What Is Happiness/Peace?

We start off with a complete letting go of our concerns of our body or mind - as if we are on a paid vacation with no obligations. This helps us get into an exploration of what it means to be happy. Not the momentary happiness that leads into disappointment or frustration but the happiness that is longer lasting.

Anger is the same to all of us, sadness too but somehow happiness has a personal definition. Maybe peace is a better word; less controversial. Eventually, we are looking for the same!

Transcript

Let's close our eyes.

You know most of the day we are not really thinking about our posture,

About our body unless we are in some kind of a pain.

We are just free.

We are free to think and do whatever we want.

I want you to extend that freedom to your body even today in this session.

There's no right or wrong way.

Just be natural.

As a matter of fact,

The whole session I want you to be just natural.

Nothing contrived.

No stiffness.

Stiffness of body or stiffness of mind.

Just let go as if you are on a paid vacation.

It's a special kind of vacation where you don't have to attend any meeting,

Give a presentation,

Attend a conference.

Nothing.

You are well fed.

So there's no immediate emergency to deal with or survival to deal with.

Most of us do get a taste of this when we go to sleep at night.

Where all our worries,

All our to-dos,

Everything is just paused while we retreat into sleep.

So this is more like an almost asleep meditation.

Everything but the sleep part.

Throughout the day,

Throughout the weeks,

Months,

Years,

We are projecting into the future.

We are in the process of becoming.

It's like where we are,

What we have is insufficient,

Is incomplete,

Is not good enough.

And that's why that shiny thing,

Shiny possibility in the future is what attracts us.

And society rewards that,

Promotes that.

Where if you are in school,

You're looking forward to college admissions.

You want to get into that particular college in that particular field.

Once you are in college,

You want this semester to be done,

The grades be done.

Then you're looking forward to graduation,

Finding a job.

Then when you find a job,

You're looking forward to the promotions.

And there's nothing wrong in these milestones.

What I'm trying to show is how we approach these milestones.

We approach them from a place of lack,

A place of insufficiency,

Where that milestone is going to complete us,

Is going to fulfill the promise of making us happy.

I remember being in,

Being 16 years old and being in 10th grade in India.

And I'd really worked hard to complete this public exam,

Which would eventually decide which college I get.

And everyone was hoping that I would make it to this prestigious list of meritorious students.

And no one in my family or friends had even achieved that.

So I put my head down for an entire year and worked towards it.

And then when I got my mark sheet,

I realized that I was ranked 23rd in like half a million students in my entire district.

So it was a moment of pride for me,

My family.

And the next day when I woke up,

I saw my picture in the newspapers and I felt an emptiness,

As if it's like,

OK,

This is it.

What now?

As if the promise,

And I remember it very distinctly,

I remember how I felt as well.

It's as if the promise was betrayed.

I mean,

I'd gotten what I wanted,

But I wasn't feeling as I'd imagined I would feel.

Same thing happened a couple of years later.

Same thing happened when I got into a U.

S.

University.

When I came to the U.

S.

,

I found a job,

Etc.

,

Etc.

And it kept happening.

Every time I thought I need to reach this milestone and then things will be OK.

And even after reaching,

If I was fortunate enough to reach that milestone,

It didn't deliver.

It didn't deliver the rest I was looking for,

That peace I was looking for.

My mind relaxed for a minute and then it didn't know what to do.

That's the approach I'm talking about.

The milestone is not the problem.

The approach was my problem.

And if I had to describe it to someone,

In theory,

No one in my family had achieved this.

None of my friends.

My picture was all over the newspaper.

So in theory,

In description,

Everything was just picture perfect.

But the quality of life is dictated about how we feel about our life,

About ourselves.

And that feeling was not making me feel that way,

Was not confirming the theory,

The description.

I'm sure all of you must have gone through some or the other version of this.

Otherwise,

You wouldn't be here.

If the promise of happiness and by happiness,

I mean the long lasting,

Once and for all,

I found happiness.

I met it and now we are married for the rest of our lives kind of happiness.

If we would have found it,

We wouldn't be here.

The fact that we are disappointed again and again.

That's where the wisdom lies.

