happiness

Conventional: A state of joy, satisfaction, and contentment that is believed to result from possessing or attaining certain outer things or circumstances that one considers desirable.

ACIM: A state of joy, satisfaction, and contentment that results from remembering and extending who we really are.

Happiness, being a part of love, is God’s Nature and is our natural state.
Currently, we have chosen misery instead because we confused misery with happiness. In other words, we do not know our own best interests (see CE W-24).
Now we seek outside ourselves for happiness (see idols) and hold grievances because things do not behave the way we want. This simply yields more misery.
To find real happiness, we must realize that we are miserable and that there is no hope of happiness in the ways of the world (see CE T-31.IV).
Happiness comes from guiltlessness, which comes from forgiveness. It comes not from trying to make things go our way in the world, but from forgiving things for not going our way.
Happiness comes not from getting, but from giving, from fulfilling our function of extending to others (see CE W-66).
The function of relationships is “to make happy” (CE T-17.IV.1:3). The holy relationship is one in which the purpose of making miserable has been replaced with the purpose of making happy (see CE T-17.IV.2).
God’s Will for us is perfect happiness (see CE W-101). Thus we need not pay for it, but merely accept it. Once accepted it is by nature constant, unless we reject it again.