I have had an epiphany in recent years about where authentic, lasting happiness and joy actually come from. There is cognitive happiness, that results when you believe something good has (or will) come to you. For instance, "It's my birthday!" or, "I bought a new car." But the happiness that results from such thoughts is fleeting, easily dispersed by other thoughts and beliefs.
It is possible to have everything this world has to offer, and still remain unhappy. Such a situation is described in the Book of Mormon. We meet King Lamoni's father, who is never actually named, in Alma chapter 20. He is king of all the Lamanites, so he has the most people under his command of anyone alive at the time. More people means more land. He is probably also the most popular fellow in his social circle; we get hints of people licking his boots and accomadating his whims. His son "feared to offend him" (Alma 20:11), and Amalekites had to appeal to him before they could build places of worship (Alma 22:7). He had at least one granddaughter who was old enough to marry (Alma 17:24), and sons who were kings under him. He hosted great feasts for his people (Alma 20:9), and in spite of being a grandpa, he still thought he was physically strong enough to defeat his son and Ammon in sword to sword combat (Alma 20:16, 20). His wife was loyal to him, even though he was apparently a grouch (Alma 22:19). Here is a man with wealth, health, love, power, popularity, pleasures of the flesh, and a large family—everything the world has to offer. And yet he is grouchy and unhappy.
Why is it possible to have everything you want, and still be unhappy? "God made us; invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it could not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were assigned to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp 53-54).
Mr. Lewis has the gist of the idea, and Latter-day scripture can take it a step further. We lived with God before we were born, and enjoyed happiness in His presence. We enjoyed a full supply of that energy, light, emanation, radiation, whatever you want to call it. But we did not have physical bodies like Him, and so we still lacked a fullness of joy. D&C 93:33: "For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy. The elements are the tabernacle of God..." God proposed a plan whereby we would come to earth, have our memories veiled, receive physical bodies, and die. But because of Jesus Christ, we would each be resurrected and return to God some day. We would then have a physical body, AND enjoy the fullness of God's light and power. A fullness of joy.
Here, we have physical bodies, but not that eternal glory, found in the presence of God, necessary for a fullness of joy. BUT we can enjoy a measure of happiness, peace in this life, as well as full joy in the life to come. How? Go back to the story of the King of the Lamanites. He tries to kill his son, but Ammon injures his arm. When the King sees that he is at the mercy of Ammon, he begins to bargain, offering him half of his kingdom. But all Ammon wants is for him not to be mad at his son. This apparent lack of greed or ambition on the part of Ammon troubles and intrigues him. He sends for Ammon, but other missionaries come instead. They begin to teach him, and in the course of study, he asks the golden question:
"What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken? Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my breast, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy, that I may not be cast off at the last day? Behold, said he, I will give up all that I possess, yea, I will forsake my kingdom, that I may receive this great joy. But Aaron said unto him: If thou desirest this thing, if thou wilt bow down before God, yea, if thou wilt repent of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and call on his name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive the hope which thou desirest" (Alma 22:15-16).
In 3Ne. 9:20, Jesus explains, "And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not." "Broken heart" and "contrite spirit" imply a deeper level of submission and humility than most people evince in their lives, except when they are in extreme pain. That is one reason why there is so much pain in life—God gives us weakness, toes that can be bruised, to keep us humble (Ether 12:27). But we can also choose to be humble without the buffeting. In return, the Lord will "baptize" us "with fire and with the Holy Ghost." We receive greater influence of the Holy Spirit, and taste that sweetness that is waiting for us in God's presence.
No wonder so many people are unhappy. The key to happiness is total submission to God. Who wants to do that? Usually just the miserable people who cannot see any other source of help. And when they are rescued, they often go right back to their old attitudes, and lose that portion of the Spirit again.
