When I was much younger I used to think that once I had xyz, I’d be happy. I’d work hard towards attaining whatever goal I set for myself and the moment I reached it I was elated. Have you experienced this too? Perhaps you’ve lost those last annoying 10 pounds, earned that promotion, bought a new trinket, or made amends with that relationship. The initial feeling of attaining a goal or satisfying a desire fills us with a sense of completion and satisfaction. Unfortunately, this feeling doesn’t last long. Try as we might we can never cling onto this sense of satiety because the nature of life is transient; all things change.
So the cycle goes, desire and the attaining of the desire which leads to a feeling of restlessness and eventually a desire for something new. For many people this is the nature of their reality. Happiness is dependent on external values; identification through objects of desire. This is so prevalent in our society that many Life Coach’s have jumped on the latest popular craze of ‘designing your life’ or ‘living your life purpose’ in hopes of helping client’s discover their true happiness. However, even this strategy is just another method to get more of the same; the never-ending cycle of always wanting more.
The Fleeting Fickleness of Happiness
For, even if you successfully discover your deepest desire and work towards bringing it out into this world, there will be a time where your vision has reached it’s peak and you become restless again. If this weren’t true then all the millionaires and billionaires with yachts, fancy cars, perfect bodies, and millions of followers would be the happiest people on earth and unfortunately we know that they are not. In contrast, we all know of humble people living quiet simple lives that seem to possess an aura of equanimity and balance around them. Are they happy? Or do they embody something else? Something beyond the fleeting fickleness of happiness?
So we must take a greater look into what we call ‘happy’ and whether this ideal is truly what we are aiming for. In order to come to know what lasting happiness is, we must understand what it is not. Abiding happiness cannot be found in external objects whether it is a car, a career, or even a person as we have already pointed out; these things are all transient and do not last. If we do attach our happiness to these things, then we leave ourselves vulnerable to the possibility of losing that object should it disappear.
Beyond The Duality of Happiness and Unhappiness
We live in a world of duality; birth and death, light and dark, high and low, cold and hot, happiness and unhappiness. The physical laws of existence do not make it possible to experience life from only one extreme. We must be malleable enough to traverse all the vicissitudes of life without losing our inner balance. So, what we are really seeking is an inner harmony or tranquility that is not swayed by outside causal factors.
This inner balance or harmony has been referred to by the ancients as ananda or bliss, though it is not the bliss that most Westerners think of. Nanda means contentment and the prefix ‘a’ expresses a strong emphasis so ananda can be translated into ‘great contentment’. This great contentment or bliss is a pleasant way of being and a very stable platform from which to experience life. From this vantage point you can participate in all areas of life and still maintain your inner blissfullness/great contentment/pleasant state of being.
How To Maintain A Blissful State of Consciousness
The ancient mystics refer to reality as Satchitananda; or truth, consciousness and bliss. Sat means true essence, or that which never changes. Chit means consciousness or the knower of experience and ananda, bliss or great contentment. These three make up existence. To access a state of natural peacefulness and joyfulness that is ever present and all abiding one must step beyond the body/mind and access existence. We do this through meditation.
Meditation is similar to the word ‘happiness’ in that it has many definitions depending on who you talk to. Some say meditation is concentrating on one thing, chanting a mantra, thinking a thought or being mentally alert to things around you. However, these are just methods, means and acts of learning to control the mind and it’s constant chatter. True meditation aka dhyana, is not something that you can ‘do’ but is rather a quality that you exude; one becomes meditative when the conditions are right.
Maintaining a blissful state of consciousness is a natural state for all human beings; we need only access it with conscious awareness. Through the practice of daily meditation methods, we slowly rewire our brain to be able to access and maintain this quiet state of high awareness for longer and longer periods. Through daily practice we become meditative, slowly taking over control of the tool we call ‘mind’ rather than having the mind control us. Eventually we are able to take this hard earned peace and joy outside of our sitting meditation practice and into our everyday lives. This meditative quality becomes our everyday state of being; our normal level of consciousness.
It is through this disciplined practice that we experience a blissful state of consciousness at all times irrespective of what is happening around us. We rewire our brain, increase our energy, and vibrate at a higher frequency. Life suddenly becomes smooth and effortless. Things we need find their way to us naturally without any great effort on our part. This is because we are in harmony with the greater existence and life itself. This state of being is far beyond the very limited and transient nature of being ‘happy’.
