998: Happiness is an inside job

You know, some people say that happiness is the purpose 
of human existence.


What would a tree say is the purpose of being a tree?
If it could talk, which luckily,
it can't,
it would probably say that the tree's purpose was to be a tree.


Being a tree might just to the exactly wonderful thing
that makes a tree happy,
and so a tree must be pretty happy
all the time.


And how about you, fellow human.
It's supposedly a New Year, and there is various huff and puff
about the Mayan calender next year,
and whether that has anymore substance than the hundred's of "time ending"
schemes
that have crowded up and into history throughout
the centuries,
who knows.


And is today happy for you?


Is right now,
reading this notice on this computer sitting in
whatever chair you are sitting in?


If you were happy, how would you know?
If you weren't happy, how would you know?


Is happiness, like water boiling, something best noticed after the fact,
or can it be conjured up into being whenever we wish?


This is today's game:
be happy all day.


When you aren't happy,
be happy that you can discover something, some difference
that makes a difference, about how you go about making yourself
unhappy.


Read that sentence again: notice how YOU go about making yourself
unhappy.


Be happy for the chance.


When you are happy,
takes some notice and awaring into discovering the other side
of this action:
how do YOU contribute to your own happiness.


Any fool can blame another for their unhappiness.
Many a later disillusioned person will "blame" another person
for their happiness.


Pretend for today that happiness is an inside job,
and see how you go about these two actions:
making yourself unhappy
and
making yourself happy.


Bon voyage. 

95: What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What others do, and our reaction to “it” another way around: 3 kinds of business

What brains do best is learn. They learn by making distinctions, noticing differences, being aware of ways that reality is not the same, ways that this apple tastes different than that pear, or this book makes us feel different than that movie, or this person enriches our life and that person not so much.

The Byron Katie work takes advantage of this, this using of the mind to heal our lives by inquiring into our own thinking, and to undermine the mind’s tendency to drive us into bad and unhappy and often even miserable feelings.

We’ve seen how the four questions is using the mind to ask and search instead of just being a victim to the average and often very unsatisfactory ways of thinking about and reacting to things.

Byron Katie helps get question three clear by sometimes making these distinctions: my business, your business, God’s business.

Earthquakes and big storms: God’s business.

Other people do what they do. Say what they say. Feel how they feel. Their business.

We react to this. Our business, our reaction,

We have ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions about what they do or say. These ideas and thoughts and rules and opinions and the consequent unpleasant feelings: this is our business.

What they do or say is What Is. It’s what they do or say.

But, when we really, really think they “shouldn’t” then we go inside ourselves and have the kind of reactions that question three helps us get clear.

Think about this.

A lot.


Someone does something.

That’s just What Is. It’s their business. Their path. Their life.



And when we make it our business to think it should be different, we have the list of consequences we get when we write our list for question three.

They act.

We react as a victim or a counter-attacker. We suffer.

And is that to say, we SHOULDN’T feel bad?

Nah, we can feel all we want, but once we stop believing our reactions, we can start to see the pain and confusion that the other person is almost surely suffering. Then we can feel for them, instead of just getting defensive.

By staying in our own business, we might actually be able to be of use to the formerly aggravation / infuriating “other.”

So enjoy your day and see when any and all unhappiness derives from being in someone else’s business and discover if coming back to your own business brings relief and happiness.

All of Life

life has many faces
and the outside
face
isn't
always the inner
joy

which is always
there,
even
when
we forget

so, hey, some days we are happy
and we know it

some days we "think"
we are unhappy
and that usually makes
us
"feel" unhappy

and the word "makes"
is very interesting

what if we took over
and said:
I am, now, making myself
unhappy

and then,
guess what,
we can return to one of the essentials
of real life,
the essential of
curiosity

And from the curiosity
at our core
we can
wonder,
ah, yes,
we can
wonder,
wonderful person that we are,
just how are we
making ourselves
unhappy.

A grand question:
How am I, right now, using my so called thinking,
and my body rigidity
and my mental inflexibility
and my seeing the world as all about me, me, me
how am I using all this not-really-me-ness
to make "me"
unhappy?

So, wonderful life,
on the "good" days,
and wonderful life,
and wonderful opportunity,
on the "bad" days,
when unhappiness arises.

The opportunity to wonder
to explore
to inquire
to go inside
to listen
to discover
to recover
to uncover
who we really are
beneath
the so-called
'unhappiness."

And to discover, recover and so on,
the HOW of
how we "make" ourselves
unhappy?

Unhappiness good?
No.
Unhappiness bad?
No.
Unhappiness a trip we trap and trip
ourselves in?
Yes.

And the clowning around in the faces
above,
ah,
sometimes
on other, brighter days,
we can pretend to be caught in
the spells
that sometimes really catch
us

Play around with how
lost we can
be sometimes

And inside that play,
the realization
of how amazing this being alive
thing
is.