Is happiness a disease?

Depression is called a disease, but not happiness.

Genuine sadness and depression are better than fake happiness.  

Sadness may be a symptom of healing from the disease of false happiness. It may be a step in the right direction, closer to truth and reality. We ARE reality, and yet as far as conscious experience goes, we may live in a fantasy world created by the mind that is mistaken for reality.

Who hasn't suffered from the disease of fake happiness? There's a massive epidemic, the whole world is mesmerized by the pursuit of fake happiness, the happiness found through the ego gratification of success, recognition, relationships, acquisitions, etc.

The spiritual awakening happening individually and collectively today  is not immune from this error. Spirituality can be fake happiness. I've used (mis-used) spiritual truth myself that way many times, and still fall into this trap.  "I am awareness" can become another story used to pretend that I don't feel the sadness and confusion roiling around inside.

All I can do is notice the bigness of not-knowing that surrounds my small story-of-knowing.

Reality is just so real! I know that sounds dumb- but there is this zoom lens that is closer than any cognition- there is this dynamite of non-verbal reality- uncategorized, un-thought, un-tampered with- so abundant and unavoidable- that is equally present in sadness and happiness.  

The more I allow the genuine sadness and fake happiness and all the rest to do its dance- the more this Reality reverberates in infinite openness.

~

Two way mirror

Reality is like a two way mirror:  looking through it one way everything is meaningless, through the other way, everything is meaning incarnate.

~

Gratitude for painting by Belgian painter Rene Magritte, titled "The False Mirror", 1928

Uncontrived authenticity

Meaning is not found in thought, but in an immediacy closer than thought. Meaning is the substance, the clay, out of which everything is made. It is the suchness of what is, before the mind pulls it into the funnel of thought.

Reality is what we are. Not what the mind says. Mooji points out that in a crowded restaurant the cacophony around us is naturally overlooked as we experience the sweet conversation with a friend, and in the same way, all the voices in the mind telling us who we are can become no more than peripheral background noise when attention is no longer fixated on them.

The uncontrived authenticity of being alive is happening right now and every moment without a single word, and it is this above all that we want- to be real. We already have what we want, we already are real and authentic. When the mind starts going (out of habit) with endless notions of "should be more," all that can be like background noise in a restaurant, easily overlooked, while the flow of consciousness is naturally present to the suchness of This Life, felt fully within and without. The flow of aliveness is felt within the body, and awareness plunges effortlessly through the eyes and ears, breath moves in and out, and there is nothing to search for but everything to enjoy and be grateful for.

"...the meaning we are experiencing is not the conceptual meaning; it is the very presence of reality."

A.H. Almass, The Unfolding Now, p. 77.

Seeing the waves and being the ocean is happening right now for everyone, it is the natural state.

The anxious restless energy pattern of "something not right" or "needing to find enlightenment" is recognized as simply a transient energy pattern and nothing more. No energy pattern can disturb the vastness in which it occurs.

Not needing to be special. Not needing to be awakened or saved or enlightened or different in any way from this as it is now. The beauty of anonymity, of being undefined and unseen and image-free even in the mind's eye.

The reality of being- this present wealth- eases the misguided longing for personal specialness or enlightenment.

"The preciousness of being is your true specialness." Eckhart Tolle




~

Distinguishing interpretation from actuality

               The drawing is either two faces or a candlestick, depending on how we look at it.

     Yesterday I sat in a room with a few hundred other people as Eckhart Tolle intertwined his fingers and said something like this, "Often people think that their interpretation of an event and the event itself are the same thing.  There is no such thing as a dreadful event.  All events are neutral.  'Dreadful' is an interpretation that is added to the event."  Eckhart disentangled his fingers, saying, "Waking up is when we see that the interpretation is not reality."  Eckhart held out one hand to represent the world of the mind, with its interpretations, judgments, opinions, and painful stories.  The other hand represented actuality, the event without any overlay of thought.  Presence is awareness freed from identification with mental forms.  It is who we are beneath our stories of who we are.

