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The Winds of the Soul ~Heaven's First Voice to Us~
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CHAPTER ONE
The Troubled Inheritance
Belief consists in accepting
The affirmations of the soul;
Unbelief in denying them.
Montaique
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Introduction~
I believe that everyone wants to be “happy,” every one of us. That’s the basic assumption of this book. In fact, it seems to me that this notion of “happiness” is likely the most all encompassing, most all important quality of life we seek. However, I think that it’s also the most elusive, most ill-defined, and least accomplished quality of life judging by where our world seems to be going.
Despite our varied views about what happiness is, there’s not a person among us who has ever wanted anything differently for themselves in the end, or basically wanted anything more, despite the means to secure that end appeared confused. No matter our peculiar and individual misunderstanding of it, no matter our cultural background or heritage, to be “happy” is a basic aspiration that all of us have deeply shared. Despite our misunderstandings and failed attempts of securing it, despite our misdirections and prejudices, happiness often remains elusive—a kind of common, generic desire that never grows old but grows ever more important as we grow older. From Aborigine and Bushman to the rich and royal, happiness, however tragically ill-defined, is a shared priority amongst us that cannot be ignored. No matter how conceived, happiness is something which most of us wish were a better part of our lives. It’s something most of us continue to try to stubbornly achieve over and over again, no matter our failed histories. To some, that may sound somewhat presumptuous, to others, trite. But to me, the importance, if not sacredness, of “happiness” is self-evident.
Yet, being so commonly all important, one would think that the “correct way” to happiness would be well-known and practiced by now, especially considering how long man’s desiring for it has been around. Surprisingly, regardless of our rather lengthy history in pursuit of happiness, the majority of us have not found a distinct and accurate method of “how to be happy.” We might have expected that man’s accumulated wisdom about the subject would have by now given us some clear direction. But it has not. We might have hoped that we would have at least learned from our mistakes, staying clear from all the erroneous paths to happiness over all these years. But we have not. Despite how long we have been at this, there still doesn’t seem to exist a clear consensus about how to be happy or how not to be. It doesn’t appear that any of us have any better understanding about the matter today than we did in the beginning. In fact, judging by the hit-and-miss actions of many of us, our view of happiness appears to have become more distorted over time. As such, corruption continues and the means to satisfy our changing views becomes perverted even further. No matter how misdirected and misguided our efforts are continually proven, we stubbornly practice the same old failed procedures of being happy over and over again. We seem enslaved to practice our “own way” of becoming happy, no matter our lack of success. Sadly, even though few of us came into this world with the direct intention of becoming unhappy or sad, so many of us are. And even though we’re generally not attracted to contention, misery, confusion, nor pain, these things appear to make up the majority of most of our lives.
It becomes increasingly obvious that none of us seems to have a clear or consistent understanding of what we have to “do” to be happy, or what “it” is that makes us happy, or what “it” is that will maintain the happiness we have. In fact, whenever we find ourselves in a position of happiness, we often wonder how on earth we ever got “there.” It’s such an unexpected and temporal thing for many of us, so difficult for most of us to hang on to. And then it’s usually over so quickly, like a burst of fireworks that suddenly fills the sky, surprising our eyes and disappearing before we’ve taken it all in. It all seems so very impermanent and gone before we realize it. We seem to be in the dark about the whole matter; there’s so much that we don’t understand.
Correspondingly, none of us seems to have a clear idea as to what to do when we’re not happy or what we should do to regain the happiness we’ve lost. We’ve all tried the supermarket methods of quick-fixes and the like, but none of them have ever worked. Subsequently, we begin to believe that happiness is a magical process, something unpredictable and unfathomable. When happiness is gone, we believe it’s gone forever unless someone has the “magic” to bring it back. And then we commiserate that any happiness that is regained will never be the same, no matter how hard we try to make it like it used to be. We find that trying to replicate lost happiness seems like a good idea initially, but it just isn’t that easy. No matter how exact we think we are being, our efforts alone prove incapable of giving us the same “buzz” and the same sort of satisfaction. We find ourselves at a loss as to how to accurately reproduce the process or understand how it came to be in the first place. Like a good pie crust that melts in the mouth, before our tastes can be fully satiated, happiness defies our full understanding, only tantalizing the taste buds for more flavor.
