Happiness - Living In The Kingdom

[JosephM]

Happiness - Living in the Kingdom

 

Each day one wakes up and is reminded there is a world out there. If one watches the national news a very hostile world is indicated. Invariably we are always on the brink of this or that. Yet beyond the news there are people of honesty and integrity. A multitude, loving and caring and going about their daily lives in a completely different world than described by media.

 

As a general rule, each one of those is seeking happiness. For most it seems a fleeting thing that appears for a time and then tragedy seems to strike and happiness is gone. Why is this?

 

It seems to me that the thinking mind that has been conditioned by life is always busy assigning labels that classify images, thoughts and feelings as favorable or unfavorable. This is done to each moment and situation it encounters. It seems to be a natural nature for the thinking mind that identifies itself with the content of life. If the mind applies a favorable label to a situation it appears to slow down its process of incessant thoughts and fears of the next uncertain moment and a feeling of happiness arises within ones soul.

 

However this 'feeling' is short lived because content of the moment changes and what once was found a favorable moment to the thinking mind may now be found boring and unfavorable. Perhaps one was wonderfully engrossed in ones hobby and ones mother-in law showed up? The mind then offers resistance to the moment by thinking concerning the unsatisfactoriness of the moment as if all this incessant thinking will change what is in the moment. Most often it cannot because there is no action it can think of that will not create a more unfavorable moment such as telling her to go back home and then facing the wrath of ones wife. There seems to be no real satisfactory alternative and the mind continues to rehash the unfavorable moment and constant wishing or begging that the future moment will be different. This apparent dysfunction of the thinking mind is mostly an unconscious event. Unhappiness has arrived and is seen as outside oneself with little one can do over the external event.

 

However, if one remains conscious of the moment and is aware of ones thoughts and their effect on ones happiness, one will see that it is not the arrival of an external trigger of ones unpleasantly deemed thoughts that has caused one to be unhappy but the perception that the content of this moment is unfavorable as opposed to the past which was favorable. This is that which the thinking mind resists and goes into the unconscious mode of acting out its displeasure in thought and sometimes in actions according to its repetitive conditioning of the unsatisfactoriness of the moment. The more identified the thinking mind is with the unfavorableness of the moment the more extreme the response and deeper the unhappiness.

 

The conditioned thinking mind always tries to compare the past with the present moment image, feeling or thought because that is all it is capable of doing. That is its nature. It is a collection of memory images subject to ones past programming previously labeled and filed as good or bad, favorable or unfavorable, desired or not desired, beautiful or ugly etc.. etc... Though the content is uniquely labeled different from others, it operates the same as in everyone else's thinking mind that identifies with content. Only the software programming (conditioning) is different assuming the hardware (thinking mind) is not damaged or defective by genetic makeup.

 

As one follows this scenario many times it becomes most obvious that happiness is a natural state that exists when we are in harmony with the moment. Thinking in this case is usually focused on the moment or stopped. Happiness only appears to have something to do with the content of the moment but in truth is able to be prceived by the senses because there is no mind resistance to the moment allowing ones natural state to surface.

 

"But what if there is pain" you say. Though pain is a more difficult content of the moment to not resist, one will find that resistance to it only makes it worse. It is identification with the content that causes resistance. Identification with ones essence happens in a silence when the mind is still. In that state even pain seems to not limit the joy of ones being. Yet this is not realized unless by self learning one is able to free oneself from the bondage of identifying with ones content of life instead of the essence of who one really is which is not much different than happiness itself. Harmony with the moment is ones only choice if one is to realize Heaven here on Earth and in doing so, a new world appears.