Most of us have grown up assuming that deep feelings of happiness, love, and peace are “involuntary,” dependent on random external circumstances; in other words, on how things work out for us or what happens to us. But in actuality, rather than leaving your body, mind, and emotions at the mercy or whim of circumstance, you can bring a new balance of spontaneity, vulnerability, and self-control into your daily life.
We all know about happiness, but how many of us live it? We know how to look happy, to put on a happy face in a culture of emotional denial, but no one taught us how to feel happy.
Happy people create happiness; it’s the most contagious energy on the Earth. Fearful, sad, angry, or miserable people tend to spread these same qualities, even if working in the name of “social conscious.”
No matter what we want in life, a partner, more money, good health, a fulfilling career or enlightenment, it all comes down to the same thing: behind all the wishes, behind the desires, beyond every symbol, we want to feel happy. After all, if we feel completely happy, what more do we need? And if we don’t feel happy, no relationship or career success can satisfy us.
If we look closely at our lives, most of us don’t feel terribly happy very much of the time because we focus our attention on precisely that which makes us feel bad, our problems, issues, and unfinished business. We find the quarry of happiness elusive because we aren’t sure what it looks like; like the chimera, it appears to us in many forms, all temporary.
Creating happiness is not easy and radiating positive energy doesn’t mean playing “pretend,” or engaging in denial or repression, all of which involve fooling ourselves. When we are truly happy, we fully acknowledge and honor whatever emotions are passing through; we watch them like clouds passing by, but we focus our attention on the sunshine above the clouds.
So intentionally creating a space of unconditional happiness differs from just saying or bravely pretending to be happy. It’s the only happiness I know that in not dependent on outside circumstances.
Our ego tends to throw away happiness, always looking for it elsewhere.
Happiness is our choice. We have the freedom to be happy here, now, in any moment.
