This is a question that we hear everywhere, what is happiness? Every being is trying to figure this out for themselves, but no one is thinking that we each have the ability to capture it. As everyone knows I have been at this journey for a very long time and I am about to hit another year, 68 years old hard to believe that. So, believe me when I say this has been a constant question that I have heard from patients, family and friends as well as considering this myself. But the reality of this question is one that started to make sense to me in the early 1990’s after I was diagnosed with cancer and knew I had to make a change in my own life. That is when I began this journey inward knowing that the answers that we are all searching for are not found in the external world. I did in have the assistance of an awesome mentor/teacher and for that I am forever grateful. He is in my heart, my mind and spirit. He guides me still even though he no longer walks in this world.
So, let’s explore this further together.
Here is the big question I want you all to consider. How can we be content with who we are if we don’t know who we really are and lack appreciation for who we are? Furthermore, if we are not content and we are constantly searching for the answers outside of ourselves, such as, that special person, place or thing to satisfy our contentment, how can we ever be really happy? So, the story goes, that once we have what we thought we wanted now becomes a worry about losing it, whether that is relationship, health, wealth, status, or power.
The key here is if we are always searching for that rainbow outside of us, we will always miss seeing where it really is, because we are too busy in pursuit of what is instead of looking inside. I know some of you will recognize this statement because I have shared this thousands of times over my years in practice as a psychologist, but it is worth stating again here even if you want to cover your eyes or shout at me: HAPPINESS IS AN INSIDE JOB. How do you feel when you read this statement? Do you feel confused, sad, angry, disappointed or I couldn’t care less? Or perhaps you just don’t give a shit! It is possible that you feel of those ways at different times and that’s okay today.
Let’s take time to explore this statement, “happiness is an inside job.” From my own personal journey, spiritual study and schooling, I believe this means that we are born into this world fully loaded. However, this does not mean that just because it’s within us that we know how to access this information. What happens in our lives after birth is different for all of us in terms of life experience what we call the manifest level, but the content of our experiences is the same. We each receive the teachings in whatever way is beneficial for us. That being said we do have something that we can do to cultivate our relationship with our “self.” Like all relationships the one within needs to be tended to as well. Furthermore, if you do not tend to your own garden you will have a difficult time in your external relationships. Think about a real garden maybe a vegetable garden or a flower garden. What happens if you do not tend to the garden does it live or die? Doesn’t the garden require water, fertilizer, good soil and tilling the soil? The answer is “yes” of course. So why wouldn’t we require the same attention? In order for the person to fully become aware of their internal condition we have to be willing to take care of the self within. Now I don’t mean the ego self, the selfish condemning self I mean the tender part of self. Some of us may not know how to access that part of self because we did not receive proper nurturing from our caretakers. To be fair I want to clarify that statement, we cannot give what we don’t have, which means if they did not receive proper nurturing either they just passed on what they knew. But what if I said, it is there even if you did not receive it. Remember what I said earlier, we come fully loaded. That tender loving part of self is there it is just buried under our defenses, the defenses that we think keep us safe. But not really! Maybe we could all approach this as a treasure hunt. We are looking for our inner treasures currently covered with a veneer which we call defenses. But there is nothing to defend against. Why would we want to defend against our innate goodness? Why does goodness need to be defended?
Some of us may want to give up before we even start. Maybe this sounds overwhelming, too much work. I would encourage you to ask yourself, “aren’t you worth it, aren’t we all worth it?” The mere mention of having to work to uncover a part of self, our inner gifts to find happiness sounds paralyzing to most of us. We immediately tense up and want to pull the covers over our heads or bury our heads in a hole. In Buddhist philosophy this is known as “laziness” as a common defense. Some of those defenses are as follows:
- Humans like comfort
- We readily lose interest- become depressed or sad.
- Develop a couldn’t care less attitude
These three types of laziness are referred to as our habitual patterns. These patterns are also quite debilitating for all beings. First, we will examine the habitual pattern of comfort. Comfort is based on avoidance. We literally will do anything to avoid inconvenience discomfort. Let’s face it we are a comfort driven world. We do like our comfort and anything that interferes with that causes us all to experience a great deal of distress. This distress could look like stress, overwhelm, anxiety, or panic attack. All we know is we want to get rid of it right now! So, what do we do we find something to distract us from the distressing feelings, this could be food, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, exercise, shopping, just about anything will suffice for a distraction? We love our creature comforts and when we don’t have them, and I mean quickly, like automatic results, we become irritable and aggressive. For some of us this could even engender rage. Some of us may even being seeing that in the here and now of this quarantine from the coronavirus. We are not able to take advantage of our normal creature comforts, stuck in the house everyday with the same people or person and some of us alone. Our life is compromised by the virus/quarantine and we cannot escape from this. What’s happening is that these habitual patterns are coming out more because we have no distractions. This quarantine is resulting in a lot of distress for a lot of beings. On the other hand, could we re-frame this as an opportunity to look at self. Maybe there is no better time than this moment to go within, the moment is now. Let’s all to take advantage of this opportunity to look within for true happiness.
The second habitual pattern, loss of interest, sadness/depression is where we experience a deep sense of helplessness and hopelessness. This is where we feel impoverished, we have the “poor me” attitude. We just cannot get out of bed and we cannot stop watching the endless loops on Netflix or Amazon Prime. Some of us just want to sit around eat, drink and smoke. This type of sadness is defined as a loss of interest in self. This loss of interest also has a negative looping message of self-deprecation. Those messages usually look like this, “I’m not good enough and I will never be good enough”; “I’ve made too many mistakes, I am unforgivable”; “I’ll never amount to anything…I’m just a big loser”. What all of these messages share in common is that they are not the truth and they lack faith.
