Make your home a valley of smiles instead of a vale of ATTITUDE tears. Smile now! Never mind how hard it has been for you to do so. Smile now! If you will remember all the time to smile now, you will smile always. However, a mechanical smile will not do. Your smile should be a reflection of your inner soul state of ever new joy.

By Paramahansa Yogananda

Some people smile most of the time, while beneath the mask of laughter they hide sorrow- corroded hearts. Such people slowly pine away behind a screen of meaningless smiles. But there are other people who smile genuinely once in a while, yet are very serious at other times; behind their austere appearance are secret fountains of laughing peace.

Happiness is a state of mind. Suppose you have enjoyed good health for fifty years then become helplessly sick for three years. You would likely forget about the long period of time when you laughed at the idea of sickness, being unable to imagine yourself in poor health. Instead, after having been sick for three years your mind would be unable to imagine your being in good health once more; it would tend instead to harbor the thought that you will never be well again.

Likewise, if after having been happy for a long time you become unhappy, even for a comparatively short time, you are apt to lose hope of ever being happy again. This mood also is the result of lack of imagination. The memory of long-continued happiness should be a forceful subconscious habit to help you ward off the consciousne ss of your present trouble.

When wealth only is lost, nothing is really lost, for if one has health and skill one can still be happy, and one can make more money. But if health is lost, then to a great extent happiness also is lost; and when the goal of life (which is happiness) is lost, everything worthwhile is gone.

Pure love, sacred joy, poetic imagination, kindness, wisdom, peace, the bliss of meditation, and happiness in serving, are felt inwardly first in the mind or the heart, and their beneficial effects are then transmitted by the nervous system throughout the body and thence outward. Do not camouflage the joy of your soul with the veil of sermons and solemn words. Understand and experience the superior joys of the interior life; then everyone around you will feel and benefit from the pure joy that emanate s silently from within your soul.