21 Jul 2009
Open Your Eyes to Happiness
Like poverty happiness is relative, so create your own scale. I used to think that a bottle of poppers up my nose was intimacy & true happiness until I found drugs further up the ladder. Now drug free for a few decades and then some, HAPPINESS is whatever I choose it to be, like the freedom to cock things up without beating myself up afterwards, freedom to make clearer choices and waking up on clean sheets without a hangover makes me very happy. Small things count.
They say that RESENTMENT kills the container it’s kept in and my fuselage was well corroded when I was bang at it all those years ago, counting all the things I did for people and the people that gave nothing back.
I remembered them.
Every one. The whole of my life was conditional and conditional anything breeds disappointment and unhappiness.
These days I try to avoid projection of happiness. Maybe this is how you think too?
OR THIS : I will be happy WHEN I get a new job, flatmate, partner and lose weight.
A Course In Miracles states that " everything is temporary ", once you get that notion and accept that happiness can’t be captured, freedom arrives as quickly as a dealers taxi. For freedom is intrinsically linked to happiness. Freedom to be who you are, to be authentic without editing, to be open about sexuality and downsides to character.
Losing past and present resentments is a key to Happiness.
What works to anyone’s advantage is to write down 5 resentments about past or present and be prepared to drop the hurts that burn inside. Chem & Alcohol consumption for many is like the film " The Great Escape " when used to forget, to numb or to avoid rejection. Drink and drugs are great tools to employ relaxation, release and realizations, long may that continue, but not so hot when the returning resentments capture your happiness and take you back to prison camp. I heard someone say that I drank to drown my sorrows then my sorrows learn’t to swim.
Well it was true in my case.
Ironically, one of the happiest periods for me was 1994-96 just before the arrival of combos. I worked soley with people dying from AIDS, all with CD4′s below 10. I took one guy to Turkey with a CD4 of 2, he was determined to have a holiday before he died. He was so happy to have made it ( and he lasted another 3 years with combos ). Another wanted to be wheeled in a wheelchair to see David Hockney’s Mr & Mrs Ossie Clark & Percy at the Tate Gallery for the last time, while another decided to die on crisp white French linen so off we went to Peter Jones. Humour in times of darkness is a breeder of joy. With these guys I assisted them to complete their life, releasing resentments before they passed into light but anyone can lift the luggage they hold without the threat of death though I do accept that fear is a great motivator.
For me happiness is a pile of freshly ironed and folded shirts.
I get great satisfaction from that. Babaji said Karma Yoga (work) breeds happiness. Happiness is knowing that you have cleared the wreckage of the past. Happiness is turning the phone off. Happiness is being silent in a persons arms.
Write your own list each day as an antidote to losing the plot. Running your life with a new set of rules fuels happy thinking. You can get this through therapy, coaching or flicking through inspirational or self -help books, however deciding not to bother with the exercises mentioned is likely to result in a half-measured result.
In REHABS like the Priory for a 6 week period you often do 16 hours a day of individual writing, group sessions, one 2 one counseling and emotional management including the suggestion to LET GO OF CONTROL. If you think you can get it flicking through a paperback you can’t. Recovery is hard work but worth it. Just think about how your sense of happiness is determined by the behavior of other people. Learning to detach from fixing others, pleasing others and then fixing and pleasing yourself is perhaps the ultimate shift in contentment. David Weeks scientific study, the first on the subject of Eccentrics, found them to be the happiest people and they live longer purely because they gave up taking notice of what people thought of them.
Happy people are happy from within, not unhappy to be without the latest label. So remember that you don’t have to have a fit body to workout from the inside and once you start to focus on solutions you will realize that a perfect waist is not the key to a perfect life.
I love this blog, very comforting.I have been through a lot of this stuff recently, particularly the letting go of fixing people. Since i am not perfect howver, nor ever will i be, i do a certain amount of fixing and pleasing myself ( not with drugs and alcohol any more i hasten to add) and have freedom and serenity in my life.
Since i am never going to please anyone else all the time nor are they ever going to please me all the time either, i have also let go of these nonsensical expectations.
Therefore i allow others to be who they are and discover who i am gradually, now that i am not a control freak!
Jackie
July 21st, 2009 at 9:48 pmpermalink
Thanx for sharing your experience on this topic Jackie and I understand your recent Happiness is 4 years. How fantastic – and the best is yet to come.
theswarmite
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 ampermalink
Wikipedia says about Karma Yoga: Karma yoga literally translates to the path of union through action. It is described as a way of acting, thinking and willing by which one orients oneself toward realization by acting in accordance with one’s duty (dharma) without consideration of personal self-centered desires, likes or dislikes.
Reading your piece it really emphasises the link between happiness and to work/move forward without attachment to the outcome. For me happiness is to be at ease with being a part of life (or something greater than myself) without necessarily knowing exactly how to be or how to move forward; to be ok the way I am rather than having the ok (happiness) linked with some model of what I think is how things should be. If that makes sense.
Swedish chef
July 27th, 2009 at 11:23 ampermalink
. . yes it does make sense Swedish Chef. We no longer need models of happiness to attach ourselves to. This was the way before credit crunch – happiness via consumerism ( the outside of us ). The inside of us is where real peace resides along with the release of destination. Real recovery comes from feelings of happiness rather than what the marketing industry tells us happiness is. Like yourself I practice being part of a greater self rather than a self-centred self. Thanx for the wiki -spot on.
theswarmite
July 27th, 2009 at 1:12 pmpermalink