Suggestions for Happiness (practical and philosophical)

1.     Eat what you like, but no more than you need
2.    Spend money only if you have it.  I have a credit card but the balance is paid in full automatically every month.  It’s a convenience mainly for shopping online.
3.    Life happens, so it’s best to accept fully whatever Life brings to you. Non-acceptance is called suffering.
4.    Assume you do not actually control anything. It’s very likely nobody controls anything, anyway.  If you think you are controlling your life, you may be mistaken. Just do what is there to be done. There can be no evidence that you have or had any choice in the matter.  This will save you a lot of worry. Giving up the illusion of free will is a radical step, but don’t you think some radical steps are needed?
5.    Understand that the past does not exist.  Memories are thoughts and feelings and if they arise they are happening now.  Life, including thoughts and feelings, can only be happening now. Even the concept “now” implies some other time, but there is no other time. The future does not exist, either; hopes, fears, expectations are thoughts and feelings only.  They are happening now.

(If there is inconsistency in these suggestions, please don’t expect a tidy scheme.  Take it or leave it.)

If there is no other time than now, then there can be no actual time, it wouldn’t make sense. The whole idea of time is just that – an idea. A convenience for everyday living.  For scheduling stuff.

I have found it very instructive lately, very helpful, to investigate carefully the nature of what is seen as reality.  Just going by my actual experience, without making any assumptions, I can see that everything I have been used to thinking of as “out there”, outside me, is really inseparable from my perceptions – in other words, a part of me.  So I could say that my world is inside me.  Or is me.  What I have been used to thinking of as “reality,” separate from me, is a thought construct,  a set of assumptions.