Wisdom for a Sunday Afternoon or Any Time of the Day
I’m sure you know our current economic crisis has many people waiting for the “other shoe to drop.” Unfortunately, their perception of “reality” supplies them plenty of reasons to think in this self-defeating way.
You’re probably aware that sometimes the deck seems decisively stacked against you. You think—happiness, I’ll be fortunate just to survive the day without losing my mind.
I understand. You know, I meditate at least an hour every day—yet I still have moments when anxiety attempts to take control of how I feel. Remember the times you felt uneasy and anxious. It’s not very pleasant—is it? I often wonder how people who don’t meditate or indulge in some type of spiritual practice handle it.
You may be asking how we can capture the illusive state of being we call happiness.
Fortunately, it’s possible to experience this daily, if we know where to look. However, we must realize that without unhappiness we wouldn’t know what happiness is. Without uneasiness of mind, we couldn’t possibly conceive of peace of mind. You know, there’s up and down, in an out, and black and white. Everything has its opposite—the other side of the coin.
The idea is not to disown sadness, unhappiness, anxiety, hate, fear and all the other negatives we’d like to do without. Disowning these undesirable feelings, guarantee they will rear their ugly heads at the most inappropriate times.
Having said that—let’s discover where happiness resides and doesn’t reside.
Unfortunately, most people believe that happiness is an external affair. They expect to gain happiness from things and other people. Sadly, they have cause and effect backwards. They don’t realize that happiness is a way of life.
It’s quite difficult to enjoy the good things in life if you haven’t discovered that happiness comes from within. A person who doesn’t realize this, attempts to escape from his misery and deprivation by indulging in irrationally selfish activities.
Most people live in the past because of all the excess baggage they carry. No wonder they feel weighed down. Since they expect more of the same, they futurize and create even a heavier burden of pain and misery to drag around.
Consider this. If you combine meditation, release techniques and owning up to disowned parts of yourself, you have good chance of discovering the happiness that resides within. Of course, you will also discover many other aspects of yourself.
Robert A. Meyer
http://libertarianway.com/