The primary motivation of the separate self is the search for peace and happiness

• The separate self is the search for happiness. Rupert Spira
• With this apparent limitation of awareness comes a limiting of the peace that is inherent within it. It is for this reason that the primary motivation of all apparently separate selves is to find peace or fulfilment. Rupert Spira
• This longing for peace and happiness is the defining characteristic of the apparently separate self or ego. Rupert Spira

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The longing for peace and happiness is consciousness seeking itself, longing for itself

• The search for happiness is the gravitational pull of consciousness seeking itself. Rupert Spira
• The search for happiness is consciousness searching for itself. Rupert Spira
• Every activity or desire will reveal that the basic goal is to achieve a certain feeling. There are no other goals than to overcome fear and achieve happiness. David Hawkins
• Even when Consciousness has veiled itself in a cloak of beliefs, doubts, fears and feelings, the taste of its own unlimited, free and fearless nature is embedded within every experience, and this taste is often experienced as a sort of nostalgia or longing. This longing is not for a state that existed in the past – it is for the peace and freedom of Consciousness that lies behind and is buried within every current experience.  Rupert Spira
• Consciousness needs to appear to limit itself to appear as the world. It needs to overlook its own being. I’m so doing it loses its innate freedom. It’s innate peace and happiness. That is why there is a wound in the separate self. Why it longs for happiness. At the heart of all separate selves is the memory of peace, happiness and love. It is a memory of something here now, covered over by super imposed thoughts, beliefs and feelings. Rupert Spira
• As consciousness contracts into the finite mind it loses the knowledge of its own being. Its own innate happiness. This explains the wound in the heart of all people. The longing to go home. The scent of happiness. What we long for above all else. Rupert Spira
• The search for happiness, which is another name for unhappiness, is simply the forgetting of our self. Rupert Spira

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Lasting happiness and peace cannot be found in objective experience…

• When we look for happiness in objects, substances, relationships, state of mind or activities, happiness never lasts for long. Anthony Lambert
• We have searched for so long in objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships for peace and fulfilment. Although the acquisition or experience of any of these brings our search temporarily to an end and, as a result, gives us a brief taste of the peace and fulfilment for which we long, they do not last. Rupert Spira
• We don’t have to wait for the right circumstances to have happiness. Rupert Spira
• Although the acquisition or avoidance of the object or situation puts a temporary end to the suffering that underlies it and, as a result, brings about a brief moment of happiness, it does not uproot it or bring it to a permanent end. It simply masks it. Rupert Spira
• Most people set out again in pursuit or rejection of some form of objective experience in the hopes of repeating the experience of happiness. In this way we become addicted to the endless cycle of lack, seeking and temporary fulfilment that characterises most people’s lives, and to which Henry David Thoreau referred when he said that most people ‘lead lives of quiet desperation’.  Rupert Spira
• The desire for peace and happiness can never be found in objective experience. Rupert Spira
• At the core of man is existence, knowledge, bliss. In his ignorance he searches for them in the external world.  Swami Chidbhavananda
• No form can give lasting satisfaction. Eckhart Tolle
• Real happiness is not in the senses but beyond the senses. Swami Vivekananda
• If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’- the wisp that ever eludes our grasp until the future and ourselves vanish into the abyss of death. Alan Watts
• If objective experience can bring lasting happiness surely we would have discovered the ultimate objective experience by now.  Rupert Spira
• What you long for (direct your love towards) can only ever be at the source of your longing. It can never be an object. Longing takes you away from yourself. Rupert Spira

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…but by letting go of desire…

• When everything that can be let go of is let go of, what remains is what we desire above all else. Rupert Spira
• Happiness and peace is the absence of all sense of lack. Rupert Spira
• Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self. Sri Ramana Maharshi
• The ego has only one addiction, which is to subjective pleasure/gain. That is the secret payoff of all desires, projected values, and attractions. This is exaggerated by projected value, worth, glamour, or specialness. This solitary motive is merely projected onto multiple diverse objects, persons, or qualities. The ‘what’ that is desired is actually irrelevant. David Hawkins
• Happiness is not a passing state. It is the changeless shining of true self. In states of dissatisfaction and misery, its non-dual shining seems distracted by the duality of a wanting mind that is at odds with what it finds. In states of happiness, the wanting mind and its duality dissolve, thus showing self for what it always is. Ananda Wood

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…and turning the attention inwards to the source of all experience…

