Cloudscape

Suggest to yourself that everything around you loves you infinitely, and in this suggestion love it back. If nothing else, it is merely a suggestion, but nonetheless it is one that has incredible psychological power.

Spiritual beliefs need not be true; whether they are or not, they work if you believe in them. In this they are true to the spirit — in a spiritual sense — which is all that matters.

Spiritual beliefs are akin to hypnosis: similarly, hypnosis makes use of suggestions which, while untrue, still work. Hypnosis might visualize images such as light filling the body, or pain assuming a physical form, or, as means of hypnotic induction, of magnets on each hand attracting each other or a balloon tied to the hand lifting it; none of these things are real in the physical world, but they are real in the mental world. They are constructs of the mind, and so to the mind they are true.

Within, they exist as thoughts, which are quite real. When one considers this, one realizes that there isn't really anything which is not "real," and that apparently immaterial things matter as much as material things.

We may, for instance, conceive of things as though they were alive; from what we know this may be true or it may not be, but that doesn't really matter. From a certain viewpoint, one could say this is true because the things we perceive around us are themselves but our own perceptions, and therefore, part of our own mind, very much alive. As they are part of our own persona, it can allow us to more fully respect our persona if we deem them as if they were persons themselves.

It is unscientific to simply take it for granted that it is so, but one can nonetheless imagine that it is so. Thereby one can allow oneself to feel more connected to the outside world, even when one is alone.

On the other hand, it can be misleading to mix scientific and spiritual beliefs, though the two may be connected. If one merely imagines something to be true without knowing whether it is so or not, one will never be deceived; if one actually assumes it, however, then one will be easily deceived.

If only one understands one's own feelings, one has full control over them. Actually, this is so for anything at all in the universe, but the miracle is that to control one's mind, one doesn't need to do anything in the physical world. One can tweak one's neurochemistry by using antidepressants, but it can just as well be done through sheer will.
The thing is, most people can't control their feelings because they don't understand them -- often they don't even know how they feel. The more one is aware of one's feelings, the easier it will be to harmonize them.
Often people will try to be happy and find that they fail. This is because happiness, like all higher feelings, is very complex. An emotional state isn't just one color -- it's a painting of a thousand hues; to achieve an emotional state, then, is like making a painting. Usually, one can't just be happy like that - one is happy about something. Even when it has a physical cause such as drugs, emotion always has a reason: an object. Do not try to be happy: try to enjoy.
One cannot fill one's mind with happiness without filling each sensation and each thought with happiness - for they are what compose your mind. Visualize that you were filling everything around you with energy, every sight and sound and smell and touch, and it will in turn fill you with energy -- for if all these things are encompassed in one's brain, they are part of your being.