WANT TO BE HAPPY?
Our default state of being is to be happy. Young children playing are routinely happy - until something makes them unhappy
So, happiness is the absence of unhappiness.
To understand happiness, we must first understand unhappiness, to be able remove it.
Understand Your Brain.
Don’t listen to everything you think!
... Your thoughts are not you!
Your brain is a functioning organ, just like your liver cleaning blood, and your heart pumping oxygen around the body. The brain too is an organ - it’s role is to process information and it’s main priority is for your survival.
My survival! - most people find this observation to be very interesting and empowering! You are not your thoughts.
This is why the brain mainly looks for threats – either:
- incessantly anxious about the future, or
- regretting hurts and lessons learned from
the past, leading to feeling hopeless about change..
– and so the brain rarely focuses on NOW.
A Lifestyle of Peace and Security
Your default state of being is to be happy. So how can you change your outlook to see past mistakes as constructive formation, and your future: as hopeful and optimistic?
There is no question - bad things happen to everyone. But it is your 'thinking' response to those events, which causes your unhappiness, after that event has happened.
Often the brain will incessantly replay the pain of a past event, as a survival mechanism, so we will not repeat the pain – even if replaying that pain makes you unhappy or depressed.
Similarly, to be anxious about possible future problems or failures, can dominate your peace and happiness – causing you to be unhappy.
Such negative thoughts can be incessant and cause anxiety, depression or hopelessness.
Control your thoughts? Exhausting.
Popular authors try to teach us techniques to control our thoughts to avoid painful incessant negative thoughts. But although there is a universal desire for peace and contentment in our thoughts, and many books are bought with the promise of a solution – in practice, recognising and controlling every negative thought, using mental exercises - takes a lot of effort and practice.
The two main approaches suggested seem to be, either:
- Try to do everything in a state of automatic 'flow' without stopping to think about anything - do not think - or
- Because the brain can only think of one thing at a time, keeping yourself distracted from negative thoughts, with an activity, or trying to think a different thought than the thought which is troubling you, can stop the painful thoughts for a while.
These techniques are very difficult and don't achieve a lifestyle of happiness.
You are a Spiritual Being - Do You Agree?
To consider that we human beings have a spiritual component to our existence, has profound implications. And raises questions...
If I am spiritual as well as flesh, what does that mean for me?
Well it means that you are influenced by other things which are spiritual.
Your conscience for instance has long been recognised as an external source which makes us feel good or bad - right out of the blue - after we perform some action, despite how positive we considered our actions to be - if we were unkind, we will lose our peace.
Dangerous passions can also come from outside us in some situations or temptation, anger, lust or hatred - "I don't know what came over me, I wanted to kill that guy"
Spiritual influences around us, can often influence our decisions and actions, which can make our happiness much more likely, or much more unlikely, depending on influences around us.
Your conscience is a major guide towards your happiness and peace, resisting pressures from other people when necessary. Resisting pressure also from destructive spiritual forces - given power to attack you by wrongdoing, either yours, or (importantly) those of your ancestors. (First Commandment)
Also, what is Love– if not a powerful spiritual force connecting people?
And finally here, since physics states that energy cannot be destroyed or created, where does that lively personality or soul go to, when our loved one dies, leaving behind only the 'overcoat' of their body they don't need any more?
Then we have angels, ghosts, atmospheres, intuitions, coincidences, sleeping on a question, witchcraft, spells and exorcisms.
This happiness we talk about is intrinsically connected to the spiritual side of your life.