• The turning of the mind away from the objective content of experience towards the source or essence from which it has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer. It is the ‘inward-facing path’ – sometimes referred to as self-remembering, self-enquiry, self-abidance or the way of surrender. Rupert Spira
• As the mind turns the light of its knowing away from the objects of experience towards its own essence, it is gradually, or occasionally suddenly, divested of its limitations and stands revealed as the very peace and happiness which it previously sought in objective experience. Rupert Spira
• If we make a deep investigation of the nature of the mind, that is, if the mind investigates its own essential nature, travelling back through layers of thought, feeling, sensation and perception until it reaches its own essential, irreducible reality, it will always find peace and fulfilment there. Rupert Spira
• A mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively saturated with its inherent peace. Rupert Spira
• It is only when we ‘give up and turn back’ – only when we cease seeking peace and fulfilment in objective experience and turn the mind in the directionless direction, allowing it to sink deeper and deeper into the heart of awareness from which it has arisen – that we begin to taste the lasting peace and fulfilment for which we have longed all our life. Rupert Spira
• ‘Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.’ Isaiah     Rupert Spira
• Just as attention or mind is awareness directed towards an object, so our longing or devotion is love directed towards a person or god. And just as the peace and happiness which the mind desires live at the source of attention, never at its destiny, so the love for which the heart longs resides at the origin of its longing, never in its fulfilment. Rupert Spira
• Maharishi suggested that the mind was restless because it was seeking something–namely, greater satisfaction and fulfillment. But it was looking for it in the wrong direction, in the world of thinking and sensory experience. All that was needed, he said, was to turn the attention 180 degrees inward. Peter Russell
• Painfulness may arise, pleasure may arise, but THAT in and to which it arises is the uncaused joy that knows no opposites.    Leo Hartong

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…by resting deeply in awareness, our true nature…

• Happiness is a non-objective experience. It is simply the presence of Consciousness. Rupert Spira
• The true source of happiness is the knowing of my own being, by resting deeply in the awareness of being aware. 
• Real happiness comes from having an unassailable connection to the deep state of unbounded awareness at our core. This state of being is our own inner joy that expresses the exuberance and wonder of being alive at this moment; it is our own self-luminous essence made conscious of itself. Deepak Chopra
• When we meditate, we go beyond the swirl of thoughts, memories and emotions that tend to keep us stuck in our ego’s story of who we are. We enter an expanded state of awareness and discover our own inner fountain of joy, a source of happiness that isn’t dependent on anyone or anything. Deepak Chopra
• Happiness exists within us, ready to be triggered by an external circumstance, but never delivered by an external circumstance. It always arises from inside us. To rest in awareness is to go directly to the source of happiness which is the knowing of our own being. This is why it’s called the direct path. Rupert Spira
• The discovery that peace, happiness and love are ever-present within our own Being, and completely available at every moment of experience, under all conditions, is the most important discovery that anyone can make. Rupert Spira
• A truly peaceful mind is very sensitive, very aware. Dalai Lama
• If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. Henry Miller
• With repeated practice, we give up our restless search for happiness in the next moment and learn that by inhabiting each moment with full awareness, we experience a deepening sensory aliveness and richness. Ronald S. Miller
• All happiness comes from awareness. The more we are conscious the deeper the joy. Acceptance of pain, non-resistance, courage and endurance – these open deep and perennial sources of real happiness, true bliss. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
• The sense of existence is the greatest happiness. Benjamin Disraeli
• When we understand clearly that inner peace is the real source of happiness, and how, through spiritual practice, we can experience progressively deeper levels of inner peace, we will develop tremendous enthusiasm to practice Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
• There is a great joy in the realization that one does not actually need anything at all to be happy […] at an advanced level the awareness of existence itself is sufficient.  Dr. David Hawkins

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…beyond all thought of “me”

• Humans must go beyond their conditioning and conceptual thought in order to be free. Aldous Huxley
• When the mind goes beyond the thought of ‘the me,’ the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, then there is a possibility of a happiness that is incorruptible. Jiddu Krishnamurti

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…in a state of oneness with all…

• The reason why we’re not happy is because we believe consciously and subconsciously that we’re separate from god, eternal awareness. Frederick Lenz
• Happiness is simply to allow everything to be exactly as it is from moment to moment. Rupert Spira

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…thereby raising our state of consciousness

• Heaven is a state of awareness. Hell is a state of awareness. Frederick Lenz
• The level of experiential happiness rises in exact accord with the level of consciousness and not with material success. David Hawkins

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Happiness is ever-present as awareness in the background of experience

