I once had a teacher who asked me month after month the same question. It really irritated me. I thought he was a broken record. I’d answered it already time and again. I got so I just giggled and waited for him to move on. He’d just look at me with those kind, deep eyes of his and wait. When I didn’t answer or didn’t have a new answer, he’d smile patiently and finally move on.

A few years passed and he moved away and so I worked with some other teachers. I had a series of dreams and I began to feel incredible change unfolding in myself. They were good changes and I began to feel happy for the first time in my life at a deep and profound level. Eventually, I began to teach in turn.

One day I was working with someone in my meditation classes. She really was quite miserable. My heart went out to her. I had been in her shoes and I wished to help. I said nothing for a few weeks, just tried to offer material that I knew would help her if she worked with it outside the classes. She would go to these deep places and be much calmer when she left, but each week, she reported not doing any work with anything I’d presented. I felt sad about it. One day, she was complaining after class, having come particularly wound up that week. The class didn’t have its usual effect.

I found myself blurting out the question my teacher used to habitually offer me:

“What makes your heart sing with happiness?”

I looked at that woman so miserable, sad and so unnecessarily unhappy. She really only had a thinking problem which could be easily adjusted with a few months of diligent meditation practice; which she wouldn’t do consistently. I knew the meditations practices would sharpen and modify her perception of her life which was actually quite rich with good things she refused to acknowledge in her daily life. If she modified her attitudes with some good ‘ol gratitude, she’d be just fine.

Then I heard my teacher’s voice in my own and finally knew why he kept asking me the same damned question over and over again…*smiles*

‘Cause I didn’t really listen the first time.

My student gave the same tired excuses I’d given a few years ago to my teacher and I just smiled at her inwardly and settled myself to keep right on asking until she got it.

So….?

What makes your heart sing with happiness?