Finding Happiness

Finding Happiness

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Searching for happiness is like the person looking for their glasses perched on top of their head. (Sounds familiar…) We all look for things in this world to make us happy and we do find many things that bring us a certain amount of temporary happiness. Eventually, though, we discover what looked like a “thing” that was making us happy was actually a “thing” and happiness. The “thing” sometimes seems to stick around a lot longer than the happiness. The new car, new love, new money that we thought was bringing us happiness seems to no longer work. Is happiness temporary while the  “things” are permanent?

Sooner or later we discover the problem is not that happiness is temporary but the projection of happiness onto the “thing” is temporary. Money seems to be the thing making us happy but it isn’t so because we can feel unhappy while we have money. At some point, the “thing” and happiness seem to split and we find ourselves once again in a situation where happiness has eluded us.

You may find it odd for me to say this but happiness is with you eternally because happiness is actually who you really are. You can never be without happiness! All that needs to be done, like the person searching for the pair of glasses on their head, is become aware of this truth.

The source of unhappiness is always the thoughts our mind traps us into believing. The voices from our head say we are not good enough, not talented enough, not blessed enough or not spiritual enough and it is the belief in those thoughts that veil from the awareness of our eternal nature, which is stillness, peacefulness, and happiness. But like a window pane covered in dirt, we cannot see clearly enough past all of the mind’s obstructions to experience this happiness we are.

This is why it often appears the “things” in life will bring us happiness. For a short time, those things bring a certain amount of silence to our mind, which allows an inward glimpse our true nature of happiness. Unfortunately, we soon lose that glimpse when we stay focused on the “things” rather than that which is beholding the “things.”

Looking away from the “things” of this world to our inner being is the path to reconnecting to our true nature of happiness. Once this reconnection is made, we carry it like a lamp to any and all situations or conditions. It illuminates our experience and is never extinguished because it is actually who we are. We are already and always will be the happiness which we have been seeking!

Protection From The Storms

Birds on a Wire

Image by roshanjoshi from Pixabay

A few years ago I was watching a documentary about the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. You may recall, there was a tremendous loss of human lives and property in that tsunami. To witness the destruction being captured ”live” on video, gave a sense of immediacy to the tragedy. I felt as if I, too, was there with many of the survivors, barricaded in an upper-floor house or hotel, hoping the sea of death and destruction wouldn’t swell any higher and sweep us away.

I was struck in particular by one scene of the video. Dark, muddy water flowed through the streets of a small village, taking everything in its path that wasn’t anchored to the ground. Houses crumbled, cars were tossed around like toy boats, and human beings, unlucky enough to not find higher ground, were hurled about in the debris-filled, ocean soup. A man and woman, thrashed about in the black water, hung on to a broken tree, and frantically searched for something more stable to cling to that would possibly rescue them from impending doom.

While the man and woman clung for their lives, I was soon aware of two birds that landed on a power line directly above the chaos. The juxtaposition of the two scenes hit me hard. The two birds, apparently deciding to take a break from their flight to relax, were oblivious to the heart-wrenching display of struggle and survival that was being played out directly below them. They surveyed the picture, determined there was no threat to them, and continued their peaceful pause. Meanwhile, human tragedy continued to take its toll beneath them.

I’ve never been able to shake the image of those two birds or to forget the idea that, in the midst of every human tragedy, there is an atmosphere of rest if we know where to search. Sometimes that rest is in the deepest of the ocean during a hurricane or it’s in the highest altitude during a tornado. And while those physical locations may provide for us some protection, there is also a spiritual dimension that ensures peace during any storm, tragedy, or catastrophe. We may not be as fortunate to be the birds on the wire, with physical distance from the calamity but we still have that spiritual location of peace and protection we carry within us wherever we go, even if it is in the heat of the battle or in the heart of the destruction. 

This spiritual center of peace within us is our true Being. Because it is who we are, we can never be removed from it. It is our secure foundation to hold to when we are being tossed about by life’s waves. When we become aware of this center of our Being on a regular basis, we begin to realize that it is never touched, moved, or injured in any way during any condition, even if our body is maimed or destroyed. We begin frequently to reside in the awareness of this spiritual location ”above the earth’s calamities,” similar to the two birds in the tsunami.  We anchor ourselves in this place of deep joy and peace, untouched by sickness, tragedy, or annihilation and, in doing so, we see manifested our true life of happiness, peace, and love.

Why Spirituality? An Introduction

Lighting a Candle

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

 

What makes a person choose to live a spiritual life?