• Happiness, like the patch of blue, appears at first to be a temporary experience that occurs from time to time, but when investigated turns out to be ever-present and always available in the background of experience. Rupert Spira
• This is not a fragile peace that depends on the relative calm of the mind, body or world, but an inherent peace that is always available in the background of experience, prior to and independent of the mind’s activity or inactivity. It is, as such, the peace that ‘passeth understanding’. Rupert Spira
• Peace is not a state. It is present behind and within all appearances of the body, mind and world. Rupert Spira
• We discover that Peace and Happiness are inherent qualities of this Presence. They come from the background of Consciousness, not from the foreground of objects. Rupert Spira

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Happiness is to be found in realising what we truly are (the Self) and knowing that…

• Happiness is not a result to be attained through action, but a fact to be realised through knowledge. The sphere of action is to express it, not to gain it. Alan Watts
• To know one’s Self is to be blissful always. Ramana Maharshi
• Stop pursuing happiness. You are it.  Rupert Spira
• The Happiness I am is veiled by the sense of being a separate, limited, finite self. Anthony Lambert
• That which is infinite, is alone happiness. Chandogya Upanishad
• One must realize the Self in order to open the store of unalloyed happiness. Ramana Maharshi
• To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness. Rupert Spira
• Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time –past, present, or future– and enter peace. Adi Shankaracharya
• Your Self, Aware Presence, knows no resistance to any appearance and, as such, is happiness itself; like the empty space of a room it cannot be disturbed and is, therefore, peace itself; like this page, it is intimately one with whatever appears on it and is thus love itself; and like water that is not affected by the shape of a wave, it is pure freedom. Causeless joy, imperturbable peace, love that knows no opposite and freedom at the heart of all experience…. this is your ever-present nature under all circumstances. Rupert Spira
• The relinquishment of this single, solitary goal unveils the Reality of the Self, which is the innate prime source of all happiness.  David Hawkins
• One discovers that the source of happiness is one’s own existence, and the realization of the Self is happiness itself.  David Hawkins
• When it is discovered that the source of ongoing pleasure is the Self, and not the self, the result is independence from the world. Gratification of the ego’s desires is within the linear domain. True happiness arises from the nonlinear. David Hawkins
• There is sorrow in finitude. The Self is beyond time, space and objects. It is infinite and hence of the nature of absolute happiness. Adi Shankara
• And in this game of life, we all search for ourselves. When I say selves, I mean ‘inner selves’, the thing that created the life in the first place. Now consciously, most of us are not aware of this. But if you’re searching for happiness; if you’re searching for tranquility; if you’re searching just to have a nice, peaceful, loving, understanding life… in actual fact, your searching for your inner self. Sydney Banks
• Desire is fuelled by the illusion of lack and that the source of happiness is outside oneself and therefore has to be pursued or acquired. The importance of the object of desire is thereby inflated and overvalued by its symbolism and mystique. The pleasure of the sense of Self is blocked by desire. When that desire is fulfilled, the ego ascribes the resultant sense of joy to the acquisition of an external. However, this is a clever illusion because the actual source of the pleasure is that the block to experiencing the joy of the Self has been temporarily removed. The source of the experienced happiness is the radiance of the Self that shines forth when it is not shut off by an ego distress.  Dr. David Hawkins

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…in the knowing of our being

• However, love, peace and happiness are inherent in the knowing of our own being. In fact, they are the knowing of being. They are simply other names for our self. Rupert Spira
• Happiness is simply the knowing of our own Being – the natural, effortless and innate condition of our Self, when it is no longer pulled into an imaginary past or projected into an imaginary future by resistance and seeking. Rupert Spira
• Happiness is the knowing of our own being as it is. Rupert Spira
• The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event – through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you – ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are. Eckhart Tolle
• Attachment is investing happiness in an object. True happiness is in knowing your true being. Then you are free. Anthony Lambert
• The peace and fulfilment that we seek is in our own being. It is our being. To avail ourself of this peace, we must know ourself as we truly are. If we mix our sense of self with our experience and qualify ourselves with it, we cannot know ourself as we truly are. Our true self becomes veiled and we overlook our true self and the innate peace and joy we are.  Rupert Spira

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Happiness and peace is the presence of consciousness

