The Secret of Happiness is a quick read that is non-intimidating. It is also extremely affordable when you want to give them away by the hundred (which you will). The booklet explains the direct connection between happiness and the expression of God’s virtues.
There are a lot of people in the world talking about God, talking about Virtues, and talking about Happiness. A few even put two of these ideas together. But I looked all over for a book explaining the direct connection between happiness and the expression of God’s Virtues, and I couldn’t find one. So I wrote it myself. The result is what one reviewer called my very best and most profound work yet – and it’s only 32 tiny pages long. It’s proof that once again, good things come in small packages.
Small does not mean tiny type, cramped pages, or ugly. This is formatted as a gift book, with framed quotations on every-other page and a full-color cover. It’s 4×6 size fits nicely in our matching magenta envelope so you can send it to friends on happy occasions.
Its subject matter and its clear and personal style make it a gift that virtually everyone will accept with gratitude. After all, who doesn’t want to know the secret of happiness?
By Justice St Rain, author of Why Me? – A Spiritual Guide to Growing Through Tests.
Here’s an excerpt from the first page:
God—your dearest Friend and the Creator of the Universe—wants you to be happy. In fact, He wants all of us to be happy. It is strange, then, isn’t it, that so few of us are happy—really happy?
There are many conflicting ideas about what makes us happy. Materialists would say that having everything we want will make us happy. Hedonists would say that doing whatever we want will make us happy. Romantics are sure that being loved by a good person will bring us happiness—which at least moves us in the direction of goodness, while religious people believe that doing what is good will make us happy. Since this is an inspirational booklet, you might assume that I would agree with one or the other of these last two. But I don’t.
Instead of doing good or being loved, I believe that we find happiness when we, ourselves, love what is good and then do what we love. How is that different from simply doing good because God wants us to?
I’ll tell you.
If we don’t want to do good, but we do “good” things anyway, then doing good becomes nothing more than a bargaining tool with which to bribe God into giving us happiness when we get to heaven. In the meantime, it will make us irritated and self-righteous, which is very different from being happy.
The Secret of Happiness has recently become available in a perfect bound gift version.
from a private e-mail note, shared with permission. –
“After 50 years, my youngest sister is investigating the Faith. I have given her several Baha’i books – secondary texts as well at the Writings themselves. So has her primary Baha’i teacher. But talking to my sister a few days ago, it turns out that what has spoken to her most clearly, most deeply, is a little booklet from Special Ideas’: “Secret of Happiness.” We had a deep discussion over the phone about the difference between joy and happiness, and the true source of joy, based on the insights that she gleaned from the quotations included therein and the inspiration that they continue to provide on her search.”
Charlotte –