In our culture we are conditioned to believe that our highest endeavor should be the “pursuit of happiness”. Anyone who’s willing to be “awake” can see that this has been the recipe for all suffering. There have been wars fought in the pursuit of happiness. People struggle through their whole life hoping to achieve happiness in the end. The planet is worse off from the various activities undertaken under the assumption that it will lead to happiness.
Is it not easy to see that if you are pursuing happiness you are sacrificing your present for an imagined future. The personal will is always looking at the future and it insanely forces you to toil, struggle and make effort, in an attempt to secure a happy future. Unfortunately, this “happy” future always seem to elude the person. He/she might attain some happiness once in a while after achieving something, but this happiness fades away quickly to be replaced by more struggle and suffering. Is this the kind of life you want to live?
Life is not about pursuing happiness, it’s all about expressing happiness. However, you cannot express happiness if you are not in a place of permanent happiness. Only the “person” tends to believe that happiness needs to be attained. Life is inherently happy all the time, it does not need to attain anything to be happy. Permanent happiness is your true nature, but the “person” can never attain it. Once the person dissolves, happiness is all that remains. Gautham Buddha spelled this truth quite simply in the statement “No self, No suffering”.
The “me” is a force created through a misunderstanding, or ignorance, in the mind of the reality, or the truth. The “me” starts using its will to sustain itself and pursue goals that it imagines will make it happy. The will of the “me” is the personal will. If you look at your own experience you will notice that the “me” is seldom happy or satisfied. The “me” is a construct which needs to be sustained constantly, for without this constant effort to sustain itself the “me” will start dissolving in force. So the “me” indefinitely struggles to keep adding “content” to itself and tries to protect itself from diminishing in any way. The personal will is the force the “me” uses to sustain itself. The “me” can never experience permanent happiness, or satisfaction, because it can never really relax for long.
When you start letting go of the “me” force, you will automatically start resting in the space of being. This space of being will become more and more powerful as the personal will, or the “me” energy, starts dissolving. You will notice that in the absence of “me” there is always happiness, because who you really are is joy itself. You will experience the joy of life every moment, irrespective of the situation you are in.
It’s really funny how you are searching for scraps of happiness while sitting on top of an ocean of happiness. The “me” has to go so that your true nature can come forth. You have to embrace the loss of the personal will, before you can experience the freedom that’s your birth right. Who you are is free every moment, who you are is joyful every moment. The “person” will never experience this joy because the “person” is what is clouding it.
Finally a site which offers ‘donate’ instead of pay now and get 95% off our regular price, and this now limited offer expires if you leave this site! Phew, I found you! Now watch me NOT donate anything because my ego lied about how important it was that the best things in life are free and if it is a worthy cause it should be by donation! : ) I remember paying $400 for my whole family for the Transcendental Meditation course back 35 years ago because they said if we did’t pay for it, it will not have much value to us? I only paid $2 to have Edgar Cayce readings mailed out but still felt money came between us. Used to be a nice big library book with everything in it for free. Then their site went pay for everything. A Course in Miracles used to have the 3 parts for free on their website, but just the lessons are up. About 3 months ago the thought came to me ‘there must be someway to kill my ego, somebody out there knows’, so I googled ‘death of the ego’ and poof, then came Eckhart Tolle. Never heard of him before. I of course bought the ‘New Earth’ as a birthday present for my mom after reading the library copy myself : ). Still trying to kill the ego. Yesterday was nasty so I googled again ‘death of the ego’ and found you! Talking the same way my mind thinks even!
Now there are 2 things I’d like to mention.
I was wondering if to release the ego you can simply welcome it. Like when I am working with my students and I feel a freeze instead of happy movement I say ‘awh poor people’ which means I identify with everybody who feels that brick wall when I get that feeling. Then it disappears because I gave awareness to it. It didn’t hurt and it made me happy. It reduced the ego in a loving way. I thought it had to be burned out or WWF’d (wrestling) out. Whew! so much pain and suffering to become enlightened! Then yesterday Larry Crane/Lester Levenson ‘Release Technique’ on You-Tube said to say ‘Yes’ to release it (negative thoughts, energy, ego, whatever), say yes a bunch of times and then when its energy is small enough, ask it if it would like to leave and it will say ‘Yes’. Cool huh. That was what my statement ‘Awh poor people’ felt like Just a temporary dismissal of the ego. Still nasty ego but practice makes perfect so I will keep working the awareness. Tolle says to keep doing awareness and it gets easier. It didn’t seem to be though, but then I realized I probably didn’t keep bringing awareness and just forgot I wasn’t being aware. Just suffering away. Bringing awareness seems to be a lot of work when you are busy thinking how hopeless your life is : ). But now that I actually can focus a little love and compassion with that awareness, it should make things A LOT easier than doing battle with the poor ego. Guess I’m answering my own question. : )
The other thing I learned was YES or NO. I guess it’s like ask and you shall receive. If I remember to ask before I make a decision, I will always get the right answer. always! That was from Marie Sheldon(?) Love and Above nodding forward for yes (ask a question 3x’s) or backwards for no. I actually used to do that with string circling right or left with a weight on the end on my outstretched arm with no apparent movement from the person holding it. Just took it seriously now. I thought that if everything is a question and its either yes or no for an answer (course in miracles only 2 choices) then YAY! everything will be solved. Not quite I guess. Still takes painful focus to ask questions! : ) But it helps a lot and I’m sure I save myself a lot of grief and energy not walking down some wrong paths. We don’t know what we didn’t do would have been. So I just have to go with faith. Looks like the truth is in the now if you can get the right answer every time. Then that is awareness of now.
Thank you so much for being here. You have helped so much to confirm insights and have assisted in pointing me in the right direction. YAY! We certainly need to be contagious to others. I know I have to set the example for everybody and I’m not used to being someone to be worthy of being followed. Children keep gathering to me and I’ve felt bad not knowing how to stick up for them and I need to change now.
Have fun and thanks so much again.
lynette
does anyone know what transcendental meditation is and does it yield the same benefits as relaxed awareness?
Carl Jean,
You can read Sen’s post here: http://www.calmdownmind.com/the-practice-of-relaxed-awareness/ for more information on relaxed awareness.
This is the page I used for learning about transcendental meditation as I have not known about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation_technique
I do not know for certain if it has the same effects (since I have never tried it), but as long as it allows for one to release their energy without focusing on trying to do so then I would say it does for a time being. The important thing is not to become dependent on the technique (as with any technique) because if that were to happen it would be a form of escape. Again, I have no experience with transcendental meditation. If you have an interest in trying it out it’s fine.