6 May 2024         

   

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The Sources of Happiness
Howard C. Cutler and the Dalai Lama

from The Dance
Oriah 

Self-Love
tom walsh

   

   

     
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Simple and Profound Thoughts
(from Simple and Profound)

The emotion that can break your heart
is sometimes the very one that heals it.
-Nicholas Sparks

All great natures delight in stability; all great people find eternity affirmed in the very promise of their faculties.   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of us, swimming against the tides of trouble the world knows nothing about, need only a bit of praise or encouragement--and we will make the goal.   -Jerome P. Fleishman

When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you.  When it is unspoken, you reign over it.   - Arabian proverb

   

  
The Sources of Happiness
Howard C. Cutler and the Dalai Lama

Two years ago, a friend of mine had an unexpected windfall.  Eighteen months before that time, she had quit her job as a nurse to go to work for two friends who were starting a small health-care company.  The company enjoyed meteoric success, and within the eighteen months they were bought out by a large conglomerate for a huge sum.  Having gotten in on the ground floor of the company, my friend emerged from the buyout dripping with stock options— enough to be able to retire at the age of thirty-two.  I saw her not long ago and asked how she was enjoying her retirement.  “Well,” she said, “it’s great being able to travel and do the things that I’ve always wanted to do.  But,” she added, “it’s strange; after I got over all the excitement of making all that money, things kinda returned to normal.  I mean things are different— I bought a new house and stuff— but overall I don’t think I’m much happier than I was before.”

Just around the time that my friend was cashing in on her windfall profits, I had another friend of the same age who found out he was HIV positive.  We spoke about how he was dealing with his HIV status.  “Of course, I was devastated at first,” he said.  “And it took me almost a year just to come to terms with the fact that I had the virus.  But over the past year things have changed.  I seem to get more out of each day than I ever did before, and on a moment-to-moment basis, I feel happier than I ever have.  I just seem to appreciate everyday things more, and I’m grateful that so far I haven’t developed any severe AIDS symptoms and I can really enjoy the things I have.

"And even though I’d rather not be HIV positive, I have to admit that in some ways it has transformed my life. . . in positive ways. . .”

“In what ways?”  I asked.

“Well, for instance, you know that I’ve always tended to be a confirmed materialist.  But over the past year coming to terms with my mortality has opened up a whole new world. I’ve started exploring spirituality for the first time in my life, reading a lot of books on the subject and talking to people. . . discovering so many things that I’ve never even thought about before.  It makes me excited about just getting up in the morning, about seeing what the day will bring.”

Both these people illustrate the essential point that happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by external events.  Success may result in a temporary feeling of elation, or tragedy may send us into a period of depression, but sooner or later our overall level of happiness tends to migrate back to a certain baseline.  Psychologists call this process adaptation, and we can see how this principle operates in our everyday life; a pay raise, a new car, or recognition from our peers may lift our mood for a while, but we soon return to our customary level of happiness.  In the same way, an argument with a friend, a car in the repair shop, or a minor injury may put us in a foul mood, but within a matter of days our spirits rebound.

This tendency isn’t limited to trivial, everyday events but persists even under more extreme conditions of triumph or disaster.  Researchers surveying Illinois state lottery winners and British pool winners, for instance, found that the initial high eventually wore off and the winners returned to their usual range of moment-to-moment happiness.  And other studies have demonstrated that even those who are struck by catastrophic events such as cancer, blindness, or paralysis typically recover their normal or near-normal level of day-to-day happiness after an appropriate adjustment period.

So, if we tend to return to our characteristic baseline level of happiness no matter what our external conditions are, what determines this baseline?  And, more important, can it be modified, set at a higher level?  Some researchers have recently argued that an individual’s characteristic level of happiness or well-being is genetically determined, at least to some degree.  Studies such as one that found that identical twins (sharing the same genetic constitution) tend to have very similar levels of well-being—regardless of whether they were raised together or apart—have led these investigators to postulate a biological set point for happiness, wired into the brain at birth.

But even if genetic makeup plays a role in happiness—and the verdict is still out on how large that role is—there is general agreement among psychologists that no matter what level of happiness we are endowed with by nature, there are steps we can take to work with the “mind factor,” to enhance our feelings of happiness.  This is because our moment-to-moment happiness is largely determined by our outlook.  In fact, whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has very little to do with our absolute conditions but, rather it is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have.

more thoughts and ideas on happiness

   

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From The Dance
Oriah

Despite the fact that endless trying isn’t working, it’s what I know.  It’s hard to believe that I can be enough as I am.  I want to be more—more compassionate, more present, more conscious and aware, more loved and loving, more intimate with myself and the world.  I want to know how to be different—better—than I am.  Even though I have failed to consistently live my deepest desires and am exhausted by the endless effort to become who I think I will have to be to live these desires, I resist letting go of the trying.  I trust my ability to work hard.  I have no experience with or faith in my ability to simply be.

