HAPPINESS IS NOT AN OUTCOME

Whom would we consider truly embodying happiness -Donald Trump or the Dali Lama?
On what basis would we evaluate the operationalization of happiness? Would the over-sufficiency of acquiring excessive external wealth, be even a factor? Would the achievement of substantive goals, be a factor? Would the aggrandizement of self with ‘things’ be a viable factor?

The above considerations all are outcome based. In relation to happiness, ‘outcomes’ are very commonly the evidenced-based criteria we use to suggest success and thereby happiness. The question is, is this a fair set of criteria in which to gauge ‘happiness’.

By this ubiquitously used standard, the winner of the above question would be the former not the latter individual. Somehow, this does not feel right.

It is conflictual because we truly, as a society, give clear credence to the aforementioned criteria. At the same time, when we put that rubber to the road, we start braking with “That ain’t right!” 

What is it that conflicts with ‘this’ reality? Our deepest knowing knows the artificialness and superficiality of this assessment.

It doesn’t add up because the consistency of happiness is that it Is consistently unabashedly Present regardless of external circumstances. External and quote ‘good’ outcomes are truly immaterial to this peace called happiness.

Contrarily, our own lives are seriously built around the ideas of an outcome-based happiness. Yes? More is better?

Do we see the roller coaster effect of tying into the unsteadiness of outcomes, when outcomes are often both ‘good’ and ‘bad’? How is one to achieve any type of equanimity, when the roller coaster is destined to go up and down, and it is us that got on this trip? And even the ‘good’ outcomes do not replenish us for any substantive length of time.

The question then becomes, if happiness is not to be found on the roller coaster of life, where is one to find it?

Happiness is already Present Now in this Moment. It Is so Present all the time that we miss It due to It’s seeming hiding in plain sight. And it has absolutely nothing to do with ‘outcomes’, period. Outcomes of ‘want’ and ‘don’t want’ are conditional and often reverse course. 

The bedrock of whom we Are, Is happiness. This Is a permanent state  that is not roller coaster based. The unshakeable stability of the backdrop to thoughts, feelings, sensation, events, etcetera, is ‘this’ happiness. It Is there in the blank screen of the real movie called our life. The screen allows everything to be shown. No pushing, no pressure. This Is stability. This Is always the starting point.

The metaphor of a blank screen is totally without outcome or requirement as far as what film or whose life may be shown. And the screen is unaffected by any ‘thing’, period. This connection to the stability of the ‘screen’ is already there, letting our life play out.

Happiness abides there in the timelessness and eternity of Now. The stability of the screen does not waver. It Is content and unaffected regardless of how many films are played on it. How could it not be Present always?

When we feel or think we have to be qualified to be happy, we deny the immediacy of our own eternity of Being; and then subsequently we believe the heresy in future moments, that compels an artificial and strained struggle. When we say we will be happy contingent on a future event, we immediately lose Our Presence, as distortion is tacitly allowed.

Be free. Be free of an outcome-based existence. Identity with outcomes commits us to the never-ending struggle to get more stuff, to fight against others so we can achieve at their expense, and to lose our humanity in the commitment to the self-aggrandizement and the un-fulfillment of replicating a voracious false self.

“We need to learn how to want what we have NOT to have what we want in order to get steady and stable Happiness.”
― The Dalai Lama

See The Source. Be the Moment. Happiness Is Here and Now. Only we can leave Happiness.

This Iz Daddy’O