“And they lived happily ever after.”

Humans, as we begin to reach even the lowest echelons of mental maturity, realize the caveats with this fairy tale cliché ending. Our Earthly lives teach us repeatedly that no one lives “happily ever after,” that the nature of existence is a series of struggles and challenges (plenty of them enjoyable with the right mindset) with the only genuine “ever after” being physical death.

But let’s examine another word in the fairy tale ending “happily” and its noun form happiness. In this deceivingly short, six-word sentence, one of our greatest human misconceptions reveals itself, the idea that the most desirable state for a person, a soul, is happiness. And before we’ve tasted true, self-sustaining inner peace, no one could blame us for this confusion.

Unless we are blessed in childhood with the guidance of a spiritual teacher who instructs us in mediation early on (still unusual in the Westernized world), we grow up hearing from our parents, from our Earthly teachers, and from an incessant and ever-more-pervasive media, that happiness is our ultimate life goal, and that we must ambitiously pursue it through gaining knowledge, gaining resources and gaining power. This, we are told will bring happiness. Demonstrating our determination to achieve “what it takes to be happy,” results in praise and Earthly reward.

In his fantastic work The Shift, the enormously gifted spiritual teacher, the late Wayne Dyer artfully articulated what happens as a soul gradually realizes its own authenticity. He sub-titled the work From Ambition to Meaning. Certainly going from ambition (for happiness) to meaning (the recognition of inner peace) is the spiritual journey all souls are called to make. He described it as “the step we take away from the demands of the ego (the false self that thrives on Ambition) toward the authentic self (which is nourished by, and nourishes, purpose).” Echoed in his sentiment, is this idea of stepping away from the endless quest for happiness and toward the destination of inner peace.

Happiness differs from inner peace in so many ways. Existentially, happiness only makes sense on an emotional spectrum (i.e. happiness only exists in a world where its opposite sadness also exists as a possibility). Inner peace on the other hand, much like light and heat, has no true opposite. We use words dark and cold to describe what we think of as opposites for these, but the nature of words like dark and cold is actually an indicator of absence, not opposition. Thus, dark is the absence of light, and cold is the absence of heat. Similarly, the only “opposite” of inner peace is a lack of the same. Thus once authentically achieved, its existence need not depend on the presence of an opposite state, but may be retained for the entirety of this existence.

Focusing on the other vital difference, true inner peace has no dependence on external circumstances. It remains through happy and sad times in a soul’s life journey. We can be devastated beyond our wildest imaginations, and if we have inner peace, it still cannot be rocked or ravaged by anything.

This doesn’t mean we don’t experience emotion. It doesn’t mean we can’t be saddened, afraid or horrified. It doesn’t necessarily mean we won’t grieve the loss of a loved one (though very highly evolved souls do begin to understand that there is no actual loss). It means our core mental and emotional stability cannot be undone even by the horrific or devastating. Even as we weep, we recognize our connection to the divine, and it brings us peace. The image of a devastated person who simultaneously believes in the imminence of their own healing and the impenetrable nature of their spiritual constitution is a foreign one to most of the Westernized world, but it’s the truth, once the soul has attained inner peace.

We all crave such stability. To seek it, we must find our inner stillness. We must cultivate through meditation our connection with our divinity, our source of animation. Devotion to the practice remains the only road to this greatest of all gifts!