Deepak Chopra - Power Freedom and Grace

I am deeply grateful to Janet Mills, who has very diligently captured the essence of my lectures over the years, and helped me bring this manuscript to completion.

Do not confuse the instrument with the user of the instrument. The instrument is the brain; the user of the instrument is the infinite Being expressing itself in different disguises.

There is a reason why you were drawn to this book. Perhaps your soul is extending an invitation to you an invitation to get in touch with the deepest part of your self. Your deepest self, your essential being, is the source of all Being the field of pure consciousness that manifests as the infinite diversity of the universe. Power, freedom, and grace are attributes of this field. So, too, are happiness, joy, and bliss.

Over the course of my career, thousands of people have come to me with various problems and challenges in their lives. My career began as a physician, and in the beginning most of the people I met had some form of illness, such as heart disease or cancer. One day I was sitting with a patient who had heart disease and I happened to ask him, Why do you want to get better?

The look in his eyes said, What kind of ridiculous question is that? He told me, Doesnt everybody want to get better when theyre sick?

Yes, I said, but why do you want to get better?

He replied, If I get better, I can go back to work and make more money.

For some unknown reason, I persisted in asking him why. Why do you want to make more money?

Apparently amused, he agreed to play the game and said, Because I want to send my son to a good university.

I asked him why he wanted to send his son to a good university.

He said, I want my son to get a good education so he can build a successful career.

I kept asking him the question, Why, why, why In the end he answered, Because I want to be happy.

Since then, I have played this game not only with sick patients wanting to get better, but with anyone who wants anything. You can try this yourself. Ask people what they want, and when they tell you what they want, keep asking why until you hear the ultimate answer: Because I want to be happy.

Happiness seems to be the goal of all other goals, and yet most people seek happiness in a roundabout way. We have material goals, such as wanting a better house, a better automobile, or items of luxury. We have goals that deal with relationship. We want to feel safe; we want to feel that we belong. We want to be able to express ourselves freely and creatively. Some of us might want wealth or power; others might seek fame. But if you ask people why they want these things, the ultimate answer remains the same: They believe that if they attain these things, then they will be happy.

As I talked to people, I began to have the idea, Why not make happiness our primary goal? Why seek happiness through all these secondhand means? And I discovered something even more interesting. If we make happiness our primary goal instead of our secondary goal, then we easily accomplish everything else we desire.

Many spiritual traditions state that if you seek the highest first, everything else comes to you. In the New Testament, for example, Christ says, Seek first the kingdom of heaven, and all else will be added unto you. The kingdom of heaven is not some far-off place in some remote part of the universe; it is a state of consciousness. So, too, is happiness.

Most people say, Im happy because because I have family and friends, because I have a great job, because I have money and security. All of these reasons for happiness are tenuous; they come and go like a passing breeze. And when happiness eludes us, we seek pleasure through addictive behaviors out of the unconscious hope that we will find joy. External causes of happiness never create real joy. Joy is an internal state of consciousness that determines how we perceive and experience the world. The internal source of joy our connection to our Creator, our source, our inner self is the cause, while happiness is its effect.

If you have lost touch with your internal source of joy, if the happiness you experience always originates in circumstances outside yourself, then you are at the mercy of every situation and every stranger you meet. This kind of happiness is always elusive.

Vedanta, one of the worlds most ancient philosophies, tells us that happiness for a reason is just another form of misery because the reason can be taken away from us at any time. To be happy for no reason is the happiness we want to experience.

Happiness is a state of consciousness that already exists within us, but its often covered up by all kinds of distractions. Just as a beautiful sunrise might be hidden behind the clouds, so, too, our inner happiness is hidden behind our everyday concerns. Social conditioning and constricted awareness keep us from glimpsing this kingdom of heaven hidden in the depths of our heart. But we can learn to rise above the clouds of conditioning and rediscover the source of joy deep within us. Upon discovering this joy, wonderful and miraculous things begin to happen. The expression of happiness brings a sense of connection to the creative power of the universe. Having that connection, we feel that nothing can stop us from accomplishing anything we desire.

When our life is an expression of the inner state of happiness, we discover an immense reservoir of power within us. This power gives us freedom from fear and limitations, and allows us to realize all the abundance that we aspire to. Even more significantly, this power nurtures all of our relationships and makes them truly fulfilling. We find ourselves becoming beacons of light and love, and our very presence nurtures the environment around us. People are drawn to support our desires, and even nature responds to our intentions.

The more we live in the state of happiness, the more we experience the spontaneous fulfillment of desire in the form of synchronicity and meaningful coincidence. In many spiritual traditions, this has been called the state of grace. To experience grace is to find ourselves in the right place at the right time, to have the support of the laws of nature, or good luck. In the state of grace, it seems to us that the universal or cosmic mind is eavesdropping on our thoughts and fulfilling our intentions and desires even as we are having them.