERFUL COUNSELOR for nothing,Llyod. :HeartThrob:

[micah7:9]

 :HeartThrob: :dsunny: :HeartThrob: :thumbsup: :dsunny:

[Lazarus Short]

Hey Lloyd, your good words are NOT verbiage... :gimmefive: