Do we really want to be happy? Or...

This is PART #1 (of three)

the PRIMARY QUESTION is: Do we really want to be happy? Or...are we confusing happiness with a temporary feeling of victory from SOMETIME getting what we want, or a feeling of relief from avoiding what we don't want?

From my observations over the last 28 years (I'm currently 42) - I have noticed that we, as a human race are seriously confused about what it means to be truly happy.

Here is my current definition of happiness:

Happiness is being happy with whatever we experience, or to be even more exact, being happy "regardless" of what we experience. Yes, this means being happy EVEN if we don't get what we want!

To some this might sound like a defeatist attitude, as if one is settling for mediocrity rather than striving for more. But, please notice that nothing in that definition says that we can't strive, or create any other experiences or activities. It says that simply we are happy with whatever we experience, even the striving.

But, one of the major traps we seem to fall into is confusing being TRULY happy with being "finished." Think retirement, or achieving financial independence, hitting the lottery, getting a massive inheritance...etc

Since we assume that happiness is our goal, and that achieving what we want will make us happy, it follows that when we are happy, we must be finished, we must have attained all that we want.

Who can see the flaws in this thinking?

Obviously, based on this flawed thinking, the chances of being happy must be reduced to moments of achieving something we want, and to be completely happy we would have to have achieved all that we want.

This is VERY unlikely, because our wanting never ends.

Given that wanting is a function of self-survival, which is another topic in itself, this drive to want, won't end until we do.

The endless desire to get what we want is not restricted to major goals or life-altering events, it is found in every day activities, like wanting to find a good program to watch on TV, winning an argument in this forum , getting something good to eat, banging your wife's sister (without your wife finding out, or instead, with your wife finding out ) - and so on.

But, I do want you to notice that fundamentally, all these things only bring us short term pleasure, a feeling of victory, or relief, but NOT true happiness.

True happiness is based on being happy, and not on circumstance.

And true happiness is being happy with whatever one experiences and regardless of what one experiences NOW, in the present moment, and ONLY in the present moment.

Happiness is NOT and never about the future. It is always about being happy now, and being happy with whatever we are experiencing on a moment-to-moment basis.

If we have what we want, we are happy, if we don't have what we want we are happy. Happiness is about being happy, period!

It is clear that if our happiness is circumstantially derived, and this is how it seems when we are confused, then whenever we fail to avoid unpleasant circumstances, we must be unhappy.

Striving to make circumstances conform to our personal desires not only puts us in a position of endless struggle, it seduces us into a mental frame of judgement, opinion, reaction, and manipulation. By their very nature these will always lead to some form of suffering, even if it's so taken for granted that we assume it's simply a natural aspect of life.

The bottom line is that this dynamic produces an endless stream of reactions that appear as inflicted and unwanted. Since getting what we want seems the opposite of suffering, it follows that if we aren't getting what we want, we must be suffering.

If both are an illusion (and they are 100%) then neither needs to be the case.

When we are in pain, we assume that we are suffering.

Yet suffering is actually "being forced to put up with something unwanted."

Certainly pain is unwanted, isn't it? It might even be the most unwanted thing.

But it just might be that we are NOT forced to put up with it. It might be that we generate it on purpose.

Pain and pleasure clearly exist to provide information regarding our relationship to everything.

As a "self" we need to classify everything into positively and negatively charged fields.

Pain is part of this activity. So is pleasure and desire.

These charged assessments (pleasure and pain) are additions to our experience - rather than an experience of what is there in reality.

We create pain, and want to continue to experience it, because deep down we know that pain provides us with a real service that helps with our physical and social survival, and we all want to survive in these two domains.

This is what a conceptual-egoic-self-mind does on a moment-to-moment basis, and true happiness is not a part of its plan, because the self-mind has no interest in the present moment.

All it cares about are past memories and future projections.

Oh...and to keep everyone of us running like rats inside a wheel, chasing the invisible cheese (goals and desires), trying to survive as a false-self.

If you didn't know WHY it is called the rat race...now you do.

The self-mind also works quite hard to make sure we ignore the FACT that we will never get the cheese, we will not survive, we will die.

One of the ways out of this trap is to be happy with what you have at this exact moment, on a moment-to-moment basis.

I mean think about it. Have you ever been anywhere except here and now?

I believe that many folks just want to be unhappy.

Many others can't believe it is so simple.

Once you see it, then you really know.

Happiness is a state of mind and does not have to be dependent on circumstance.

nice avatar happy talk guy. haha

money is the disease that feeds this cycle. kill yourself for that buck and then waste it quick on something that makes you happy for about 5 minutes. Being happy with yourself in the now, means being content with what you have in the now.

When a harvest is coming up and I am anticipating more "stuff" that I like, I find my happiness becomes more dependent on my urges and desires. ie. I need rich food, I drink more, and what I have seems more boring. When Im popping seeds with a fat head stash, Im happy doing the dishes and wondering at the small things. I feel this is the root of the "beginners mind" that is the goal in spiritual practice.

i am happy as you can get without being annoying. own house and properties.cars paid in full. live in sd great climate.med mj. great dog. so many things keeping me happy. i am takin it easy . i put in my 7 day 12 hours work for a long time sometimes more. now i chill . i dont have to worry what day it is or time it is . and i can go fishing whenever i want. yeeeeeehaw btw south florida was fun but the cops were all over me .lol. and i aint into bling.

Thanks for all your comments and the rep folks.

This is PART #2 (of three)

Continuing on, toward the true nature of happiness:

It becomes increasingly clear that in the domains of physical and social self-survival we need for pain to occur. By the way, physical and social-survival is ALL we do. If we are living as a false-conceptual-self (and believe me we are) 100% self-survival (physical and social) is all that is occuring. There is nothing outside of it...ever.

It isn't actually that difficult to consider that if we need pain to occur, that as a result, we also need suffering to occur. We need these to occur in order to continue to generate the particular activities of the self that we have become identified with.

It is simply an overall by-product of the complex of activities that depend on pain and pleasure, value and threat, good and bad, to determine survival. Since we want to survive we want to suffer. That might sound absurd...but it's 100% true.

Of course, we say we want pleasure and don't want pain, and that we don't want to suffer. It just seems to happen to us, try as we might to avoid it. But we're missing the big picture folks.

Pain and Suffering are NOT happening to us, we are actually producing them.

Since it is not acceptable for us that our "self" dissolves (does not survive) - or that anything associated with or serving this "self" is surrendered, we do not care to let go of the activities that allow us to hang on to all these things.

It is not acceptable for us NOT to have a way to navigate this complex "self" - that we believe and assume we are - through our field of experiences.

We need to have a positive and negative charge on everything in order for us to do so - and this field is generated by us - not merely perceived.

When we are clear that our suffering is occuring within our own internal state - our own thinking and emotions, judgments and reactions, perceptions and interpretations - we can better recognize this pain and suffering in its many forms as an activity that we create.

It also becomes evident to a large degree, that this is all a by-product of all the activities that we ourselves are doing.

If we can locate in our awareness the activity that creates pain and suffering, no pain or suffering needs to be experienced as simply occuring.

I am aware that it is difficult to see all of these familiar and taken-for-granted activities, - desire, judgments, ideals, beliefs, opinions, clinging, self-image, fear, self-identity, upsets, needs, and concerns - as creating our own suffering, but with observation and contemplation of your own experience it is possible. Simply looking back on your life, and also observing how you are currently projecting into the future, one can notice how we suffer and struggle because of all the activities mentioned above.

I know this is not easy to grasp at first glance, and especially hard to grasp when we are confronted by life's activities. But, if we contemplate the matter, getting past the knee-jerk assumptions that emanate from self-survival and our adherence to cultural dogma, we will begin to see that it is true.

We do in fact generate our own suffering because we cling so much to our self-interests on so many levels.

Even if you're unwilling to give up the basic sense of being a self - and are willing to suffer the consequences - you might be willing to give up the complexity of your conceptual-self and false-self, and so need not suffer the preservation of these.

The vast majority (99%) of our suffering is caused by clinging to the conceptual world of self. By far the best thing to do is to directly experience what your real self really is. This would clear up so much.

But, until that happens, you can profoundly observe what the false-egoic-conceptual-self "does" and grasp how you actually generate 100% of the suffering in your life, rather than endure it.

Were we to recognize that suffering is NOT necessary, we imagine we wouldn't endure it.

Yet, we do!

