What is Happiness?...

There are two kinds of happiness.

There is the pleasure connected to the intensity of the human experience. There are the delight and pleasure connected to wanting and to finally having what one desires. The fact of desiring makes us feel alive. And the fact of possessing, of having, makes us feel like someone who has value in his or her own eyes as well as in the view of others. This happiness belongs to the field of the pleasure of the senses and of perception: taking joy in life’s pleasures and profit from the beauties of this planet, of this material world. “I take joy and feel alive when I eat, when I listen, when I smell, when I touch, when I look… When something takes place which fills my senses. When I see that I can do the things that I like to do and when I know that others may admire me because I have access to these things.” These pleasures are intense, but often also sources of attachment and dissatisfaction.

Then there is the peace and the profound satisfaction of needing nothing in particular to be happy, of being in a more permanent state of wellbeing more independent of causes.

This happiness is realised knowing that unhappiness is nothing but a momentary and delimited experience which is in fact related to the whole of human experience. And knowing that these difficulties are caused by constraining and restrictive beliefs which give us a distorted and erroneous vision of reality: beliefs that make the human experience intense and tragic.

This second kind of happiness is also related to the fact of knowing that with our new knowledge about the nature of things, we can continue to play the game of the human experience and to live a series of fascinating stories, but this time, in a state of detachment. We become less attached to what surrounds us, being conscious that the world’s manifestations are changeable and impermanent, but born out of that which is permanent, i.e. Absolute Consciousness, the Source or the Whole. Knowing the momentary nature of this experience, we give life a less serious, less tragic and a lighter character. We are no longer trapped in the survival of this experiencing, knowing that this human experience is only a momentary aspect of who we really are.

So I am happy when I no longer believe that I am the ego (i.e. identification with the body, with its survival, and with all the difficult experiences which are attached to these facts) and when I know that this human experience is merely passing and temporary. When I profit from this marvellous journey while still being conscious of these facts. When I am calm and at peace, in the present moment.

I am happy when I leave that stream of thoughts which distances me from who I am (Presence-Consciousness); when I leave thoughts which take all my attention and which cause me to forget who I am. When I leave the darkness and the pain created by my own fears and I turn again towards the light of consciousness. And when I move closer to who I really am: the Source, but expressed in a particular form, the Whole appearing as an identity and an entity: as a human being.


.......Alain Colpron