     Eckhart was talking with a woman with health problems who had lost her job.  "There are no dreadful events," he reiterated.  "There are only events, which can be challenging.  Challenges are real.  Problems exist only in the mind."   Eckhart's comments to this woman may sound unsympathetic, but they were the opposite. "Freedom is not dependent on pleasant conditions but on clear seeing," he said, and the woman looked as if a load had been lifted off her shoulders.

     For decades one of my worst fears has been the possibility of becoming obese, as obesity runs in my family.  Eckhart also pointed out that what we fear, we tend to attract into our lives.  When my husband and I became engaged to be married seventeen years ago, I said to him, "Promise me that you will divorce me if I ever get fat."  He smiled and replied, "Okay, I promise."

     Around the time I turned forty I went through four pregnancies in six years (three Cesarian sections and one miscarriage).  Gradually my fear of gaining weight became reality.  My sweet husband has also put on a few pounds, and thankfully he broke his promise to divorce me if I gained weight.  For years now, every day there is the relentless march of shameful thoughts in my mind for being overweight.  Every day there is a ready-made excuse to complain and hate myself and obsess over myself, etc.

     Can I distinguish between the interpretation and the actuality?  The actuality is the body weight.  According to a medical definition, I am overweight.  This actuality is neutral.  Further actualities are that I am physically fit, I am pain-free, and I enjoy walking.  I have a higher risk for weight-related health problems and I would like to lose weight.  None of these actualities produces suffering.

     The suffering comes in from the agony of thoughts of embarrassment, shame, unworthiness, and separation from others.  The suffering comes from the judgments, "This shouldn't be.  Things should be different.  I am a failure." etc.

     I am learning to distinguish reality (body weight) from the mental interpretations (this is a problem, this is unacceptable, this makes me miserable).  I am beginning to feel more at peace in my body right now just as it is.  I am in fact grateful for this body with its capacities of sight, hearing, taste, touch. I am grateful for the unfathomable mystery of this body that has been the doorway into this world for the three human beings I love most-  Chris, Mary, and Jack.

     Problems disappear when they are seen to be nothing more than mind-waves.  The actuality remains, but it is what it is, and it is non-problematic.  Even when the mind-waves reappear (habitual thoughts pop up again and again) they can be seen as innocent mind-waves rather than as a source of distress.

     This is similar to the shift that can occur when looking at a picture such as the one above; nothing actually changes, but there is a transformation in perception-  where there had been two faces there is now only a candlestick.  Actuality bathed in transparent awareness free of judgments emanates the peace that passes understanding.

(Addendum: Please see comment # 7 on this post for information about a subsequent talk where Eckhart speaks of dreadful events in the world.)

~

What we want isn't found in the story.

Good does not come from the story.

Good doesn't come from good fortune, good doesn't come from things going my way. Good isn't found there no matter how hard we try to find it there.

We all know this on some level. The good that comes from the story is fool's gold. There is transient pleasure and gratification but not the lasting fulfillment that is longed for.
Yet we honor the story and do the best we can on that level, as Eckhart Tolle says. I prefer good fortune over bad fortune as much as anyone, all the while knowing there is no up without a down. Good fortune and bad fortune are inseparable sides of a coin, and the deeper good that we long for is not to be found there.

Good comes from Reality, the current of the ineffable that is always present.

Good is the substance of everything.
Good is the proton and the electron and the space in between. Good is everything that is seen, felt, heard, palpated, thought. Good is that which sees, feels, hears, palpates, thinks.

Good is the air and the lungs and the blood that receives the air and the heart that moves the blood and the cells that are nourished by the blood that carries the air.

Good is death and the dissolution of every appearance. Good is birth and the unfurling of form. Good are all the exchanges between forms. Good is the space that envelops it all with the lightest touch.

Reality is gold.

~