Clearly, it requires a much deeper experiential recognition of the activities that cause the suffering. Beyond simply hearing about it, we need to be willing to challenge the assumptions that are as close to our hearts as our very selves.

More over, we suffer the ignored knowledge that in our struggle to survive as a "false-self" - we will, in the end fail. We will die a physical death, and the false-self will stop persisting at that moment. Since it was created after we showed up in this world, and is a simply a temporary distinction occuring inside of OUR Consciousness, the false-self is an illusion that lasts only as long as the physical body last.

The main assumption that results in the consequence of suffering is the assumption of the "self."

We presume that we need the "self" to exist.

We DO NOT.

Let go of the false-conceptual-self, and you let go of suffering.

NO false-self = NO suffering!

Folks, we ONLY suffer because we believe and assume we ARE this false-self. But we are NOT.

Once you let go of the false-self - true happiness will emerge as your real-self being happy with whatever and regardless of what you experience at the present moment.

If you will have all that you want, or you will not have anything that you want, you will be truly happy, and not merely surviving as something false, that needs a non-stop exchange of pain and pleasure in order to believe that you are alive and surviving.

You can jump off this wheel, stop being a mouse that's chasing the invisible cheese, and actually experience reality AS-IT-IS-AS-ITSELF and FOR-ITSELF, and not in relation to a false-self made up of a snow-ball that is filled and over-flowing with false beliefs, assumptions, and BS that our CULTURE has been force-feeding us for millennia.

Your REAL SELF is what IS.

Your false-conceptual-self, the mouse chasing the cheese, is what is NOT.

This is why as a false-conceptual-self, we continue to run after the cheese, and as we get closer and closer, the cheese continues to be out of our reach.

The false-conceptual-self makes a RAT out of us, and uses DESIRE as the invisible-cheese that we are never meant to actually get.

Look where you are right now. No matter what you have or don't have, if you have desires about the future, you are SUFFERING, because suffering is an element of desire. Desiring in itself, is when you are not happy with what IS, and a belief in that you will be happy when you get what you desire at some time in the future.

...Do notice that this desire IS-WHAT-IS-NOT, and simply a future projection in your mind. And you believe and assume that when you finally get this cheese (desire) you will be happy.

But, as this future gets closer and closer, the cheese gets moved forward ==>> farther and farther into future, over and over.

To actually grasp how this self-principle keeps us chasing the cheese as if we are rats in a wheel, you have to contemplate your life experience, and observe how from the first moment you remember your "self" existing and right up to this moment where you are right NOW - you have been running inside this wheel, chasing the invisible piece of cheese.

And what has been pushing you to run non-stop is the force of pain and pleasure created through your own false-conceptual-self-mind.

All you have been doing 100% of the time is surviving as this FALSE-SELF.

As soon as this "false-self" was created in the field of your awareness --- (when you were a small child) --- self-survival has been the goal...period!

But, if we recognize that this is all an illusion, we can stop being rats, stop being what we ARE-NOT, and actually BE what we are.

.......a Human BEINGS.

Being does not persist, it does not need to survive. It is what it IS.

Being IS-ess.

IS = Being.....and it does not need to survive or persist, because it is what IS.

It does not need to be a DONKEY walking after an invisible carrot, being dangled by the false-conceptual-self-mind.

Being exists AS-ITSELF and FOR-ITSELF, and Being exists ONLY NOW.

Here and Now. And Being is what you really ARE.

Interesting, huh?



That's end of part#2 folks

Television is the biggest road block to a higher state of mind...most people are so confused about themselves because they try so hard to fit in...rather then be themselves...owning items means nothing.... building good karma is where its at...Material objects are just the stupid idea of self worth you were trained to believe is good since you were a child...

You can draw positive energy to yourself...you can do some amazing things with your mind....it all starts with how you carry yourself as a person...

Television and Pop Culture aka Social Engineering...

Evil people have too much control over peoples thoughts ..its scary

This is PART #3 (of three)

It may sound strange, but our purpose in life is NOT to be happy. Life as a goal of persistence demands that our attention and commitment be devoted to "self-survival" - and all of our organs of perception have been designed toward this end.

Since mind serves and is generally considered to be the self, this self-mind is where all experience arises from and relates to.

Our constant thinking and chatter, our emotions and reactions, our underlying drives and instincts, are all designed for and committed to the persistence of this "self."