"And behold, I say unto you that if ye do this ye shall always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God, and always retain a remission of your sins; and ye shall grow in the knowledge of the glory of him that created you, or in the knowledge of that which is just and true." Do what? "...remember, and always retain in remembrance, the greatness of God, and your own nothingness, and his goodness and long-suffering towards you, unworthy creatures, and humble yourselves even in the depths of humility, calling on the name of the Lord daily, and standing steadfastly in the faith of that which is to come, which was spoken by the mouth of the angel" (Mosiah 4:12, 11). Happiness is hidden in a place where most of us are not inclined to look. Is it abusive to think of ourselves as "nothing?" Whether knowing it hurts or not, we truly are small, fragile specks of dust in the vast configuration of the grand cosmos. Perhaps that is the essence of humility—complete deference to the truth.
Gal. 5:22: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness..." There they are—the real gems that everyone is scrambling for—love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness. We get them when we have a large enough portion of the Spirit, and the key to that is faith in Christ, coupled with a deep, genuine, submissive humility.
"Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me" (Alma 32:28).
"...ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand. O then, is not this real? I say unto you, Yea, because it is light; and whatsoever is light, is good, because it is discernible, therefore ye must know that it is good" (Alma 32:34-35).
"Is not this real?" It is a source of faith to me whenever I feel God pour light, knowledge, and peace into my heart and mind. Yes, the world, the environment, is a mess, but God grants peace on the inside, and it is not dependent on environment. Also, I have had some experience with that change of nature the scriptures refer to as being "born again," and I know that it is real.
In Norton Juster's novel, "The Phantom Tollbooth," the characters dine on "subtraction stew." The more they eat, the hungrier they get. Many are engaged in frantic grasping at real forms of subtraction stew. Drugs, sex, food, and other pleasures all promise unlimited happiness, but ultimately they leave us hungry. Life without the gospel is a giant tease, a come on, as sadistic, cruel joke. "Outside of the religion we have embraced, there is nothing but death, hell and the grave," said Brigham Young, and the more I live, the more I see he was right. "Every excellency, blessing, comfort, happiness and light, and everything that can be enjoyed by an intelligent being, is for us, if we live for it" (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 10:352).
The appetites and desires driving us mad in this life are often divorced from reality. "The body never lies" is untrue—it lies to its owner frequently. My body tells me that I will be happy if I turn off the alarm, roll over and go back to sleep. But my day is ruined when I give in. Misery results. My body is lying to me. The power to fulfill all appetites is not the same thing as power to be completely happy. Happiness is not the point of bodily appetites; keeping us, and the species alive, is the at the root of such desires. When the imperative is met, the happy hormones shut off. The point is survival, not joy. A prominent scientist has prophesied a future where technology imparts immortality. He also describes being able to eat junk food without negative consequences. In spite of his brilliance, he is getting contradictory signals from his lower-brain: "live forever," and "eat junk food." Even if he could live forever, eating limitless mountains of junk food, my experience indicates to me that doing so would fail to confer joy.
People's descriptions of heaven reveal a lot about them. One person described a fantasy about raspberrys the size of footballs with only one seed. Hollywood imagines Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, where the nominal 2500 calories per day necessary for survival give way to rivers of fat, sugar, and flavoring. Some imagine having sex with numerous women for eternity. All of these descriptions have several things in common, among them: 1. They originate from a belief that happiness is totally dependent on environment; 2. They represent things that can and are bought with money—Xanadu was already built and crumbled a long time ago, and many have been, and are now, actively engaged in constructing pleasure palaces.
Paul had skipped straight to happiness, and so it was not asceticism for him to say, "... having food and raiment let us be therewith content" (1Tim. 6:8). 2500 calories and some modest clothes were all he needed to be content. Ironically, those in the pleasure palaces are never satisfied, and make themselves and millions of other people miserable by trying to get more money, more power, more pleasure, etc.
There is a way to experience peace in this life, and joy. Faith in Christ, humility before God, and repentance allow that nascent fuel we lack here on earth to be infused into our starving souls. We can get a partial sample now of what awaits in fullness there.