This lack of faith in who we are is embedded in the bones of the culture we have created.  We are surrounded by the assumption of our innate inadequacy, the notion of original sin made implicit in a secular culture preaching achievement, improvement, and change.  The marketplace is flooded with books and tapes and speakers telling us how to change and transform ourselves into something other than what we are, implicitly telling us that who we really are is not enough, is at best deeply flawed and weak and at worst nasty and aggressive.  In a word:  sinful.

Many of the New Age spiritual teachers talk a great deal about how our consciousness is “evolving.”  Now this may or may not be true, although I think you could argue that becoming more efficient producers of weapons of mass destruction and relying more and more exclusively on our rational thinking to the exclusion or undervaluing of our emotions and intuition could be seen as evidence of some devolution.  But even if you choose to believe that we are evolving—and it would be an amazingly arrogant species-centric assumption even for us to say that the process somehow stopped with the magnificence of Homo sapiens—anyone who has studied the process of evolution will tell you that it is very, very slow and therefore unlikely to be of any real assistance to me in my quest to become a more patient and loving mother before my sons reach retirement.  Calling upon evolution as the hoped-for salvation and making suggestions that seem to indicate that we can somehow make it happen faster if we try harder says that our very nature needs to be fundamentally transformed in order for us to be the people we really want to be.

Secular preachers put forward a similar idea in a different guise.  I recently sat in on a presentation given to corporate coaches, folks who work with displaced CEOs and corporate executives.  The presenter, a bright and entertaining motivational speaker, was not talking about increasing profits or acquiring more material possessions.  In fact, he was questioning the usefulness of these goals in our lives and talking instead about living more fully every day, an intention that echoed my own.  But as he urged his audience with real evangelical zeal to “go the extra mile” in living more fully, to become better parents, better coaches, better executives, to get up an hour early to exercise, to get up two hours early to meditate and exercise, to take someone new to lunch every week.  I could feel myself becoming exhausted just listening to him.  And as I looked at the quiet, tired faces of the men and women in the audience—men and women already running on too little sleep and too much caffeine—I felt an insurmountable heaviness in my limbs.  I could feel myself agreeing with him:  yes, these were all the things I would have to do to be consistent with my intention to live fully.  And I knew right then and there that I was not going to make it, that I would never be good enough or disciplined enough to do all the things I would have to do to consistently live my soul’s longings or this man’s aspirations.  I simply didn’t have within me the energy to make all the necessary incremental upgrades.

Weary and discouraged, I was contemplating returning to the free breakfast buffet for another high-fat croissant—what the hell, I was never going to do half of what I should anyway, so why not?—when the speaker said something that woke me up.  With absolute conviction he said, “The harder you are on yourself, the easier life will be on you!”  Something inside me snapped awake.  I knew this was wrong.  He was offering a deal:  if you drive yourself, life will reward you.  And in a flash I knew that this was the place I would land over and over again, driving my body and heart to the point of exhaustion in the hopes of the ever-elusive inner spiritual makeover, if I thought the central question was why are we so infrequently the people we really want to be?  And if success is at best unlikely, the only hope is a deal, a magic formula that offers a promise and keeps us on the treadmill of self-improvement in the hopes that someone or something will see our effort and grant us a boon.

Still, some days—my sons might say weeks—searching for evidence that my essential nature is compassionate would be pretty slim pickings.  Sometimes I’m a shit.  Really. I automatically judge as flaky people who use names like Ophelia Morning Glory, which is pretty cheeky for a woman who writes and speaks under the name Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  I spend too much time picking at my sons for little things like not wrapping the cheese up tight enough so the edges won’t get dark and hard and forgetting to feed the cat.  I suspect them of deliberately leaving their oversized sneakers in the hallway where I am sure to trip over them.  I get angry at people who don’t do things my way, like the young woman on the phone who sounds like she is twelve and will not let me send my courier shipment collect to my publisher, even though I have done it a dozen times before, because it has just dawned on her that the United States is a different country from Canada and the company policy is that you cannot make collect international shipments.  And, believe me, I can get pretty nasty when someone who is just doing their job or having a bad day cannot see that My Way is better.