• It follows that Peace is inherent in Consciousness, that Peace and Consciousness are one. Rupert Spira
• Awareness is peace because nothing can disturb it. Awareness is love because all things arise in it, are known by it, and made of it. Awareness is happiness because I, Awareness, want for nothing.  Will Wright
• Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love. Rupert Spira
• Thoughts may be agitated, feelings distressed, the body in pain and the world troubled, but pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is never perturbed by anything that occurs in experience. Thus, its nature is peace itself. Rupert Spira
• Happiness is a non-objective experience. It is simply the presence of Consciousness. It is the experience that is revealed every time a desire comes to an end. Desire is agitation and Happiness is the ever-present background of all states that is revealed when this agitation ceases. Rupert Spira
• No one created by God can find joy in anything except the eternal… nothing else is worthy of him. A Course in Miracles
• Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus, its nature is happiness itself – not a happiness that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of all states, circumstances and conditions. Rupert Spira
• Consciousness is by nature self-aware. Its nature is simply to know its own eternal, infinite, inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled being.  Rupert Spira
• Deep sleep is in fact simply the presence of Consciousness shining by itself. That is why it is so peaceful and enjoyable!  Rupert Spira
• It’s not enough to know what I am. Awareness needs to know it does not share the limitations of body. That is it not temporary or finite. That it is inherently peaceful.  Rupert Spira
• Later on we discover that Peace and Happiness are inherent qualities of this Presence. They come from the background of Consciousness, not from the foreground of objects.  Rupert Spira

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Happiness is to be found within us

• Do not look for happiness outside yourself. The awakened seek happiness inside.  Peter Deunov
• The locus of happiness is always solely from within. Pleasure is transitory; joy and happiness are from within. David Hawkins
• Happiness is your nature. It is not wrong to desire it. What is wrong is seeking it outside when it is inside. Ramana Maharshi
• What we really desire is not the object, because if it were, its possession would eliminate all desire. What is desired is bliss, Ananda, which exists at all times in myself and everything. The realisation of this bliss was lost to me when I became a separate ego, thereby losing sight of my essential identity with it. Jean Klein
• The world’s wisdom traditions have one central message that I have learned to live and know to be true. Happiness (and when I say happiness I mean a deep and lasting contentment, a sense of being at peace and at ease within and feeling a deep connectedness with life (a happiness that words could never fully capture)) cannot be found in external factors but can only be found within. Happiness comes from abiding in our natural state. Melli O’Brien
• In actuality, joy stems from within and is not dependent on externals. David Hawkins
• In the surrendered state, we are independent of the outer world as a source of satisfaction because the source of happiness has been found within us. David Hawkins
• Essentially, what the average person wants out of life is just one thing: happiness. It is in this quest that he goes through life day after day in the firm belief that he will somehow, someday find final satisfaction through the things and circumstances of his world. There comes a time, however, when man gets utterly tired, physically and mentally, of this constant search because he finds that it never ends. He comes to the startling discovery that every kind of satisfaction has within itself the roots of pain and torment. At this stage his search cannot but take the turn inwards toward that happiness which is independent of external things. Ramesh Balsekar

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Happiness is our very nature and our natural state

• Peace and happiness are not, as such, objective experiences that the mind has from time to time; they are the very nature of the mind itself. Happiness is our essential nature, apparently obscured or eclipsed much of the time by the clamour of objective experience but never completely extinguished by it. Rupert Spira
• Happiness is the experience of being the screen of awaremess. Unhappiness is the apparent veiling of the screen, the overlooking of what we are. Happiness is our natural state. Rupert Spira
• Our own true nature is Infinite Joy! Always happy, Always peaceful, Always free.  Swami Satchidananda
• The deeper emotions are not really emotions at all but states of Being. Emotions exist within the realm of opposites. States of Being can be obscured, but they have no opposite. They emanate from within you as the love, joy, and peace that are aspects of your true nature.  Eckhart Tolle
• You do not acquire happiness. Your nature is happiness. Bliss is not newly acquired. All that is done is to remove unhappiness. Ramana Maharshi
• Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed. Rupert Spira
• These feeling of peace, joy and connectedness are not in fact new feelings. They are simply the inherent qualities of our essential nature filtering into objective experience. It is for this reason that we are never motivated to move away from such feelings. They feel like home. They feel like our birthright. They are our birthright! Rupert Spira
• Happiness is self-generated. It depends on one’s attitude of mind. The basis of happiness, is the simple fact that the deepest reality of our own nature is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new joy. Goswami Kriyananda
• Joy and peace are my inheritance. A Course In Miracles
• Each thing tends to move towards its own nature. I always desire happiness which is my true nature. My nature is never a burden to me. Happiness is never a burden to me, whilst sorrow is. Adi Shankara
• Peace is your natural state. It is the mind that obstructs the natural state. Ramana Maharshi
• Constantly remind yourself that happiness is always with you: you are happiness and that happiness does not depend on anyone or anything in the outer world. Swami Swaroopananda
• Our exclusive focus on the objective aspect of experience veils this Happiness. However, failing to notice that Happiness is in fact already present, we search elsewhere for it. Rupert Spira

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This is a vital realisation

• The discovery that peace, happiness and love are ever-present within our own being and completely available at every moment of experience, under all conditions, is the single most important discovery that one can make. Rupert Spira