Saturday, April 16, 2016

Secret of Happiness: It's Directional; It's UP!

Truth is simple: all else, complex.

How easily we stumble into the darkness of confusion and doubt by looking down into the labyrinth of our troubles, indulging our fears and self doubts, accepting the judgmental verdict of others or what we imagine that judgment might be!

If our own happiness, satisfaction and contentment be our guide and our goal, no one condemns us more than ourselves: no distant deity, no colleague or intimate can do to us what we do to ourselves.

As Paramhansa Yogananda has said, "If we want to be unhappy, no one can make us happy."

The turning point in maturity and spiritual awakening can be said to take place when we know without a doubt that there exists a separation, indeed, a gulf, between what happens to us and our reaction to it. "All conditions are neutral. They seem positive or negative, happy or sad according to the attitudes of the mind." (P.Yogananda) Only as and to the extent we gain awareness and control over our responses to life (including our own thoughts and emotions), can we begin to be the masters of our fate and destiny............and HAPPINESS!

Recognition of the separation of the world around us from the "ME" is but the first step. It is by no means the last. A teenager will rebel or reject his his parents' values and upbringing, but may, in the years that follow, return to embrace those values consciously (like the prodigal son). In a similar way, the soul, in the form of the ego (defined by Yogananda as the "soul identified with the body"), may be inspired, at first, to wean itself from the attractions of material life in its spiritual search. But as the seed of spirituality grows into a mature tree, its leafy and lofty branches nourishes and protects all who come to it for shade and refreshment. The soul's very detachment from an ego-centric life is not the life negation that other egos assume. Life negation is not the consequence of a spiritually mature form of nonattachment! Indeed, quite the opposite. Nonattachment makes life affirmation truly possible because not biased by personal interest, likes, and dislikes but motivated by what is right and good for all.

Nor is nonattachment a recipe for boredom or for being a bore. Nonattachment brings a constant flow of joy, humor at life's ironies, strength in dealing creatively and positively with life and compassion for all beings. Self-involvement, by contrast, sees the world revolving around itself. Its centripetal force steadily makes one's life view very narrow and, ultimately, rather boring. Why, then, doesn't everyone seek to expand his sympathies to include others? Habit, first and the ego, second, protecting its turf and fearing the unknown! And: reinforced by the power from which ego separation came and which sustains it so universally in human minds.

As a young man working in the world of business, I was astonished to see that the most successful investors, inventors, and business types were those whose focus on making money was a distant cousin to doing what they loved and were good at. By contrast, the "losers" were inevitably those most attached to the results. The little guy buys high and sells low, moving with the crowd, trembling eagerly at the prospect of profit or panicking in fear at the prospect of loss. Thus even in the grubby realm of making money, the law of non-attachment to the results holds sway. (Krishna, in the scripture of the Bhagavad Gita, called this form of action: nishkam karma: acting without desire for the "fruits" of action.) Nonattachment is the secret of success in all things. This is one of the great paradoxes of life.

Financial success however is no guarantee of happiness. Far too many mistake the one for the other, and, if they succeed financially, they will find, after years of strain, the coin debased. 

Life's challenges will always be with us. In this world there are no absolutes. Ill health, death, disappointment, betrayal and failure alternate with their opposites. As we mature and grow spiritually we can take in long, even strides the vicissitudes of success and failure with increasing equanimity and calm cheerfulness. Ironically, this distance, this dispassion, allows us to embrace WHAT IS with humor, with compassion, with wisdom, and with creative vitality. 

This world is a world of energy and constant change. We never stand still and, unless we harness conscious intention and will power towards a given goal and in a specific direction, we will bob up and down like a cork on the ocean of life. Thus, our journey towards happiness must be seen in directional, not absolute, terms. If we learn to love another person, we may begin with human love, which is rife with attachment. But if we consciously try to leverage on our love-relationship to make it ever more unconditional, than our human love can grow towards unconditional, divine love. In this way, my ability to love even one person can be a doorway to perfect in me my capacity to love all without condition!

Being energetic, enthusiastic, willing, helpful, creatively engaged, and compassionate (while yet also wise): these are the simple steps that make for human happiness. A selfish person is never happy in her selfishness. A giving person finds satisfaction in helping others. Are these enough, however? No, but an excellent beginning. Imagine if enough people aspired sincerely to these merely human qualities, we'd be living in a paradise on this fair earth.