But then I think of those I love.  In contrast to the way I see myself, I have little difficulty thinking of others I know as being basically, essentially good even while I can see aspects of them that are less endearing.  Linda, who has been my best friend for twenty-two years, has a temper, and even though she was once a Catholic nun (or perhaps because of it), she can swear like a trooper when she is angry.  Even though I don’t actually believe in hell, I have upon occasion thought to myself, when hearing a string of epithets come from her mouth that would make a sailor blush, “Well, we’re all going to hell just for hearing that one!”

Lately Linda has been going through some major changes in her life.  If you met her at the moment you might think she is basically a very angry woman, and if you told me this I would tell you without hesitation that Linda is just very frightened right now.  Linda’s fear comes out as anger.  I do not have any problem keeping sight of the fact that Linda is not her anger, that Linda in some essential and basic way is a gentle, compassionate woman truly capable of being fully present and loving with anyone on the planet.  How do I know this?  Because I have seen it.  Now of course you could point out that I have also seen the impatience and the anger.  So why do I not feel the least bit confused about which is the essential Linda?  I don’t know.  I just know that who she really is is the good stuff.  Love is what lets me see this in Linda and know that it is true.  Clearly this may be the perspective I am missing when examining myself.

But if humans by their essential nature are basically compassionate and capable of being fully present, why then do we so often act out of anger or harshness or distraction?  Again, when I look at someone I love, the answer to this question is not such a mystery.  Fear.  Linda behaves in a way that is inconsistent with her basic compassionate nature when she is afraid, when fear comes between her and her knowledge of who and what she is, knowledge that would reassure her that she belongs in some fundamental way, that who she is is made of the same stuff as I am and you are and the world is so that no real harm can come to her essential self.

It is the same for each of us, although what makes us afraid—what makes us forget who and what we are— may be different.  There are many ways to describe the factors that shape our fear and influence our behavior:  past trauma and conditioning, inherited tendencies and learned responses, past-life karma, and current pressures, human biology, psychology, and spirituality.  We can develop some useful self-understanding by considering any or all of these, but I do not believe we can ever claim to have a definitive explanation for all of our behavior.  We remain, like so much of the universe, something of a mystery to ourselves.  Whatever the reasons for behavior that is inconsistent with the basic compassionate nature the Grandmother claims we are, the useful question if we want to live our soul’s longing is, How can we expand the opportunities and increase the probabilities of living consistent with this nature?  How can we dance?

If I want to live my ability to be fully present and compassionate, my ability to be with it all—the joy and the sorrow—I must find the ways, the people, the places, the practices that support me in being all I truly am.  I must cultivate ways of being that let me feel the warmth of encouragement against my heart when it is weary.  I must be fiercely and compassionately honest with myself about those choices and actions that are inconsistent with my deepest nature and soul’s desires.  I must find the song lines that run through my life, the melodies that remind me of what I really am and call me gently back to acting on this knowing.  I must learn how to dance.

more thoughts and ideas  on life
more thoughts on self

  

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We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is lost,
but it is only then that what is new and good begins.  While there
is life there is happiness.  There is much, much before us.

Lev Tolstoy

   

 
Self-Love

Of all the topics that are covered on this website, this topic is the one that has given me the most difficulty of all.  I grew up being my own worst critic, and I rarely gave myself the benefit of the doubt in any area of my life.  There are specific reasons for this that I've learned later in life, but they aren't necessary to go into here.  What is important is that I've finally learned the importance of loving myself, being good to myself, and taking good care of myself so that I'm in a better position to do good for others.

After all, that's the bottom line on self-love:  how can you possibly love others well if you're not able to love yourself?  How can you treat others in ways in which you're not even willing or able to treat yourself?  We can fool ourselves and try to convince ourselves that we can treat ourselves poorly yet still be better to others, but that simply isn't true.

Most of the terrible things we see people doing to others comes from people who aren't able to love themselves.  It's sad, but it's true.
   

You can explore the universe looking for somebody
who is more deserving of your love and affection
than you are yourself, and you will not find that
person anywhere.  You, yourself, as much as
anybody in the entire universe, deserve your
love and affection.

the Buddha

   
Sometimes it's hard to convince ourselves that we are just as deserving of our love--and the love of others--as anyone else on this planet.  When Jesus said, "Love others as you love yourself," there are two commands in that sentence, yet we somehow tend to ignore the second one.  And because we do ignore it, we treat ourselves with less dignity and grace and caring than we really should.  We deprive ourselves of rest and relaxation, we come down hard on ourselves for every little mistake that we make, and we criticize ourselves ruthlessly for almost anything that we do.  This isn't loving behavior, and in fact, many of our problems in life result from our own treatment of ourselves, though we may blame them on the way that others treat us.

