Excerpts from the new book featuring incredible authors from around the world.
Excerpt Below By Dr Gabriella Kőrösi
Close your eyes, open your heart, and imagine that you are one with everyone. The meaning of spirituality for me is being one with everything and everyone. Showing love, caring, humility and support for myself and those around me. I am a part of everything and everyone just the same way as everything and everyone plays a part of being in this universe together. Feeling the pulse of the universe around you.
We are so fortunate to be here. Experience life. Experience love. Experience birth and death. Experience joy and dance. Life has so much to offer. Looking at the words and a way of being — just practicing being here, being in this moment, enjoying everything life has to offer us.
Understanding that we are everything and nothing at the same time. We are all a part of being collective particles forming the current existence and knowledge that is ensuring life to go on. We are part of people, plants, and animals that existed before us, and we will be part of them in the future.
Word pairs that come to mind when I think of spirituality:
“Unity and Love.
Beauty and Joy.
Nature and Peace.
Harmony and Light.
Acceptance and Support”
“Spirituality can be expressed in a way of being. People can use gatherings like churches, various groups to be together with other like-minded people. Practicing togetherness this way helps create a way of being and express the feeling of unity and love toward each other.I believe and have had multiple experiences with the feeling of oneness with the universe, humanity, plants, animals, and minerals.”
“Past and Future ExperiencesMassages from the past and the future are part of spirituality for me. I love feeling people who passed around me, protecting me and supporting me when needed. I love the feeling when I think of a friend or family member, and they call or message me. I love the feeling of interconnectedness we share with each other.”
“I had experiences when my grandparents visited me or showed up in my dream. My uncle had visited me. Their visits provide support and reassurance. It is comfortable and makes me feel good.In closing spirituality can be different for everyone. The message that it conveys to me is unity, love, and support for each other. Living in harmony and kindness.What does spirituality mean to you?
Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi: About The Book
“Storytelling is a way people have been learning from the beginning of time. Stories, teachings, and learnings passed down from generations to generations. Each story begins somewhere. An idea in our mind, an experience. A spark that creates words, lines until it becomes a story. The authors of this book are amazing storytellers. They are sharing their gift of stories with you my dear reader. The authors are from all over the world from different ethnic and religious background, different belief systems and different upbringing. Yet the amazing thing is that we all come together to create something magnificent. A magical mix of stories. If you opened this book, you are in the right space to get inspired.”
An Excerpt Below From Featured Author : Jennifer Dunne
Two Paths of Joy
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”― Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is fleeting. It is a product of the senses. We taste our favorite foods and feel happiness. We put our feet up at the end of a long walk and feel happiness. We snuggle beneath a thick comforter on a cold day and feel happiness.
Joy, on the other hand, comes from within. We may feel joy that we are able to provide a meal that nourishes those we love. We may feel joy that we have a purpose greater than ourselves, and that our actions contribute to its success. We may feel joy simply by sitting silently and witnessing the grandeur of creation.Joy comes from deciding on a world view, our place within that world, and a value judgement of whether that place is good or bad. Our senses may lead to a constant roller coaster ride of happiness and unhappiness. But our internal compass points steadily toward one setting in the range of misery-to-joy.
Path 1 — Learning Young
“When I was very young, a child in the single digits, my overwhelming emotional states were boredom and frustration. It seemed that, no matter what I wanted to do, I did not have either the skills or capacity to do it. As a result, I often retreated into books. In those worlds, I could be someone who had the skills and capacity to get things done.Moreover, in books, I could find a purpose. The protagonists of the stories I read always had a meaningful goal that was bigger than themselves. At the time, I was fond of Arthurian legends, and tales of The Knights of the Round Table. I also enjoyed tales of Robin Hood, and even Sherlock Holmes. (That wasn’t all I read, by a long shot. Those were the ones I obsessively reread, over and over again.)Then, I happened to read something that completely changed my point of view. I came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
“An explosion of possibility”
This quote was like an explosion going off in my young mind. I realized that I was choosing to be bored and frustrated. But I had different choices available to me.
Why was I feeling bored? It wasn’t that I lacked for things to do. In fact, if I ever made the mistake of telling my mother I was bored, she would rapidly load me down with more chores than I could ever hope to accomplish.