Come to think of it, in a strange sort of sense, our common experiences of happiness and flaky pie crust are more alike than they first appear. When they’re both good, it’s almost magical! And, similarly both have been hard to replicate and even harder to master. With pie crust, whatever recipe was used, a faithful reproduction is often difficult. No matter how sure we are of the ingredients, something still turns up wanting. No matter how sincere and practiced our efforts, it’s never quite right, never quite the same. Something is still lacking, something still missing. Somehow, an important contributing factor remains yet to be defined. Similarly, those special factors that suddenly activate situations and circumstances and allow us to experience happiness are not often known either. As in the making of good pastry, the missing ingredients of happiness that turn everyday experiences into those which are passion filled, warm, and alive seem, in the end, frustratingly elusive for most of us.
The difficulty, of course, is in knowing what will actually “make” us happy, or that which will cause us to be “truly” and permanently happy. Despite our healthy individual differences, our individual understanding of what happiness really is has become increasingly ill-focused and badly defined. This is where the real problem starts. Not knowing what it is that we seek, we have lost the way to true happiness and forgotten the understanding as to how to make our own happiness endure. We are left instead with only the dismal guidance offered from unclear historical debates over the matter as our guide. Making things worse, a confusion of materials and social rewards compete with the notions of our heart, often substituting for them any “gusto” we find along the way. To be sure, without a clear understanding, we are vulnerable to almost anything promising us a quick fix.
There are a lot of magic recipes out there, a lot of people selling “happiness” in the world today. Through the recent years, we have been inundated with all sorts of “plans” for happiness. There are so many failed strategies and systems for living that it’s difficult to count them all. Some are packaged as religions, some as new “pop” psychology movements, some as business fads and social trends, some as entertainment. Each come and go with the decades. Each are dramatically orchestrated for our attention and attraction, the splendor and tinsel they offer soon fading. Collectively, these are the “happiness-mongers” selling their wares to any unwary individual who will give them the time of day. The fact that they know little about real happiness doesn’t seem to stop them from selling their notion of it. Either cloaking themselves with religious persuasion or feigned business expertise, there’s always some sort of angle about the matter they’re pushing. “Making people happy” becomes a blanket under which they rationalize their misguided deeds while continuing to break all the laws of Principle, justifying the legitimacy of their calling to themselves and others. Quite startling, their businesses appear to be growing. Despite the seemingly repetitive nature of their antics, the continual bombardment from the “happiness-vendors” endures. And even though they are like snake-oil salesman whose quackery is made from watered-down intoxicants that act to give us a quick “buzz” and little long lasting joy, we don’t seem to get enough of them. We welcome them each and every time they appear, applaud them, bequeath them money and honor, and give them anything else they’d like for the asking, including all of our trusted attention. No matter how crowded, there always appears to be more room for them at the table, as if somebody has been sending them invitations!
Some say being richer will make you happier. Some say being younger or at least being more beautiful will do it. Others want you to join their movement, club, or religion, asking you to quietly surrender the reins to your life so as to allow another to steer your course and make your decisions. They promise us that they’ll tell us the secret of happiness if only we would make a small “investment” or “donation” to their “cause.” Still others believe that you simply have to “busy” yourself. They’ll sell you all the plans you’ll ever need while occupying your time with just enough dribble and nonsense—kind of like summer camp—presumably so that you don’t have to think about how unhappy you really are in the process. Some even tell you that learning not to desire happiness will make you happy. Perhaps they think it will happen by default. Happiness is not only being marketed “wholesale” in this way, but retailed too! Breakfast cereals are now supposed to help us start out the day “happy,” while cheeseburgers and cola drinks are presumably to keep us contented the rest of the time. For more drastic fixes, more money, more cosmetics, more jewelry and clothes can help “make us over,” and thereby be supposedly happier. And of course there’s always that new car that will help set the tone right. In fact, “new” anything seems to make people forget their troubles for a while. Advertisers and retailers have known this for a long time. They thrive on our tendency to buy on impulse. Buy something…. Anything…. It doesn’t really matter what it is and it will make us happy, we’re told. Parenthetically, the words “more” and “new” and “happiness” seem to have become synonyms in our culture. A new credit card, more credit, more success, a new house, a new job, a new baby or love interest, even a new wife or husband—anything to distract us, to give us more pleasure no matter how short lived, has sadly come to mean the thing called happiness for most people.
