This photograph is definitely a very happy moment. My wedding in January, 2018. Surrounded by family and friends and joining with the love of my life was one of the very happiest moments in my life. So, is that happiness? Or, that moment plus other “peak moments” in my life like the birth of my children, or their first steps, first words, graduations, my promotions and vacations… is happiness just peak moments, or is it more?
The experience of happiness is surely found in peak moments that are sprinkled throughout our lives. Recall one in your mind for a moment. First of all, you were very likely just in that moment with few, if any, distracting thoughts of past or future. There were most likely smiles and outright laughter and the glow of the event may well have carried on for days if not weeks. That peak moment is still there in your memory and perhaps you return to those moments time and again to relive the positive feelings and sense of optimism. But, is it possible to be happy outside of these extraordinary events? Like in everyday life when we are running errands, or doing chores or working or studying or the thousand other activities and events with which we populate our lives? Deep and sustained happiness is what I am talking about. Not just happiness in peak moments.
Just like the feelings in these peak moments, I believe that deep and sustained happiness is really two things. First it is a sense of complete satisfaction with the circumstances of our lives in any, and ultimately nearly every, moment. This is a feeling of completeness and also the concurrent absence of desire for something different or “better”. Secondly, it is a sense of being in the present moment which is really determined by the absence of thoughts about the past or future. It is only when we want to change some aspect of our circumstances, or want something different than what we have, or stay locked in rumination about the past, or anxiety/fear about the future, that our happiness slips away.
So, if to be happy we need to be satisfied with the way things are right now, and not think about the past and future, then what about the ideas of striving for goals, learning from the past or planning for the future? Our Human Being and our Soul Being (see previous posts) approach these questions very differently.
Remember, our Human Being is designed to be a survivalist and procreator, an individual. So, our Human Being sets goals that generally relate to accumulating more security about our physical survival and passing on our genetics to the next generation. Goals about money and possessions and finding or retaining the right mate and having children. This then drives the nearly constant thoughts about the past and what went well, and didn’t go well, relative to these goals. Likewise the continuous thoughts about the future are all intended to predict the achievement of the goals, and then to worry or even be fearful about what may, or may not, be achieved. Clearly, this is the antithesis of the model of happiness described above. Our Human Being is never really satisfied with the current state and is rarely in the present moment due to the thoughts of the past and future relative to changing the current state by achieving our goals.
Our Soul Being on the other hand is clear that existence is eternal, that we are part of all that is and that only the present moment is reality and the past and future are illusion. So, for our Soul Being there are no goals as such and no thoughts of the past and future. There is only complete and constant satisfaction with what is, and awareness of the present moment. The past and future do not exist. This, then, is happiness and your Soul Being is the “you” feeling happy in that “peak moment” you thought about earlier.
That all sounds simple enough. The Soul Being is happy and the Human Being is generally not happy due to the nearly constant mental drama about money, posessions, jobs, relationships, children and of course thinking about the past and future. It is, in fact, very simple. However, it is not easy to live more as our Soul Being and less as our Human Being. Unless you are one of the fortunate few to whom this comes naturally, it takes consistent and sustained work to be able to overcome the power of your Human Being’s senses and mind and biology of survival and procreation and to put your Soul Being in charge. How to accomplish this will be the topic of the next few blog posts. I hope you’ll continue to follow along.
Thanks so much for reading and following!
Jim
