The new film “Living Luminaries on the Serious Business of Happiness” refocuses the search for personal happiness from material to spiritual—from events to choices.
Most of us are on a quest for happiness in our lives. That search is behind most of the choices we make--from marriage or where to live to where to work or whether or not to have children. Will these things make us happy?
The contemporary thinkers interviewed for the docudrama “Living Luminaries (on the Serious Business of Happiness)” would all say that we are looking for it in the wrong places. Outward events and activities can never bring a true and lasting sense of happiness. Twenty-something writer/producer Sean Mulvihill poses the question of how he can find happiness to everyone from the Catholic priest of his childhood to a Tibetan monk, from a New Thought expert to a Voodoo priestess. These “living luminaries” present a beautiful array of spiritual thoughts on this life quest and how to discover where this grail of happiness can truly be found.
As different as their specific approaches to this search, there is one thing they all seemed to agree on: happiness is a moment by moment choice, not something put on us or gained by outside forces. Some of the inspiring points these conversations bring out are:
*You don’t need to believe the truth for it to exist, but lies only exist if we believe them.
*All unhappiness comes from self-centeredness. When we react to things only as they affect us, we are on a constant treadmill of up and down emotions and live with that insecurity to our personal sense of peace and joy.
*Our narcissism gets in the way of our loving others.
*We have to recognize the basic goodness of the world, and then we have to nurture it, and then we have to widen its scope.
*The great journey in life is not the one to success, it is the one to significance.
*Mankind is on a “suicidal rampage” of self-obsession and a refusal to let God work though us to heal the world.
*You are what you do with your attention. You are the awareness that allows the world to be what it is.
*The human body and world are nothing more than a bunch of electromagnetic impulses.
*God dwells in the depth of your being as the formless Life itself.
Those are just my “oohh” moments, but there are many more that will touch people in a different way, depending on where each is in their spiritual journey. I was raised with many of these deeper concepts of the real nature of happiness, but it is always wonderful to hear the same ideas coming from so many different quarters and expressed with such peace and a genuine sense that the seeker has actually found his or her personal happiness.
Of course, I’m always a proponent of the search for joy, peace, and self-fulfilled happiness from a divine source. One of the ideas that my parents and Sunday School teachers often shared with me was that God is the only one who can send good things my way. That same divine Love will help guide me to what choices will lead to the happiness of everyone involved, even if the road is rougher than I might like.
I’ve been led to change jobs when this choice seemed illogical, only to find out later that the original job would have dissolved within the month. New homes have come along at just the right moment. Friends to bless my life are brought to me just when I need them. God’s plan for my happiness is always right in front of me when I am listening for those little angel thoughts—and following them. My sense of God’s government of man’s happiness has its foundation in this quote from a woman I consider a luminary, Mary Baker Eddy.
“Soul {God} has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul [God].” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures ,” by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 60).
It has been proven to me time and time again, and this film stresses the same point, that grasping for happiness from people and events in our lives will never establish it on any firm foundation.
Like the Biblical man who built his house on the sand, that false foundation is constantly slipping out from underneath us and is easily washed away by the inevitable storms of life. But when we have a rock solid, spiritual foundation for our personal choice to express happiness because it is our divine right as a creation of God, then the winds and rains can blow and we will recover with our lives—our homes—intact.
This film may be a bit harder to find than some, but it is well worth the search for those asking that same time old question: Where can I find true, lasting happiness? I don’t know that you will have all you need to know revealed to you in 94 minutes, as the film’s promotional material claims, but you will definitely be gently led to focus your journey on the right track to success.
Though unrated, there are some frank, though not graphic, conversations on sexuality that would put this film in the PG-13 range.
Local presentations of “Living Luminaries (on the Serious Business of Happiness)” can be found at www.spiritualcinemanetwork.com . It will be featured in the July collection of The Spiritual Cinema Circle. For more information on the film, go to www.livingluminaries.com.
The full text of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” by Mary Baker Eddy, can be found at www.spirituality.com .
Meg Welch Dendler is an avid movie-goer, always on the lookout for a uplifting, spiritual message. She’ll tell you when she’s successful and warn you when to save your money. Meg is in the public practice of Christian Science healing just outside Houston, Texas, where she lives with her busy family, five cats, and a dog, Max. You can reach Meg to comment on this piece or suggest a movie for review at