We’re repeatedly sold this bill of goods. Around every corner there is always the promise of the “sure thing.” The trouble is, none of them have ever worked. Each promising much but delivering little. Not one of them have made us happy. Although the happiness-merchants and pleasure-mongers themselves would never admit it, all of them have failed in making good on their promises. Yet, no sooner is one proven false, then ten more appear, all promising to be better, more “new” and “improved” than the last. Sounds kind of “commercial,” doesn’t it? When all that we were really interested in was buying a good laundry soap! And laundry soaps come and go, you know, just like all the promises of the happiness-merchants. All those promises come and go with the times. The trendy ones, the fashionable ones. You know the ones I’m talking about. And in time, no longer bright with promise, each “enlightened path” becomes a candidate for the junk pile. Despite this evidence, we seem to become ever more convinced that just one of these days we too will win the lottery of happiness and never have to be sad again. We never seem to tire but become addicted to the process instead. But win? We never do—only lose. As each plan successively fails, we find ourselves filing away the “junk” as we would the stuff in our attic or garage. Misbegotten pieces of memory shuffled to the side and ignored for the most part, never to be used again and embarrassingly discarded.
Ever wonder how we ever got mixed up in all of those ill-conceived “sure-things” in the first place? What is it that happened to us which led us so far astray or made our life suddenly so confusing and overwhelming? How many times have we all just thrown up our hands and said, “I’ve had it…. I just can’t take it anymore!” How may times have we found ourselves uncomfortably failing, wondering how we ever got into such a mess? We don’t intentionally wish to fail or be unhappy. So why is it that it becomes such a big part of our lives? How is it that something we want nothing to do with ends up being a major part of most our lives? I ask you, is this the way it should be? Shouldn’t we all be more happy than unhappy over time? Shouldn’t happiness be something that everyone can experience, something that none of us should lack? Shouldn’t happiness be easy to understand and easier to keep in our life? Should happiness be such an elusive and temporal experience? Should happiness, in fact, be so difficult to find? And once tenuously grasped, should happiness then be so difficult to hold on to or possess? Does this make sense to you? It doesn’t to me. Still, the understanding of what happiness “is” appears to have grown muddled and clouded amongst us!
I can’t accept the notion that happiness is supposed to be so indefinable, “undetectable” and unknowable. That would be sadistic. And I don’t believe that life is something which punishes us in such a way or takes joy in another’s unhappiness. Although life may offer us disappointments, it’s true, there’s generally a purpose behind it when we look honestly enough for it. And it’s not only by reason of disappointment that we are “unhappy.” Although misfortune and unhappiness often accompany one another, we can’t blame our unhappiness on our misfortunes, just as we can’t derive an eternal or long lasting happiness because of our “successes” alone. Happiness must come from another source for it to be legitimate. Indeed, it is easily verified that true happiness leads to “fortune” and not the other way around. Accordingly, “misfortunes” do not cause “unhappiness.” Rather, it’s just the opposite. “Unhappiness” leads to misfortune, just as pride “goeth” before the fall.
And why is this so? Well, it’s when we are in the absence of true happiness that we become numb and insensitive to our surroundings. It is this passive state of helplessness, a form of perceptual blindness that then potentiates many of our own misfortunes. Unhappiness actually breeds misfortune by creating the circumstance of chaos and insensitivity which allows it. Misfortune cannot by itself “cause” unhappiness. Put another way, unhappiness precedes misfortune, like the clouds do the rain. The subsequent state of blindness and narrowed perspective that results from our unhappiness foreshadows, if not portends, the possibilities of misfortune sure to follow. When we are in a state of unhappiness, we’re undiscerning; and being so blind, we actually invite misperception, misjudgment and error, providing all the necessary constituents for misfortune to abound in our lives. In this light, unhappiness is simply a forbearer of misfortune. Perhaps this is where the notion of “when it rains—it pours” really comes from.