Our world seems to have everything we could ever possibly want to experience. There are places to go, things to do, movies and TV shows to watch, hobbies to attend to, wars to fight, friends and families to spend time with, sex to have, partners to love, drugs to take, wines to savor, pets to cuddle, jobs to go to and tasty foods to eat. We literally have a universe of things to do. So why would anyone want to focus on spirituality, an activity which often removes us from all of these exciting experiences of our world?

Many of us have had moments when we have realized the experiences available to us in this life are not very fulfilling unless they are also giving us a sense of peace and happiness. If we are not experiencing inner peace and happiness from our jobs, we soon begin pondering different employment. We’ll leave relationships when they no longer give us the peace and happiness we crave. Even with a seemingly infinite amount of things to see, do, and participate in in our world, we recognize most of those things aren’t worth doing unless they make us happy or fulfilled.

One of the main selling points of religion is that it will give you loads of inner fulfillment. Since the beginning of time, prophets and dynamic personalities have promised peace, happiness, and a blissful life if you would just worship their gods, pray their prayers, and live their particular way of life. And it seems to work for some people. Their faithful attend places of worship on a regular basis, remove certain experiences from their lives, wear particular clothes or symbols, and read recommended holy books. Whether they truly find inner peace and happiness can only be testified to by the individuals, but there seems to be no shortage of believers, disciples, and devotees to the numerous religions.

Most of us, however, would rather not remove ourselves from the activities of the world. We have no interest in becoming monks or ascetics or hermits. We want to experience all the excitement and fun life has to offer while also gaining the peace and happiness we feel on an intuitive level is our birthright. So we examine religion a bit to see if there is something we can take away and incorporate into our daily lives. We try meditation but can’t relax due to our noisy, crazy mind. Friends may suggest yoga, but we can’t experience inner peace when we are trying our best not to topple over. So we give up. We’d like to find something that works but it’s just way too much trouble.

My own life has been a long, focused pursuit of the spiritual. I don’t recall a time when I wasn’t trying to find god or at least the most effective path of reaching him/her/it. I went to church, read books, prayed, meditated, fasted, listened to teachers, gurus, and preachers. At times I felt like I was close, other times I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. Still, the quest for a spiritual life was always my main motivation. I didn’t know how to separate that seeking from who I was as a person. Then one day that happened on its own.

When I was forty-something years old and still living a life as a spiritual seeker, I had an experience in meditation that clearly “told” me there is no god. As you might imagine, that was a startling and unexpected message to come to one who had spent his entire life in the pursuit of god. Yet, oddly enough, at that very moment existence became clearer than it had ever been for me. Everything finally made perfect sense. At the time, I felt it was the closest thing I had ever felt to the experience Jesus described as being “born again.” It was a complete change of consciousness. From that moment, I ceased everything “spiritual” I had been working on, thinking about or studying and for ten years I lived life with no god. It wasn’t at all the life my Southern Baptist upbringing told me atheists experienced. There was no anger, despair, sense of loss, or hopelessness. On the contrary, I was filled with more joy, fulfillment, and inner peace than any moment I ever experienced as a spiritual believer.

Ten years after my “conversion” to atheism, I felt an inner pull to start meditating again. It wasn’t something I felt would be the start of a new spiritual practice. In fact, I assumed it would be nonspiritual meditation for the sole purpose of more focus, clarity, and creativity. It turned out, however, to be a doorway into a new experience of spirituality, an opening of inner perception and enlightenment. It was that “place” I sought to be my entire spiritual life. And it came without effort, expectation, or desire. Imagine that.

One of the continual frustrations on my life-long spiritual journey has been the seemingly complicated and complex instruction given by teachers which often seem to lead nowhere other than a new state of inner confusion. When I finally reached that space of  “enlightenment” it could only be described as the most simple awareness. Natural. Uncomplicated. Why was it necessary for me as a spiritual student to spend so much time trying to decipher spiritual puzzles, koans, and parables in order to reach this natural state of simplicity? Was there not a teacher somewhere who could have helped me wake up without pushing me further into darkness?

If anything, that is the main purpose and goal of this web site. To help provide a clear and simple path to those interested in “waking up.” Waking up to the nature of who you really are. Not to dish out a little bit of peace and happiness for your life journey but to help you realize that your own very nature is peace and happiness. That very nature is the background on which your entire life experience appears! I have no intention of assembling a new teaching. The world doesn’t need a new religion. My intention is to simply provide pointers in the way of thoughts, ideas, and examples that may prove helpful to your own spiritual life. These pointers may help shake your conditioned mental foundations and open new insights leading to your own awakening. It is my intention and hope that you too experience the beauty, simplicity, and infinite wonder of the reality which you are.