The fact is that we have all lost our way and we all need a guide to help us shine some light on this situation. But the guide that is truly helpful is the one within. We all have the guru within, the holy spirit the higher self whatever you want to call it. Remember what I said earlier we come here fully loaded that’s what that means the truth of who we are lies within. Yes, this road is arduous, and requires considerable commitment and effort on our part. The journey also requires patience, kindness, and love but aren’t you worth it, aren’t we all worth it?
The third type of laziness, “I couldn’t care less” is difficult because it is colored by bitterness. This bitterness appears in us as a feeling of being treated unfairly. It is similar in quality to our loss of interest, but it is much tougher to access. Now our vulnerability is affected by a greater loss. Now we are pointing the finger in our external world blaming each other for our misfortune. Fortunately, or unfortunately, in the here and now we have some sterling examples of this in action. We are quarantined from creature comforts, family, friends, vacations etc. No way to escape what is going on and we are all experiencing this in the world. Wow what an opportunity to develop the interconnections among beings. Unfortunately, this advantageous moment is being wasted on the blame game. So instead of each and every one of us taking responsibility for this unfortunate world pandemic we are pointing the finger at countries, doctors and political parties. We just love to point the finger and not take responsibility for our own lives. When we don’t look within and we always blame others for our misfortune we have what I like to refer to as the perpetual pity party, all doom and gloom. This type of attitude can easily result in Major Depressive Disorder which many of us face and can be very debilitating.
The bad news is that strategies we have for dealing with these habitual types of laziness/difficult emotions are dysfunctional. Why are they dysfunctional? Because we are just too good at self-condemnation. We easily and readily give into our pleasures. We avoid the things that may be helpful because it is just too much work and we simply don’t have time to be bothered. So, let me see we don’t want to take the time to learn kinder strategies because we like the familiar and it is too much work to learn a better way. We would rather criticize/judge, blame and shame ourselves instead. We would rather embrace the negative and increase our suffering. Instead of looking deeper into the recesses of our own minds to see it’s just a big illusion, we would rather stick with our stories that each one of us makes up to keep us stuck in the mud of suffering. I encourage you all to consider there must be a better way.
Likewise, we unfortunately have another dysfunctional strategy, giving into all pleasures/overindulgence. In humanity this is equally prevalent and just as damaging. In this form we make habitual excuses for our laziness we are good at making justifications for our unkind actions. We all seem to have this nagging voice in our heads that takes pride in saying, “Hey baby this is just who I am take it or leave it.” Or maybe it is that feeling of, “I just don’t deserve to be treated this way…I deserve better than this!” “Hey if I want to be angry, I’m just going to be angry and if I don’t want to get out of bed I won’t!” Is there really a good reason for feeling this way? Now I don’t want to downplay depression or feelings of inadequacy but what we seem to be the best at is telling ourselves stories that are simply not true. What’s more we have told ourselves the stories for so long we now believe the stories we tell ourselves and it is difficult to undo these stories. What we end up doing is talking ourselves into being okay with our own stories even though we suffer from those very same stories.
The last ineffective strategy is avoidance which happens to be fueled by procrastination. This may work for a while because we can dissociate from our experiences thereby numbing ourselves out. The fact is, that we will do anything to distance ourselves from the truth. We seem to be comfortable with refusing to look clearly at what we are doing because it is much easier to attack, indulge or avoid. Maybe it is time to take a painstaking honest look at ourselves.
This painstaking honest look at ourselves requires us to train our minds. Yup, mind training, that is what I said. Does that scare you? Probably so it scares most of us because we are not sure what that means. But what I do know from living life for 68 years is that it works because I have been trained in it and I could not have made it this far in my life without this type of training and practice. For me it has saved my life and given me the courage to face some of my most difficult life journeys. Training our minds entails looking beyond what we see with our eyes, and any of our senses. Which I refer to as the manifest level anything that we see in the outside world. This training requires us to look within to be able to see the deepest levels of who we are, the tender area, the golden nugget, the truth. This kind of looking takes courage, we must all become a warrior, fighting for our own truth. It is a journey to “self” the truth of who we really our, the guru within. That part of who we really are has been patiently waiting for your arrival. All we have to do is be fully present to our experience. Approach this like a child with curiosity, inquisitiveness, joyfulness and tenacity. Watch how a child explores their world with excitement, curiosity and joy. I watch my grandchildren do this almost every day via the net and it brings me so much joy and laughter. They are light, energetic, bounding gleefully all over the place. They are curious about how things operate, and they are playful in figuring it out. They don’t give up on their journey they pursue life with zest. Just imagine if we could each approach our life in the very same way. If we did, we would truly see the tenderness in our hearts, and we would remember who we really are and approach life and ourselves and each other differently.
In closing I would like to share a little antidote that I share with my patients all of the time. “Whatever we resist persists”. When we are able to touch the within of who we really are the ego diminishes and our insight and self-compassion increases. Without the ego coloring our perceptions we have a clearer view of self and other and we are able to be kinder and more compassionate to all beings.
MAY ALL BEING BE FREE OF SUFFERING. MAY ALL BEINGS FIND PEACE AND HAPPINESS.