The problem was that none of those activities felt in any way more meaningful than any other. What I actually lacked was a sense of purpose.
Why was I feeling frustrated? Because my capabilities were outpaced by my desires. If I could develop my capabilities, I would not feel so frustrated.When looked at in this light, the answer seemed blindingly obvious. If I wanted to be happy — if I wanted to make up my mind to be happy — I needed a sense of purpose and greater capabilities.
Lifelong learning and purpose
The desire to increase my capabilities has led to a lifelong love of learning. But it is not learning for learning’s sake. While I’m okay with learning some theory in order to better understand context, I generally want to learn those things which have a practical usage. I want to be able to do something with what I learn.
“In other words, I want to increase my capabilities, not just my knowledge.Given the books I was reading, it’s no surprise that the purpose I decided upon for myself was to increase hope. I wanted to help people feel hopeful. Hope that good would triumph over evil, that wrongs would be righted, and that brave heart and bold action would carry the day.
Note that it was a very realistic goal for a young child. I certainly didn’t expect to be able to do any of those things. That was left to the all-powerful adults. But I could try to increase hope that those things would, in fact, be done. That was within the realm of things that were possible for a child to do.
Did this lead to joy?
These few simple decisions have led to a lifetime of joy. By keeping in mind Lincoln’s quotation, I have developed the habit of choosing how I look at things. I do not immediately jump to one interpretation but consider all of the many possible interpretations there could be, and which is most consistent with my overall worldview.
My worldview is simple: The universe loves me and wants me to be happy. Any situation, no matter how painful it may be in the moment, is ultimately there for my greatest happiness. If I am not seeing how, it means that it is a learning opportunity.
“What is my place in that worldview? I try to increase the amount of hope in the world, both my own and others’. If the universe loves me and wants me to be happy, then it wants me to be successful in increasing the amount of hope in the world. So that others can also recognize that the universe loves them and wants them to be happy.
My value judgement of my place in the world is that it is a good one.
And thus, I experience joy. Despite various setbacks, my overwhelming emotional state ever since has been one of deep and profound joy.”
An Excerpt Below From Featured Author: GnanVi
I Am Joy A Form Of Pure Love
“What is Joy? Where do you find it?
Joy, for me, is in purity that’s powerful, vibrant, and energizes which I find only when experiencing the bliss of Mother Nature, immersed in Her soul, in the innocent smile of a child, and in the smiles of fragrant vibrant flowers.
This experience of joy can be recreated and felt by revisiting the moments of joy.
Joy is mostly selfless; a feeling of emotion felt within oneself by making others happy.
Joy is a feeling of fulfillment experienced by giving.
Joy is a feeling of ecstasy, feeling out of the world, but yet feeling connected to everything.
Joy is a pleasant feeling that’s inseparable accompanied by a calm mind; it’s a vacuum, you don’t have any thoughts, it’s blank but pleasant and pleasurable.
“The pure inner self!”
“When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” — Buddha
How does it work?
Joy is stored deep in the subconscious permanently, strengthened more and more by every joyful experience you have in your life. It gives you instant happiness, gets stored, and when overflown it creates happy smiling faces as far as it travels.”
“The stored memories of joy become the catalyst to your happiness whenever needed, even during your darkest times in life.
It works for me that way. So, it’s very easy for me to bounce back from any dreadful situation. It’s been the secret of my survival for more than two decades now. I do mental time travel to revisit and recollect joyous memories to experience joy.
I grew up as Nature’s own child in the beautiful blue mountains of The Nilgiris in India. So, being a complete Nature person who is awaiting the golden knight’s arrival to take me to the jungle where I wish to be, living in a 24/7 buzzy, busy city, by the runway, I survive every second of my life by living in my memories of joy.
“Joy cannot be seen by others but can be felt by some, it’s a mystery to many.” — GnanVi
Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes...
— Frederick Buechner
All Excerpts From The Joy Of Life, By Dr Gabriella Kőrösi Are Copyright Protected. Published On Smiley Blue With The Express Permission Of Dr Gabriella Kőrösi.
To discover more or to purchase the book below.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-joy-of-life-dr-gabriella-kor-si/1143844793?ean=2940167350144
