2300 years ago, Aristotle concluded that, more than anything else, men and women seek happiness. Since then, we still don’t understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did. As Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, beautifully summarized in his book “Flow”; despite the fact that we’re now healthier and grow to be older, despite the fact that even the least affluent among us were surrounded by material luxuries undreamed of even a few decades ago, and regardless of all the stupendous scientific knowledge we can summon at will, people often end up feeling that their lives have been wasted, that instead of being filled with happiness their years were spent in anxiety and boredom.
A lot of people on the planet, unfortunately, because they’ve been victims of the religious system, are waiting to die so that they can live. Almost everyone we speak with nowadays is preoccupied with their future. What’s going to happen in politics? The economy? Public health? The environment? And most importantly, how will it affect our future? (*)
From the day we are born; countless, systematic encodings; such as fears, anxieties, expectations, comparisons, and separations; are injected into our minds. Eventually, we call them our personality and we struggle with these feelings that we don’t understand where they came from. We often blame ourselves as we’re the core reason for these emotions. These feelings stick to us in such a way that sometimes it feels like our core character, which doesn’t seem possible to be changed.
We are usually put upon dozens of expectations without questioning. We try very hard to get somewhere, to achieve something, and to prove ourselves to someone for our entire life. In this rush; we do not realize how quickly life passes; because the system does not allow it. It keeps our minds busy all the time; we lose ourselves in the system. Most people don’t even have time or energy left to focus on themselves. Unless a drastic or tragic event happens to them unexpectedly; they don’t consider changing anything in their life, or even questioning what they really want from life, because it simply seems impossible to change.
In this systematic madness, we’ve moved from our hearts to our brains. We’ve lost our connection to nature, to earth, to the divine. All decisions are made by the brain. We became polarized; we lost our connection to the universal consciousness, called Unity; which we explore what it means in the following chapters both from the lens of quantum science and mystic ancient traditions.
What’s the solution? Can we revisit the definition of happiness?
In the concept of happiness, perception is the key. The perceptions about our lives are the outcome of our experiences; each having an impact on whether we feel good or bad. While there are some forces outside of our control in this life, by changing the way we think and perceive life, we can change the whole experience of our daily functioning and perception of happiness.
Legendary psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous investigations of “optimal experience” have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called FLOW. His groundbreaking research in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness, unlock our potential, and greatly improve the quality of our lives.
In the upcoming sections, we will dive deeper into the realm of consciousness and explore its meaning and our interaction with it. For now, we can summarize the state flow as basically removing all the conditioning and business of the mind; aka “Quieting the Mind”, and tapping into the universal energy field while engaging within the actions at the moment. Of course, as you can guess from the topic of my thesis, our core approach to achieving this will be “Meditation” which, for some of you, could be an alien term.
Meditation is in its simplest term the practice of slowing down and focusing our mind in the present moment. The core essence of meditation is increasing the “flow” moments in our lives until ultimately our entire life is a meditation-in-action. Then all of our acts are part of the flow of the universe.
Why meditate? To live in the moment. To dwell in the harmony of things. To awaken!
Ram Dass, who was an American spiritual guru, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author, in one of his masterpieces “Journey of Awakening”, gave us incredible insights about practicing meditation. Here is how beautifully he summarizes the flow:
Everyone has had such experiences where you were in the totality of the moment. You were not clinging to anything. You were not holding on to the experience. It was flowing– through you, around you, by you, in you. At that moment, you were the experience. You were the flow; you had transcended the separation that thought creates. You were the moment in all its fullness. A moment. The moment of orgasm. The moment of being in love. The moment of crisis is when we forget ourselves and do just what is needed. In these moments of your life that there is no longer separation. There is peace, harmony, tranquility, and the joy of being part of the process. In these moments the universe appears fresh; it is seen through innocent eyes. It all begins anew. These moments are ones in which we have “lost ourselves”, or been “taken out of ourselves”, or “forgotten ourselves”. They are the moments in FLOW.
These moments appear again and again in our lives. For many people, it first comes as a glimpse into other states of consciousness brought about by emotional trauma, drugs, sex, nature, or a love affair. This glimpse reveals to the person that there is something more. That he or she isn’t exactly who he or she thought. You may link these moments with the conditions out of which they arose. Perhaps it’s the moment of sexual orgasm when you transcend self-consciousness. Perhaps it’s a moment of trauma, or extreme danger when you “forget yourself”. Perhaps it’s when you’re out in the woods away from people and you let down your defenses, and loosen the boundaries of your self-consciousness. Perhaps when you’re lazing by a stream, or when you’re sitting quietly with friends you trust and love.
In these moments, our awareness expands. These moments bring a sense of rightness, of total perfection, of being at-one-moment, of clarity, of feeling intimately involved with everything around you, of being free of the tension of ego. Sometimes we mistakenly identify these moments with the vehicles, and we cling to these situations and keep going back to them to recreate the moments. However, these moments of flow can happen anytime, anywhere throughout life; and you can access them by slowing down the mind and removing all the conditioning of the ego identity.
The first step is basically taking ourselves from the marketplace for a while and cultivating the inner quiet space. When we take the time to be still and question our habitual certainties; we will realize that actually, we know nothing! Everything we know is made up; it’s a human construct. And once we are embedded in that human concept, we call it a reality! We don’t question what is the source of this experience.
Through meditation when we simply practice the mindful awareness of body, mind, mental space, the web of relationships, and the mystery of existence. It takes us slowly deeper into our true self which is the orchestrator of our everyday experience; our source of perception, and our core of happiness.
Edwin J. Dingle, who was an English journalist, author, and founder of the Institute of Mentalphysics in California, US, wrote this statement in his meditation guide: One of man’s greatest gifts is his ability consciously to enter the silence. When we know how scientifically to tap the power and wisdom through meditation, we discover ourselves to be already far along the path. Life then holds no disharmony for us. We’re free from the ravages of worry and time. We come closer to the forces that propel us on our journey and enter consciously and fully upon the more abundant life.
Quieting the mind is not an easy task at first for most of us. In such a noisy and distracting world outside us, one needs to take responsibility for the meditation practice and deliberately turn inside to listen and observe carefully with full presence.
Shunryu Suzuki, a brilliant Zen teacher who helped to popularize Zen Buddhism in the US, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, one of the great modern spiritual classics, wrote:
“During meditation, many sensations come. Many thoughts or images arise, but they are just waves of your own mind. Nothing comes from outside your mind. To realize pure mind in your delusion is practice. If you try to expel the delusion it will only persist more. Just say, “Oh, this is just a delusion” and do not be bothered by it.“
Baba Ram Dass, in his other best-selling book, Be Here Now, summarized the concept of thoughts as follows: Can we stop the thoughts? NO. Thoughts continue as a natural process in nature, but you run them through on automatic (base brain) – the same way most people drive an automobile, that is, without attending to each movement of the accelerator or steering wheel. We function under the fallacy that we’re thoughts and therefore must attend to them in order for them to be realized. To break your identification with your own thoughts is to achieve inner freedom.
As a summary of this chapter, we can say that our main purpose with meditation is to liberate ourselves and gain true freedom in our life and tap into the flow of life. How? By dropping the ego, which is another term easier said than done. In the next chapter, we will focus on the concept of removing the conditioning of the ego identity; Becoming Nobody!
