What is happiness? When we want to be happy, we are looking for a feeling of fulfillment. We want to feel fulfilled, but we also want this to last. Before understanding what genuine happiness is, we need do first see and delve deep into what the foundation of happiness consists of, what underlies it.
So for that, you have to start a self inquiry to become more aware what genuine happiness is for you. Have you ever asked yourself that? Maybe at a first glance, happiness to you equals money. But money in and of itself is not going to bring you happiness, obviously, it's what you do with that money and hence the feeling, the emotion that was created by the experience you had with the help of that money. We confuse the feelings given by certain things that we attain with having the things themselves. We don't look deeper to see that all of the things that we want are nothing but a means, nothing but intermediaries that promise to lead us to the feeling that we are unknowingly looking for for. But even after we get what we want and what we believe will make us happy, after a while we realise that that the feeling promised by these material things starts to dim, starts to slowly lose their intensity. We get used to the things that once were the goal for our happiness, we start taking these things for granted, we no longer perceive these things as the source of our happiness. This inevitably happens anytime & everytime we are unconscious of what true is happiness for us. So first of all before thinking that your happiness will be brought by an exterior source, try to figure out by doing some self work some introspection try to figure out what happiness is to you. So let's say we take with the big sample of the person for whom money at face value bring happiness. We already saw for this person it's not exactly the money that brings genuine happiness it's the feeling that underlies that brings him or her genuine happiness, so it's freedom, in this case. That only tells me that freedom is one of the core values that this person a deer's to and cherishes the most. To understand what happiness is to you, look at the things that using you want and need. So say you want to create beautiful art, that tells me me that your happiness is where creativity lies. If you want a good marriage that means that the value you that will bring you happiness is love. You value love. if you want a career that is successful that tells me that why you are are looking for is sense of significance and worth. However the Trap is the fact that we are conditioned and Wired to think that all of these things can be found outside. Therefore we pursue them outside of us and we are convinced than once we attain them they will offer us the everlasting feeling of happiness that we are after. But like I said previously once we obtain them we get used to them, we start taking them for granted and the happiness promised, the feeling of excitement that they initially sparked in us, all of this goes away.
The secret is understanding that you already have the things that you want. The problem is why you think that you don't. So for instance if you value freedom and for you, freedom brings you happiness in a genuine manner, why do you think that you are not already free? You see, happiness is not somewhere outside of you because that would make your happiness conditional. The only one that can give you happiness or take happiness away from you is yourself. And that gives you immense power. As I said in the beginning happiness must be unconditional even if it has to align with your desires expectations and values. It's not a contradiction or paradox because all of these factors like Desire expectations or values are intrinsic and inherent to your beingness and that makes them unconditional. The only problem that we have is that our mind and is so entrenched with the belief that happiness is a goal, that we automatically and unconsciously attribute happiness to something that is external to our being. All of these things - desire expectations and values - these are inherent to your being. So like I said if freedom is your happiness you need to ask yourself and do some self inquiry into why you are not already free. What stops you from being free. If you answer this by saying that you cannot feel free because of your rent, or your mortgage, or your miserable salary you are saying that you are enslaved by your own mind. Why? Because it's not the rent itself that makes your inner world not be free, it's your mind that puts the shackles on you. Do an exercise. Close your eyes and start feeling free, just like that. Imagine it. Sit with it and insist on feeling it until the feeling of freedom, hence happiness, invades and penetrates all of your veins, your entire body, your entire being. This is an exercise to help you see that you can practice the feeling of happiness unrestricted and without constraints from anything outside of your awareness. Exercise and after a while you start feeling happy. And you can become aware of the fact that in order to be happy you did not need any crutch from the outside, you were just happy. What does that tell you. That tells you that happiness is as I said not conditioned upon anything. The only requisite for happiness is beingness. Therefore happiness is at its core very simple: in order to be happy you just need to be. This aligns with everything that you desire everything that you expect and everything that you value because all of these things converge to the present moment. Happiness is in the present moment. Happiness cannot be in the past nor can it be in the future nor is it an attribute or a property held by materialistic things. This is where you fool yourself through the conditioning and the programming imposed on you by society.
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