Thus, if we are without happiness in life, it’s only because we’ve forgotten how to keep it, not necessarily because something outside of us has first caused it. When we’ve lost that “happiness,” that light, we will begin to stumble into the paths of misfortune and confusion. Conversely, when we’re truly happy (not vainly satisfied, nor accepting some temporal counterfeit—but truly happy), we are alert, present, discerning, sensitive, aware, and discriminating of our surroundings and experiences. Such a state or presence of mind, in turn, breeds the possibilities of fortunes to follow like the day follows the night. Perhaps this is why it is written, “Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven and all else will be added unto you,” or in other words (if you will allow the liberty), “Seek ye first the happiness of Heaven, and everything else will follow, as sure as the dawn does the night.”
Happiness, we will learn, comes only from within. It’s not created or caused by things from the “outside.” It’s not caused by gaining or experiencing pleasure. It’s not caused by a new car or new house, a new job, more money, more success and social standing or new relationships. It’s real happiness that makes all other things new or appear new and undiscovered so that we will appreciate them as though they were new. True happiness is like the sun that warms the earth, causes the rains to fall and makes things to grow, and to grow beautifully in their respective order. True happiness causes fortune to shine upon us. True happiness never forces growth or profit from the ground. It never changes the natural and quiet order of things, but works without offense. It is true happiness that naturally opens our eyes and understanding to the fortunes and blessings we have been promised and, thereafter, allows the harvest to be realized. However, if we try instead to seek first for those things outside of us, desiring for them to make us happy (or feign a pseudo or false happiness so as to get gain), it’s then that we disrupt the natural order of things, and, becoming blinded and narrowed of mind, subsequently lose the promise of fortunes that were previously ours.
This is an important thing to know. Losing the promises of fortunes and blessings of life is directly caused by first losing our position or state of happiness. Ironically, such a loss is often shamelessly reinforced through the passive and misinformed direction from others who teach us to simply accept the passing of happiness in our lives like the passing of the seasons and the coming of old age. This irritates me more than anything else! Let’s consider this: Why do we all pray for our happiness to stay a little longer as a guest in our lives, but do nothing about “keeping” it there when it is there, only to become sad and confused when it unexpectedly leaves? Why do we learn to count our blessings, being thankful for the treasures of happiness we’ve been given, but do nothing about inviting the gift to continue to grace our lives? Why are we so passive and uncommitted about these matters? Why are we instead so superstitious as to why happiness appears to come and go with such frequency? Indeed, why are we afraid to honestly understand the true nature of happiness?
How can we let such a treasure slip through our lives without ever thinking about its genesis or beginnings? Instead of sadly surrendering to the passing of happiness, perhaps we should be more concerned with embracing it more fully so as to understand the means by which it can be invited to stay. Perhaps we should begin to study our happiness more seriously and learn what “it” is that is at its root instead of accepting the worldly notions of its unpredictability. If, indeed, happiness is so very important to us, we should treat it as the serious business that it is instead of taking its “happening” so very lightly. Maybe that’s been part of the problem all along. In our carelessness and light mindedness, could it be that we have been inviting “unhappiness” continuously without knowing it? And in turn, have we unintentionally been forgetting to invite “happiness” into our life? I think that’s part of the problem. So, maybe it’s time for us to learn something different. Rather than depending on the “world” as an Oracle for needed advice and direction, perhaps we should reset our compasses and strike out on a different course. After all, the world doesn’t seem to know what “happiness” is nor where it may be found. So, maybe it’s time for us to depend on something else, something that won’t let us down, something or some way which will always be there to help us—a way discarded by the world, a way that works, and a way that can be found within us all.
