Hello,
I'm Don Joseph Gohe and my course here at Insight Timer is the Science of Ending Stress.
You know,
It's possible to live a stress-free life,
Which is what I intend to discuss in this podcast series I'll be presenting here.
So let's start with the opposite of stress,
Namely the state of peace and happiness it seems to elude so many of us.
It's hard to find a completely happy person.
By completely happy I mean the innate happiness that nothing of the world can shake,
None of life's ups and downs can unsettle.
When discerned from the data,
It's only 4% of the population that report living from this extraordinary state of being completely happy.
But the irony is we were born happy.
It's in our very nature to be happy,
But we've become disconnected from it.
We were born free but often become trapped in thinking and perspectives that pen us in.
We were born with an open heart that stress and fear so easily close.
We were born gifted beings of a measurable worth but often feel not good enough.
There is a divinity of joy within us and surrounding us,
There to empower and enrich our lives,
But we've become blocked from seeing it.
The great mystic Anthony Nimello said,
It's as if we were all hypnotized to see what is not there and not see what is there.
How did this happen to us?
Well,
Society programmed it out of us by stamping into us the belief that happiness and self-worth are found out there in the world.
And if we work long and hard,
Success will come to whatever degree it does.
And out of that,
Happiness and fulfillment will follow.
We've all swallowed that formula.
And 10 years later,
We realize that success has come without fulfillment.
That's failing at living.
Waking up is the realization that contrary to what society has taught us,
Nothing but absolutely nothing of the world can make us happy.
Success is important,
Of course,
But success is not the same as fulfillment.
Fulfillment doesn't come from the world.
Happiness doesn't come from the world.
Not the radiant happiness of a child that is constant and makes you smile for no reason.
That's pure happiness,
And pure happiness comes from within you.
When science wants to study human nature,
They first look at children,
And what they find in children is a natural given state of happiness and altruism.
They even find altruism in infants.
By the time we're out of kindergarten,
We've begun to lose it.
And by the time we are adults,
The natural state of happiness we enjoyed as a child seems as unreal as a fairy tale.
We have to rediscover it,
And we can.
We have to rediscover the truth that the mystics keep patiently telling us that there's not a single moment in our life where we don't have everything we need to be happy.
And that the only reason we're ever unhappy is because we're focusing on what we don't have rather than on what we have right here,
Right now.
So what this means is you're not broken.
You're not some problem to be solved.
You're not something to be fixed.
You're okay.
If there's a problem,
It's a way you were programmed to believe that without something outside of you,
You cannot be happy.
You cannot be at peace.
That's a false belief.
You don't acquire happiness.
You don't earn peace.
You have it already.
Drop the false belief,
And your struggle with the world drops,
And peace arises all by itself.
All is well because you are.
Even if you're still neurotic,
Even if your finances are a mess,
Even if the world doesn't give you what you want,
Even if the world withholds its approval of you,
None of that matters when it comes to being at peace,
When it comes to rediscovering happiness.
Isn't that marvelous?
If we could only come to see it clearly,
And we can.
So that's what I intend to discuss in the upcoming talks I'll be giving here,
Namely,
How we drop these false beliefs and rediscover our true nature.
So between now and the next podcast,
I invite you to do an exercise.
I invite you to observe children that you come across in your daily life.
It may be your own children.
It may be children that you observe at the market,
Or perhaps when you pass a playground.
Watch and sense their innate happiness,
Their innate innocence.
And ask yourself,
How much of that happiness and innocence is still in me?
Thank you.
