Waiting on the world to bring back your happiness

How most people would answer the three most important questions

(Click here to start this series from the beginning.)

Last time we saw why these three questions are the most important questions we can ask ourselves:

1. What is the source or cause of happiness?
2. What is the source or cause of unhappiness?
3. When we are unhappy, how can we shift back to happiness?

My new thing …

Jack Handy, the well-known writer for Saturday Night Live, once said:  “I think my new thing will be to try to be a real happy guy. I’ll just walk around being real happy until some jerk says something stupid to me.”

Why is this so funny? It’s because his grandiose resolution is just to do what he’s always done.  To what nearly everyone does all the time. You just go around being happy as long as everything is going your way, and then you immediately become upset as soon as anything or anyone somehow crosses you. We all know exactly what he’s talking about, because we’ve all been there ourselves.

Typical answers to the three important questions

Jack Handy’s statement points to how most people would answer out three important questions.

1.  What is the source or cause of happiness? Having all the right stuff and right conditions in your life.  For instance, good health, a good relationship, enough money to do or buy whatever you want, people around you doing and saying the right things, etc. And perhaps also a good past, that was free of abusive and damaging situations, and free of guilt and regrets. Most people agree that it’s hard to be happy now if you were emotionally “wounded and scarred” in the past.

2. What is the source or cause of unhappiness?  Not having all the right conditions in your life. Or even worse, having exactly the wrong conditions in your life. For instance, not having great health or a great body; not having the perfect relationship or partner; not having enough money to get everything you want. Having people around you do the wrong things (treat you unfairly; be nasty or rude or disrespectful; try to cheat you); having a bad history (being abused by others, and/or making your own seemingly irreparable mistakes).

3. How shift from happiness back to happiness? Fix or change the world and others and your circumstances, at least to whatever extent is practical and possible. Of course, much of the unhappy stuff in your past may not be fixable, since it has already happened.  We tend to believe that a done deal can’t always be undone.  And the upshot of all of this is that perfect happiness may well be impossible for you. Most people tend to believe that they must settle for a limited degree of happiness, and that only some of the time.

As we look more deeply at happiness, we will discover that it is precisely the belief that our happiness and unhappiness depend on the world that is the source of all of our unhappiness.  (To be continued …)

supreme happiness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We are all looking for happiness

As you know if you have read any of my writings, I define the word “happiness” as the unity of perfect peace and absolute joy and unconditional love. I don’t think of these as three separate things, but rather as three expressions of the same state of being. And for simplicity,  I call that state of mind, “happiness.” So “happiness” for me means a whole lot more than being cheerful or being in a good mood or having fun. I’m not claiming that this is the “right” definition of happiness. But it is my definition. So as you read through these blog posts, every time you see the word “happiness,” think perfect peace-joy-love. If you have a word for that state of mind that you like better, please feel free to substitute it as you read.

Happiness, in the sense that I am defining it, is the purpose and motivation of everything we do, everything we choose, everything we strive for. We are looking for happiness for ourselves and others in everything we do. And far from being a selfish pursuit, cultivating our own happiness is the very foundation for offering it to others.  You can’t share what you don’t have. (And in this case, sharing it is exactly what enables you to recognize that you have it. But more on that later.)

Our starting point

We find ourselves in the midst of a life experience where we are sort of happy some of the time.  Some of us are more happy more of the time, and some less.

But regardless of where we start on the scale, we all want the same thing: to be more happy more of the time.

The 3 most important questions

Since we are all looking for more peace and love and joy all of the time, perhaps the most important questions we could ask ourselves are:

1. What is source or cause of happiness? Where does happiness come from?
2. What is source or cause of unhappiness? Where does unhappiness come from?
3. When we are unhappy, how can we shift back to happiness?

You could say that the most important question is the third one: “how can we shift back to happiness?” Because when we are feeling happy, we don’t really care about these questions very much. But when we are unhappy, it is the third question that is very pressing.  But to answer that question, we first need to understand where happiness and unhappiness come from.

(To be continued ….)

Choose your turtle wisely

There is a classic story about Bertrand Russell questioning a Hindu philosopher who was giving a presentation at the Royal Philosophy Society. (Actually there are many versions of this story, but this is the one I first heard.)  The Hindu philosopher was describing a traditional mythical-metaphysical theory about foundation of Being. He said, “The world rests on the back of a giant elephant.”

Lord Russell jumped in immediately asking, “What does the elephant rest on?”

The answer was, “The elephant rests on the back of a giant camel.”

Lord Russell pounced on this answer and asked, “Yes, but what does the camel rest on?”

The answer was, “The camel rests on the back of a giant turtle.”

Lord Russell was determined to expose the foolishness of all this, and asked, “Yes, yes, but what does the turtle rest on?”

The answer was, “The turtle rests on the back of another turtle.”

Now Lord Russell smelled blood, and moved in for the kill: “Aha! But what does that turtle rest on?”

The Hindu philosopher smiled and answered, “No, no. You won’t catch me there, Lord Russell.  It’s turtles all the way down.”

Any way of talking about ultimate Truth will ultimately end up being “turtles all the way down.”  So when you construct your own myth about “what’s really going on,” choose your turtle wisely.