To experience a happy, healthy, joyful and rewarding life, regardless of your circumstances, you need to develop a clear understanding of the meaning of your life and the significance of your relationships. For this endeavor, you will need a Philosophy of Life to guide you. It should be a simple philosophy, and when you become thoroughly familiar with it, then you will begin functioning on a deeper level of consciousness, and you will begin to truly enjoy your life.

Such an enjoyment does not mean merely experiencing some momentary pleasure. Regardless of all that you have or do not have, within and without, you can consistently enjoy life––provided you have the right philosophy.

Your life is a manuscript, and you are its author. But both the beginning and the ending of this manuscript are missing. You do not consciously know from where you have come, why you are here, what’s to be done, nor to where you will go. But, right now, in this present moment, you do have the middle portion of the manuscript with you. If you fail to study that central portion of the manuscript (which is your life), you will never be able to successfully retrieve its missing pages that reveal what existed before birth and what will exist after death.

To me, this is the most interesting subject to study. Reading books and listening to lectures can give you some direction and solace in life, but if you merely study books and listen to the stories of others all the time, when and how will you learn to create and experience your own truly rewarding life?

Learn to study the greatest of all books now: the book of your own life. You are the creator of your own life’s destiny. No one else creates problems or joys for you. Your happiness or unhappiness is your own creation.

Without a greater understanding of life itself, you will not understand your own habit patterns, and will not be able to fully enjoy life. Simply to live is a grace from Providence, but the ability to live happily is of your own making.

The manuscript of your Life can be seen as a line––hung on two points. One point is called birth, and the other is called death. Like all human beings, once you were born, you immediately began to perceive life and relationships through the limited windows of your unconsciously held concepts and habits. These hidden forces limit your vision and your ability to access an unlimited, Super Conscious horizon. But the moment you adopt a Philosophy of Life that encourages you to experiment with moving beyond your mind’s limited perspective, your conscious horizon will spontaneously expand, and your life and relationships will become increasingly more rewarding. Then, you’ll begin to see that your life is a manuscript, but not yet a completed book. As you already know, a book has a beginning, middle, and an end. But as you begin your spiritual awakening, you still don’t know from where you have come or where you will go. You are still in search of the beginning and ending pages of your life in order to make your manuscript complete.

In actuality, it is your desires that brought you into this world. In the same way that an accountant uses a new ledger sheet as needed, while the accounts remain the same, human beings bring forward all of our past accounts and simply copy them into new “books ” at birth. As a result, your body is new, your brain is new, your conscious mind is new, but the desires that motivated you to come to this world are old. Desire, with a certain motivation, causes rebirth, and attaining the freedom from pain, misery and bondage is a prominent desire of all human beings. Birth, therefore, is the coming forward of those desires––from the unknown to the known; from the unseen to the seen––that are ready to be contemplated, and then fulfilled or consciously sacrificed.

So, to experience true freedom from pain, misery and bondage, you will need to achieve the next step. That next step is fulfillment, unfoldment, and Enlightenment.

Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you a person fully determined to know yourself? Are you willing to learn and to experiment in the process of creating and following your own Philosophy of Life? If your answer is yes, then I am willing to share, on behalf of an ancient tradition, the experiences and knowledge of what I have learned and practiced for more than 50 years, and which I received through my personal studies with sages of Yoga Science and Philosophy.

If you are prepared; if you are ready, and if you are willing to practice the teaching this profound wisdom offers, you will definitely make rewarding progress.

About the author

Leonard

Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev)

Leonard is an American spiritual teacher, a direct disciple of medical pioneer Swami Rama of the Himalayas, and a living link to the world’s oldest health and wisdom spiritual tradition. A noted educator, philosopher and Yoga Scientist, Leonard is the founder of the American Meditation Institute, developer the AMI Foundation Course curriculum, and originator of National Conscience Month. He is the author of the award-winning books The Heart and Science of Yoga and YOUR CONSCIENCE, and the Mind/Body/Spirit Journal, Transformation. A rare and gifted teacher, Leonard’s writings and classes are enlivened by his inspiring enthusiasm, vast experience, wisdom, humor and a clear, practical teaching style. Leonard has presented courses at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, numerous medical colleges, Kaiser Permanente, the Commonwealth Club of California, the U. S. Military Academy at West Point and The New York Times Yoga Forum with Dean Ornish MD.