Nowhere in any of this is happiness the purpose.

The devotion of mind and body to the persistence of this "false-self" is not a devotion to happiness. As a matter of fact, for reasons other than the simple fact that it is not, survival cannot be directed toward happiness. Happiness is NOT found in the pursuit of happiness.

As strange as it may sound WANTING happiness, is itself unhappiness.

Wanting happiness implies a separation from the thing desired. So wanting to be happy suggest we are NOT happy. The very act of wanting happiness is an act of suffering.

Happiness on the other hand is only found in BEING happy.

Since we notice that getting something we want frequently brings us a sense of pleasure, we reason that attaining everything we want should take pleasure to some ultimate, permanent level.

If we think that an abundance of fulfilled desires indeed brings happiness, it obviously makes sense that one of our culturally accepted goals is to get a lot of everything we want - an abundance of love, success, wealth, or even enlightenment.

Without investigating too much we naturally assume that making everything work out and obtaining all that we want will bring the happiness we seek.

But, the problem here is this: The fundamental operating principle of self, and of our self-mind, - which dominates our EVERY perception, thought, reaction, emotion, and action - makes this reasoning incomplete and happiness unattainable.

Getting or maintaining what we want is a function of survival. This includes both physical (20%) and social survival (80%). It is not the pursuit of happiness even though it SEEMS like it is.

Remember the mouse is never meant to get the cheese, only to persist by running after it.

Ordinarily we tend to focus on acquiring whatever will fulfill our needs. With experience, we tend to notice that our needs are never finally or ultimately fulfilled no matter what we accomplish.

Some of us even begin to suspect that our activities and impulses may be cyclical - that they may even somehow cause our distress.

This awakening suggests a high degree of sensitivity and alertness on our part, but still we find ourselves unable to step off the mouses's wheel.

Unfortunately our attempt to handle our many needs doesn't come to us like a cheese-chasing metaphor; it comes to us like life.

Yet, no accumulation of wealth, knowledge, status, or obtained desires will create happiness. We maybe happy to have those things, but without being free within, we won't actually be happy.

Happiness is as much about being free FROM ourselves as it is about being free to BE ourselves. Try as we might, we still struggle with this as a possibility rather than live within it as a reality.

Navigating through the ups and downs of circumstances and the good and bad of our internal states is self-survival in action.

If we're upset when something doesn't go our way, how can we be happy?

We imagine it is a temporary glitch, and once we fix the problem we can then be happy.

Usually the problem is seen as standing in the way of our happiness and so must be overcome in order for us to be happy.

Yet, in reality it does NOT stand in the way of happiness, it stands in the way of the SELF.

This is a BIG difference.

We have confused accomplishing survival - which shows up as getting what we want - with BEING happy.

Survival doesn't make us happy. It keeps us alive and persisting as ourselves. In the realm of survival, happiness is an illusion - it's simply some of the cheese that keeps us running on the wheel and so is just a tool of survival.

Actual happiness is NOT something to pursue for itself. Happiness is better seen as being happy with whatever you are experiencing on a moment-to-moment basis.

This obviously is not the goal of survival, which must divide experiences into good and bad.

Imagine being happy even though your experience is sad, or upset, or afraid, or angry.

Imagine being happy without desiring happiness.

Imagine being happy REGARDLESS of how you feel.

This is TRUE HAPPINESS.

Doesn't sound like the happiness we're used to as "happiness" does it?

That's because we aren't used to happiness, we're used to VICTORY (or defeat), and victory is always temporary.

No matter what is accomplished throughout our life, no matter how successfully we meet all of life's challenges, the end of the story is that we will fail. We will NOT survive.

All goals accomplished and ordeals overcome will fall away. That maybe a depressing and unacceptable fact for a self.

But to Being it doesn't matter.

If happiness is dependent on successfully realizing your goals, then ultimately there can be NO satisfaction and NO freedom.

On the other hand, if you are happy working toward your goals, then your happiness is not RESERVED for attaining them. If you are happy with whatever you experience, then you ARE happy. Being happy is a matter of being happy, period!

As far as BEING happy, your true nature is already happy; simply let it "BE."

Realize that this is true, and then it is true. It doesn't matter what comes or goes.