But others can treat us only as well as we treat ourselves.  This is one of the cardinal rules of life that most of us refuse to accept, for it doesn't make sense to us.  Can't we be loveable even if we don't love ourselves?  After all, our mothers love us unconditionally, so why won't others?

But we must remember that a lack of self-love sets us up with neediness--we need more love than others because of our lack of self-love, so we become more demanding, often in ways that we don't even notice.  We may drop hints to others in an effort to make them express their love, trying to reassure ourselves but ending up making them uncomfortable around us.  If we don't love ourselves, we may make more self-deprecating statements, and those make anyone uneasy--after all, if we're able to cut ourselves down, what might we say about others?
    

When you love yourself you feel worthy and deserving
of claiming the gifts of this world.  Self-love gives you
peace of mind and balance.  Self-love gives you self-respect
and the ability to respect others.  It gives you the confidence
to stand up and ask for what you want.  Self-love is the
main ingredient in a successful, fulfilled life.

Debbie Ford

    
When we do feel comfortable with who we are and how we approach life, when we do feel the love and compassion for ourselves that we're meant to feel, we approach life in different ways--as Debbie says, we approach life with a confidence that we simply can't have without self-love.  When we can respect ourselves, then we can extend that respect to others with little effort, and we won't feel the hopelessness of not being loved.  And we won't be spending much time and effort trying to be loved, which makes our relationships much less stressful and much healthier.

So many things in life cannot fall into place without a sense of self-love.  When we don't love ourselves, we put ourselves in positions in which success is much more difficult to achieve, in which fulfillment is an underground spring that we cannot find without the divining rod of love.  When we tell ourselves that we are not even worthy of our own love, how can we possibly feel worthy of the love of others?
   

We receive mixed messages about taking good care of ourselves.  Love thy
neighbor as thyself means to love thyself and thy neighbor.
  Yet, self-love often is confused with selfishness and conceit.  We are selfish
when we do not love and accept ourselves, and attempt to take from others
to fill the emptiness.
   Conceit indicates low self-worth and an attempt to conceal it.  It is difficult
to extend to others what you have not been able to give yourself.
   Take good care of yourself so you can care about the rest of us.

Jennifer James
Success Is the Quality of Your Journey

   
Self-love is not hedonism, and it is not conceit.  Self-love is a necessary quality if we want our lives to work, if we want to be able to reach our potential in any of the most important areas.  We cannot be afraid to love ourselves if we want to live the full and fulfilling lives that we are meant to lead--we cannot let what we think other people would think of us change the ways in which we treat ourselves.  What have you done today to show yourself love?  Doing so isn't a question of indulging in every whim or desire; rather, it's a question of giving to yourself the same love, respect, and compassion that you know is important to give to others.

More on self-love.

   
   

   

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Whatever books you may
read, you cannot realize the
Divine merely by intellectual
effort.  One must put it into
practice.  That sense of
oneness can only be promoted
by the practice of love and
not by any other means.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

  
I have walked 25,000 miles as a penniless pilgrim.  I own only what I wear and what I carry in my small pockets.  I belong to no organization.  I have said that I will walk until given shelter and fast until given food, remaining a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace.  And I can truthfully tell you that without ever asking for anything, I have been supplied with everything needed for my journey, which shows you how good people really are.

With me I carry always my peace message:  This is the way of peace:  Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.  There is nothing new about this message, except the practice of it.  And the practice of it is required not only in the international situation but also in the personal situation.  I believe that the situation in the world is a reflection of our own immaturity.  If we were mature, harmonious people, war would be no problem whatever--it would be impossible.

All of us can work for peace.  We can work right where we are, right within ourselves, because the more peace we have within our own lives, the more we can reflect into the outer situation.  In fact, I believe that the wish to survive will push us into some kind of uneasy world peace which will then need to be supported by a great inner awakening if it is to endure.

Peace Pilgrim
   

  

We hurry through the so-called boring things in order to attend
to that which we deem more important, interesting.  Perhaps the final
freedom will be a recognition that every thing in every moment
is 'essential' and that nothing at all is 'important.'

Helen M. Luke

    

  

Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.

   
 

    

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