What would make you truly happy?
Alan Wallace’s course,
Conative Intelligence and Flourishing, is now complete. Use it to activate your deepest aspirations for true fulfilment. This vital process will enable you to make life choices based on a clear idea of your values and possibilities.
In four sessions, we contemplate four questions:
- What is your own vision of a good life, your vision of what would truly bring you happiness, a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction and meaning?
- In order to realize your own vision, your own aspirations for genuine happiness and fulfillment, what would you love to receive from the world around you?
- What tendencies, habits, hold you back, perhaps harming yourself and others? What qualities would help you on the path of your own genuine happiness?
- Your own happiness is intricately intertwined with others’ happiness. In order to lead the most meaningful life possible, what would you love to offer to the world? As Alan puts it: “What would you love to offer to the world so that when you come to the end of your life, and you’re looking back, you will do so with the certainty that you’ve offered your best?”
These are discursive, or contemplative meditations. You need to spend time reflecting on each one. They add solidity and precision to the sense of motivation proposed by Matthieu Ricard’s very first session,
Why Meditate?Charles Hastings’ contemplative course
Knowing yourself to know the world can enable you to disentangle your true feelings from society’s assumptions, pressures and demands. Knowing what truly counts for you and how you want to shape your life provides a sense of direction in a complex and changing world.
According to Alan, there are three different dimensions to human flourishing:
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Ethics: Social and environmental flourishing: nonviolent, benevolent behavior that is conducive to one’s own and others’ flourishing.
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Mental balance: Psychological flourishing.
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Wisdom: Spiritual flourishing; “know thyself”.
Only by thoroughly integrating the ideals of genuine happiness, truth, and virtue can we fully discover the meaning of life.
—Alan Wallace