It's an odd thing to say that life is already complete, and that at our source (our true, genuine, and authentic self) we ARE already happy.

Perhaps happiness is an inherent aspect of Being, just as suffering and struggle are an inherent aspects of surviving as a false-self.

Don't fall into the trap though, thinking it is either one or the other - happiness versus suffering - but rather as BEING happy in the struggle and with suffering, and BEING happy without them as well!

Suffering and struggle are not something to be resisted; they are to be fully experienced and understood. Just as happiness isn't something to be desired; it is also to be fully experienced and understood.

Being CONSCIOUS of the true nature of things elicits joy and humor. I don't really know why. Perhaps the miraculousness of it all blows away the human mind, and freedom within shows whatever is there as unnecessary, and so our long suffering then appears - although not without affection - as rather humorous.

We don't really know what we ARE or what this moment IS.

If we can live in the moment and NOT-KNOW who or what we are, and what all of this IS, we will be the closest to our true nature as unknown-beings.

But, no matter if you ever reach this state, or not, --- BE HAPPY with whatever you are experiencing on a moment-to-moment basis!

Thanks for reading this long-ass 3-part post

huh

huh

Is this scientology?I'm a happy camper

"that's the way it is cause that's the way I thunked it!"

What non-sense.

I hate Rene Descartes!

being happy with your abilities is what you are talking about, your ability to DEAL with life. If you like your skills and your consistent choices and want to make the same choices its all a bowl of cherries... until you are faced with a real crisis.

Possibly relevant:

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/philosophy-guide-to-happiness/

Also, download the torrent for "the teaching company No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life" it is a series of lectures. Great for listening to while trimming, another member here turned me on to this, but I forget who.

I just want a happy ending

Happiness is overrated.

I mainly wish to be grateful.

Once again, thanks for all the comments, and the rep

This topic is not easy to grasp for most folks. I have been contemplating this stuff for years and years.

What we perceive 99.9% of the time is our beliefs and assumptions. Not what IS.

Beliefs and assumption are what is-not. They are CONCEPTS, secondary-conceptual-structures.

The conceptual beliefs and assumptions form the foundation of the false-conceptual-self, and it is all the false-self ever perceives. It is an exclusive system that keep the false-self isolated from reality of the present moment.

To see the truth, we must look without our beliefs and assumptions blinding us. We have to leave them at the door, when entering into the state of NOT-KNOWING.

When we are in the present moment and don't know who or what we are, we get as close to BEING who we truly ARE as possible. Here we can have a fresh look at what IS actually there, and NOT simply a reflection of our beliefs and assumptions.

This is why it might take reading this information above a few times, and then contemplating the real message that it carries.

Most folks think that it is BS, and only want to get on with their lives, to continue running on the wheel chasing the cheese.

Nothing wrong with that.

If you understand, things are AS they are. If you don't understand, things are AS they are.

ZEN-SAYING.

Happiness comes and goes. Im a lot happier with money in my pocket.

GET MO said:

Happiness comes and goes. Im a lot happier with money in my pocket.

Click to expand...

What you are talking about is self-survival-mode...lol.

Being aware of my false-self living as a mouse chasing the cheese, I am aware that I am also a lot happier with money in my pocket

But, this is NOT true happiness that I talked about in those three long posts. If this topic (true happiness) truly interests you, you might want to read them slowly, and a couple of times, and you will grasp what true happiness IS.

In simple words. True happiness is when you are happy with money in your pocket and happy when you have no money and no pockets to put them in.

very nicely written southflorida, I was just pondering about the happiness yesterday after reading this and remembered the sentence from christopher mccandless he wrote while dying in magic bus in the into the wild movie, happiness only real when shared.

jenery said:

very nicely written southflorida, I was just pondering about the happiness yesterday after reading this and remembered the sentence from christopher mccandless he wrote while dying in magic bus in the into the wild movie, happiness only real when shared.

Click to expand...

good to hear J that my posts made you ponder, this is the best way to grasp this elusive happiness stuff

btw...true happiness is a difficult thing to share with another, mostly because very few people are truly happy

but, if you have at least one other person to share it with - in the off-line world - it is definitely a spectacular experience!

peace

I am just trying to survive.....I have so many fleeting emotions, happiness is one of them, but so is sadness.....so I take what I can get, and keep it moving.