Could the Pursuit of Happiness Be the Problem?

Now and then it is good to pause in our pursuit of happiness, and just be happy.  

~Guillaume Apollinaire

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These ideas take me back to the memory of a long-time spiritual mentor who observed I was seemingly always discontented about some thing or another. Of course, I was discontented with his observation. He made note of that as well, then asked me a question.

"Do you suppose you are asking life to provide things that life is not really designed to provide?"

The question stumped me, so I inquired, "Like what?" 

"Has it ever occurred to you that life is not designed to produce happiness, because it is an inner state, not one that can be delivered by anything outside ourselves?"

"Would it be possible that your disenchantment and discouragement is because you can't get what you need and want in the ways you are seeking it? Not that life is flawed, but that your seeking is off the mark?" 

"Could it be that you are always at odds with life, and therefore discontented, because your approach cannot ever succeed?"

A very long pause followed. My lifelong operating system was being exposed and deconstructed in that moment. There was simply nothing from which to respond. I was betwixt and between, which means a state of liminality where transformation lives.

Then my mentor asked, “Would you like to try something different?

 

A Seeing True Moment™

It proved to be a very good day, though a very disconcerting one. You can’t abandon a lifelong way of being without a fair amount of disturbance.

All of which is a very good thing. I needed an upgraded point of view, a new path to walk, because the old one had been revealed to be terribly lacking.

Ram Dass once suggested that eventually every path must be abandoned because it cannot take us were we next need to go. Needless to say, I now understand his comment.

The result of this experience was to finally see and understand that my happiness and well-being, and most everything else that matters most, is not dependent on the world, my situation, or the people of the world.

With that clarity, most of the time now life tends to be fine, and often it is quite wonderful. Somehow the discontent that dogged my life for more than five decades simply slipped away.

Mysteriously my entire experience of life has been remade. I am increasingly convinced by these changes in perception that heaven on earth is not in the world, but is to be found wholly in my relationship to the world.

 

The Closing Prayer from the Navajo Way Blessing Ceremony

 

In beauty I walk

With beauty before me I walk

With beauty behind me I walk

With beauty above me I walk

With beauty around me I walk

It has become beauty again

It has become beauty again

It has become beauty again

It has become beauty again

 

Today I will walk out, today everything unnecessary will leave me,

I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.

I will have a light body, I will be happy forever, nothing will hinder me.

I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.

I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.

I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.

Through the returning seasons, may I walk.

On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.

With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.

With beauty behind me may I walk.

With beauty below me may I walk.

With beauty above me may I walk.

With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.

My words will be beautiful.