from my formspring, slightly edited.
What is the secret of your mindful joy and peace? Any advice for a fellow tranquility searcherer?
Oh god, hahaha, I’ve been trying to put this down in text for a tumblr post for a month or more, and came to the conclusion that I could write a book about how it all came to me; I should say, how it came from me. Conciseness has never been a strong point of mine, so I suppose the practice will do me good. Take from it what you will.
For years, like I believe is true for many folk, I saw me at the centre of my world, and my happiness revolved around either good or bad things happening to me. Of course I’d try to seek out what I saw as happy things, I’d move away from unhappy ones, and figured that if I managed to keep doing that I’d be happy. Reality had other ideas and it didn’t really work. As an aside I believe that thinking is the basis of just about all consumerism. See. Want. Buy. Repeat endlessly.
Jump ahead to a bit more self-awareness, and I saw that the happiness and unhappiness that came from what I’d seek was something I generated within myself. ie If I lost a job, I could choose to see it as making me unhappy, or I could choose to see it in a positive light as an opportunity for renewal, a new start. That took effort to turn events to positivity, and it worked better than my previous tack - but sometimes it just drained me, and the effort I spent was more than the positivity I gained. If I relaxed too much or didn’t keep up my alertness I’d descend into depression again.
For many quite aware folk, that seems to be where the story ends, and the world is full of self-help books on how to turn negatives to positives by continually adjusting your own attitude.
At the end of 2009 however, I had another realisation that I can only describe as an Enlightenment. If I detached totally from the judgment of whether an external force was good or bad or anything at all, if I let it come to me, wash over me, and leave, I could strip away more and more to be left with just my own consciousness. While meditating on this and experiencing only my momentary consciousness, nothing else existed or needed to exist. My past experience with my family may have influenced where I was and what thoughts I had, for example, but for the moment they did not exist. My friends, my car, my lawns, my artwork, my city, all ceased to exist. There was just the last core of me simply Being; an ever changing spark that wandered here, wandered there, and simply Was.
Now a diversion back to my previous states; I’d felt before that to feel anything good or bad, I had to generate those feelings based on events that happened to/with/around me - whether it be an event, a thought, a dream, some other person. Therefore to be happy I felt I had to generate a happiness by altering my perspective of events. If, back then, I’d been forced to imagine what I might feel like if I stripped all that experience away from me, I’d have said it’d be a neutral state. A balance. A sphere floating in space, neither good nor bad, neither up nor down.
But merely existing as nothing but consciousness felt GOOD. It felt blissful. It was contentment, happiness, and a hundred other emotions I couldn’t exactly pinpoint. It was a totality of peace, joy, serenity, complete calm, wonderment. I burst out laughing when I saw that simply Being was so awesome. I mean that quite literally, just after sunset on December 8th 2009, I was laughing with tears in my eyes when I discovered it.
What a state to be in!! Now, in the past I used to say meditating did me good - but it was defective because after I stopped, the real world came back - but the more I saw, practiced and experienced myself as consciousness, the more I felt that blissful state, the more I could touch it when I wasn’t meditating quietly in a peaceful place. The first time I really felt it ‘intrude’ into the rest of my life was in the cheese aisle at Woolies - and again, I laughed out loud. At cheese. In public.
Now cheese is inherently funny, but this was better than that.
Do I sound like a flake yet? That’s ok! At least enjoy your laughter too because it’ll do you good :)
Now, after months of tapping into that state inside me, I can see it always. Fewer and fewer things that happen *to* me touch a judgment of being Good or Bad, and I see everything differently - those outside events become just indicators. Sure, I sometimes feel sad, even cry, or feel frustration, illness, annoyance - but all of those things are telling me something now, showing me how to steer my little boat. There may be rough seas, but as the captain of my vessel I’m always smiling, enjoying the ride.
It all ends up in a realisation that puts a whole history of human spirituality in perspective to me, and about why this joy came to me now. It’s only in the last 18 months that I felt what I consider to be a pure innocent untainted love - and having had that feeling of being loved and loving another, that mix of wonderful feelings that can’t be described in one form but only experienced (otherwise we just spend time describing limitless facets of it) is also that positive feeling I find when simply Being. It’s not just giving love, or the feeling of being loved by another/the universe/etc, it’s just Love, fullstop.
I am, and by Being, I am Love. It never runs out, it’s free for the experiencing, and by sharing it I can generate more among others, with no energy lost. One short quote I read on twitter (of all places!) really makes so much sense to me now.
“If you want happiness, then start being happy!” - All we have to see is that the emphasis is on the Being.
Bliss to you, and thank you for asking :)
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