Where's the fly in the soup? Well, the problem is this "ceaseless flux" thing. The average person might affirm enthusiasm but life keeps score and wants to settle accounts. It prefers to keep the universe in balance. It has this annoying way of popping balloons. You see it goes like this: "whatever goes up, must come down." If we push the rope of attitude "up," it will have to come down, eventually.

Is there a secret escape: a skylight out of this dilemma? Yes, there is. But even if there wasn't, the effort to express enthusiasm would be worth it. Swami Kriyananda (my teacher) said of himself, "The reason I love is that I am happier loving than hating." To affirm enthusiasm does make us happy, even if just for a while. But it's at least the right direction, you see?

The skylight however is the discovery that enthusiasm isn't your invention. It comes from your own higher nature. This nature isn't personal: its universal. The secret of enthusiasm (and, therefore, happiness), however, is to know that happiness is an "inside" not an outside job. It is a product of our consciousness, not outside circumstances. Enthusiasm for vacuum cleaners (if you are a sales person for such) can't carry one very far by the nature of vacuum cleaners: nothing's perfect; competition may come up with a better one; too many people have one already; the one you are selling may be over priced etc.

Enthusiasm is larger than you: just as life and the universe are vaster than any one person. Enthusiasm (joy, peace, etc.) is like a radio station. All you need to do is to tune your receiver to that station. The more powerful your receiver the more happiness stations you can choose from. What if, "by nature," you are not an enthusiastic person? Then ACT enthusiastic and the power of your affirmation will automatically and magnetically turn the dial of your receiver to that station! Again, the direction of our efforts is vital.

Meditation offers the single most effective way to experience a state of mind where life affirming qualities like joy and peace can become increasingly your new and permanent self-identity. Living from your center is like having a box of chocolates where you know that each one has a creamy, yummy soft-center. Not like that box of chocolates like Forrest, Forrest Gump had. You know, the one where you "never know what you're gonna get."

Enthusiasm, like joy and peace, is an invisible and conscious force which, if we affirm that we do have it, will respond to support us. This is the anti-gravity serum that allows us to defeat the up and down-ness of the law of opposites which otherwise rules nature. This teaching is at the heart of the once popular pop movie, "The Secret." It's called magnetism. Our "energy" is like electricity: it generates a force field which attracts to it a like kind. Energy, then, based on attitude and reinforced by action, is the key to our destiny.

Yoga practice (by yoga, I mean primarily meditation but also its physical forms: postures) takes this a step further. Not only by "sitting" or "stretching" can one experience inner peace, but by consciously working with the life-vitality of the body to move this life force from the lower parts of the body up to the brain! A yogi learns to experience the body not merely as a physical mechanism, but as a creative vortex of vital, intelligent, life-giving energy.

Just as we look up when happy and look down when unhappy, so too yoga practice teaches us how to move the "energy" of the body upward. In the very process of this movement, we experience greater calmness and joy. It's not wholly mechanical for the mind has to cooperate rather than fight this process. As happiness (etc.) is a state of consciousness and not merely a "thing," it requires conscious intention, not just mechanical movements to attract it. But nonetheless it's amazingly easily to prove that a flow of energy in the right direction can change your consciousness. No belief system needed.

As we progress in the pursuit of true happiness, we gradually awaken to the reality that this joy exists not just within us but all around us: indeed: everywhere. We discover that this reality is conscious; it is self-evident to our own experience. This reality is super-conscious, meaning omnipresent and omniscient and, indeed, is the essence of life itself. It connects all matter and all people in one larger-than-life vortex of Consciousness and the reality of it becomes intuitively incontestable to your inner experience and sight. It is called: God! Divine Mother, or Father. or Holy Ghost or AUM.

Ultimately, this divine consciousness is both the source of, and the solution to resolving, all the opposites, both positive and negative. But that doesn't make negative as "good" as positive! Positive attitudes foster happiness far more effectively than negative ones. The bad guys go to jail; the heroes are honored. Our "job" is to move in the right direction (positive). When we discover the greater reality from which they come, then we are drawn magnetically towards our Source. It is in the baptism of our consciousness in that divine state where the opposites do not dwell that our efforts achieve both beatitude and increasing permanence.

To start this journey seeking the Holy Grail of happiness requires no dogma. Anyone, atheists included, may embark upon the adventure. The goal and the path are self-revealing, for, the secret of happiness, like the "kingdom of heaven," is, as Jesus Christ said it well enough, "within you."

Joy to you,

Nayaswami Hriman