Happiness

When you take the time to settle into the silence regularly, and listen deeply, you will begin to realize that your happiness is not dependent on outside forces. You will begin to develop a relationship with Life as it unfolds, a relationship firmly grounded in reality (as opposed to fantasy created in the mind about the way you think it should be or the way you want it to be or even the way you perceive it to be). You will no longer feel that you can be happy only when everyone around you acts the way you want them to, or only when the weather is just so and all your planets line up perfectly. Ramana Maharshi once put it this way: “Trying to change the world without first changing yourself is like trying to cover the whole world with leather to avoid walking on stones and thorns. It is much easier to wear sandals.”
In your meditation, accept all things: thoughts, feelings, memories; all things with equanimity. This is the practice of vairagya. Abhyasa and vairagya – practice and equanimity - work together to keep your sails moving with the wind in a way that moves you effortlessly toward freedom. To practice equanimity is to see the world without opinion and preference. Whether the room is too hot or too cold, too noisy or too stuffy, practice sitting quietly without needing to change everything to suit your needs. Increase your comfort level by accepting life, and all of its ups and downs, with equanimity. Soon you will discover that you feel more content with the world, with yourself and with others. You will expand your awareness and acceptance of other ideas, and other ways of seeing things. From that place of real understanding you can make a difference in the world. You can act from a place of clarity and wisdom instead of reacting out of habit or fear.

Don’t worry that you will turn into a door mat with this practice. Quite the contrary. If you are acting on auto-pilot, and auto-reactions, then you are already more of a door mat than you might realize. Without the practice of vairagya, you are at the mercy of your desires, you are being held prisoner by your own opinions and preferences, so that if things aren’t exactly comfortable, you aren’t exactly happy or content. If you merely change your surroundings to suit your preferences, it is like being in prison and putting up a picture of beauty. Nice, but the prison is still there. So it is with your judgments, preferences, desires, criticisms and opinions; unless you are able to observe yourself beyond them, you will always be held captive by them. The stronger you hold on to them, the more intense they get and the more you suffer. Learn to find beauty everywhere... at least, practice being neutral in difficult situations. When you aren’t wasting energy spouting off, complaining, blaming or otherwise expressing your opinions, you are able to see more, hear more, observe more (in yourself and your surroundings). You are also more likely to move through the situation in a logical, systematic way, one obvious step at a time. Less flailing about, less damage done. Listen to yourself. Be willing to lay aside all your preferences, opinions and ideas of how things SHOULD be in lieu of being present in the world AS IT IS. This is vairagya, the practice of equanimity. It can be practiced continually and it won’t take away your preferences or your ability to change things for the better in the world. It will merely be freeing you from the bondage of your unconscious thought patterns. It will be freeing up more of your energy to do your work in a more efficient manner. In other words you will not be all wrapped up in angst when things don’t go the way you desire them to go. For you, happiness will be a steady state of consciousness free from the events around you. You will feel a deeper, fuller quality of grief, of joy, of richness in your life, because you will always be grounded in reality, in truth, in light and in love.