It may be,

Maybe this promise,

Itself is the problem.

Everything except the promise is the is OK,

But the promise of happiness,

If we are able to isolate it,

Because the promise takes us to the heights of expectations and then to disappointment.

Most of the times because we didn't achieve what we quote unquote set out to do.

Or if we are fortunate,

We achieve what we set out to do and we still feel disappointed.

The milestone by itself is not a problem.

We should all get promoted,

Earn more money,

Do bigger,

Better things.

But we should withdraw this expectation of happiness or peace or rest from that achievement.

If we are to experiment with the opposite of what we have been trying to do all along,

All along we have just been projecting,

Projecting our happiness into the future.

What would it look like if the next time you meet your loved one,

You call your kids and you don't expect them to make you happy?

Or even when you hang out with friends,

What would it look like if you relieved your friends to make you happy?

If you relieved your job to make you happy?

If you relieved your kids and boss and spouse to make you happy?

Would that interaction improve?

I know many of us say this that,

You know,

Everyone's definition of happiness is different.

I don't quite understand that.

All of us experience anger the same way.

That's why we are able to talk about it.

Not the triggers of anger,

But anger itself.

The way it manifests might be different,

But anger is anger.

Sadness is sadness.

There are no two definitions of sadness,

But somehow when it comes to happiness,

There are two definitions or end definitions of happiness,

Yours and mine.

That's why I've started gravitating more towards peace than happiness,

Because somehow happiness has become like a controversial word.

If you want to simply define happiness or even peace for that matter,

In a simplistic way,

It can be defined as wanting what you have,

Wanting to be where you are.

Every time we don't want to be somewhere,

We don't want what we have or we want what we don't have.

We feel unhappiness.

We feel restless.

We feel incomplete.

So being okay with what we don't have and wanting what we have,

Being okay with what we don't have and being okay with what we have.

The simplest definition of peace and happiness.

Think about the time where you were just in the woods with your friends,

With your kids,

With your family.

You experienced this deep,

Deep peace or happiness or fulfillment or joy.

Although the circumstances were simple,

You wanted to be where you were.

You didn't want anything else.

Those were the moments that you probably are thinking of right now.

You didn't want the weather to change.

You didn't want the people to change.

Nothing,

Everything was just picture perfect.

So nature has this mechanism where we encounter this blip in the matrix,

So to say.

Where whatever nature wants aligns with what we want,

We experience happiness.

And the moment there is a dissonance,

A discrepancy between what nature wants and what we want,

We experience unhappiness.

And most of the times,

Nature wants something else.

That's why most of the times we experience unhappiness.

Now we can spend our entire lives trying to fix nature.

And by nature,

I mean everyone else in the world,

Including weather,

Climate,

Diseases,

Everything else.

Or we could just align ourselves with nature because we are not outside of nature.

We are nature.

We'd like to think that we are outside.

We are special,

But we are nature.

So the experience of unhappiness is thinking that we are against or we are outside of nature.

But what if we aligned with nature?

What if we even attempted to experiment this for ourselves to find out what the results would be like?

What if we didn't have a problem with what was happening?

That doesn't mean we condone everything that is happening.

We have to do our parts.

Just aligning our happiness,

Our actions with nature's demands.

If nature wants you to work harder,

Yes,

You work harder.

You take care of yourself.

You take care of your family or friends or whoever you cross paths with.

If something needs fixing,

You fix it.

What if you didn't complain?

What if there was no ulterior motive to cause unhappiness to us other than the fact that we are thinking about someone having an ulterior motive to create unhappiness for us?

What would our life look like?

Would our experience of life deepen?

And this is not a thought experiment.

These questions are only to invoke the scientist in you to experiment in our own life,

For our own life.

You don't have to accept anything I say.

If you wish,

You can try it out.

See what results you get.

If you like what you see,

Keep it.

Aligning what we want with what nature wants.

I remember the very influential book in my life by Michael Singer called The Surrender Experiment.

I remember this quote so distinctly.

Although it has a religious tone to it,

But you can replace that with nature if you don't like the word God.

It said,

God's plan for me is better than my plan for me,

Which translates to what nature wants.

I just need to align myself with it.

Thank you.