Is Happiness Conditional Or Unconditional?

[gengar]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@gengar I'm sorry for your health struggles. I have serious ones too. Unfortunately life doesn't owe us happiness or a good outcome.

Pursue more consciousness and see what you discover. That's really the only real thing.

Thanks for those kind words, they are highly appreciated. I know you have been struggling as well. 

With pursueing consciousness, do you basically only mean psychedelic work? I have been looking into astral projection, is that worth to look into in your exp?

[Leo Gura]

32 minutes ago, gengar said:

With pursueing consciousness, do you basically only mean psychedelic work?

No, I mean any method that works for you. Meditation, self-inquiry, retreats, yoga, etc. You have to try them to see what suits your genetics.

Astral projection is mostly a diversion. But if you are talented at it maybe it can have value for you. If you don't have the talent I would not bother sinking much time into it.

[Nito]

On 16/01/2025 at 11:06 PM, Ishanga said:

the rising of the Kundalini which is like the manisfestation of the Life Intelligence within You

Hey ty for this reply. Super amazing. Really helped me. Do you mind me asking you for guidance for where to learn about raising my kundalina? I wouldn't know where to start, but it sounds like something amazing to do. 

Appreciate you a lot Ishanga 🙏

[Nito]

@integral Very true. Feels like im sinning by not being happy when I have such great circumstances compared to other people. Getting better at it all tho

[Nito]

On 17/01/2025 at 0:30 AM, integral said:

But there is a prerequisite to this. The prerequisite is that you have a healthy body.

Without a healthy body, you cannot produce the chemicals to stay in a good state. You experience sobriety, and sobriety to life is brutal.

 

Hey I know this is a basic question but wdum by "sobriety"? I don't see how the word makes sense here. 

[Nito]

@UnbornTao im not sure tbh. thats why i made the post haah

[Nito]

@Jwayne Yeah I agree with you. is there anything to do to kind of bullet proof yourself from suffering when you are old and ill? I saw a clip from Shinzen Young where he said with illness and chronic pain, you can tolerate it and not be bothered by it if you have very powerful mindfulness. So maybe I should start practicing that more lol, Specifically he was taling about "equanimity"

[Nito]

@Princess Arabia Yeah so you're saying that interpreting things positively is basically king

[Nito]

@Ishanga

On 17/01/2025 at 10:47 PM, Ishanga said:

I remember watching this the first time, and it blew me away.. he mentions it at around the 2:46 mark, and he says "Your just dismissing the most fundamental quality of Your Life, Happiness is not a State of Mind, its the fundamental Quality of Your Life".. 

I interpret this too mean that nothing significant will happen in Your Life, Experientially especially unless Your fundamentally Happy, or able to Consciously control Your Inner Experience and Environment, otherwise Your just a slave to outside situations or genetics or memory/karma at play. 

The whole idea or purpose of Us being here is too use Free Will, the Ability to Respond, to determine the Quality of Your Life on a personal level, forget about Enlightenment, Realization, Absolute if this is not Established within You Already.. Too many here take Happiness and Well Being too lightly, but when it is not available to You then You will know what it means!!!

 

Thank you for sharing the video!

[integral]

7 minutes ago, Nito said:

Hey I know this is a basic question but wdum by "sobriety"? I don't see how the word makes sense here. 

Your high on biology. Right now.

The ideal state that you should be in as the body designed it, is something im calling "high". so there's a pretty big spectrums of states you can access throughout this life.

Im calling the sober state when things are dry and the mystery and fun is gone, but that word could be used in a different way depending on how you want to paint things.

[Ishanga]

39 minutes ago, Nito said:

Hey ty for this reply. Super amazing. Really helped me. Do you mind me asking you for guidance for where to learn about raising my kundalina? I wouldn't know where to start, but it sounds like something amazing to do. 

Appreciate you a lot Ishanga 🙏

Thanks!!

I think the first thing we have to do is calm the system, stop the stress fight/flight response from happening so often during the day, its happening so much nowadays for most ppl, they react so much, judge too much and are too invested in their likes/dislikes, all of this causes Stress to happen during one's waking hours, and that affects their sleep at night too, plus all the bad food and such, its no wonder ppl are going more nuts today than ever lol...

So bringing Peace into One's life is primary before anything else, this is the start of BEINGNESS, which comes before doing any sort of Action internally or outwardly and/or having success and happiness, achievements in life..  

Intellectually You have to know there are certain truths, one is that life is only in the NOW, past is just your memory coming up, memory is in everything, genetics, your brain and visual memory, conscious and unconscious memory, this is what Karma means, its all the forms of memory coming up in the NOW moment and making You not realize that Life is Only in the NOW moment, second is Acceptance, this moment is the way it is and it was Inevitable! Realizing that alone will stop all Stress from happening within You, via these two things Responding, Free Will will arise naturally, no more Reacting Compulsiveness will happen then, once that is established then Peace is Your natural Experience and Kundalini will start to rise up naturally.. 

Some Pranayama or Breath Work helps allot too, start with this below, Isha Kriya, its a 12 min practice and its starts the process, do it twice a day for 40days, see how it affects You! From that do the Inner Engineering Course offered by Sadhguru and Isha Foundation, its super effective as well!

 

[Princess Arabia]

6 hours ago, Nito said:

@Princess Arabia Yeah so you're saying that interpreting things positively is basically king

No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying why are you chasing happiness. Circumstances in life comes, goes, changes and are spontaneous. If one is only happy from outside stimuli, it's like gambling; you never know the outcome. It's OK to want to be happy, but why not just be happy when the time comes; when something makes you happy in the moment. The opposite too. Why not embrace the sadness. They don't last long. Only if one hold on to the thoughts.

Positive and negative exists. Trying to be positive all the time will set you up for failure. It will never happen. Seeing things for what they are is king, as in your words. If something happens that makes you feel happy, fine. If something happens that makes you feel sad, fine. No need for therapy to try to right the negative. It passes. See it for what it is. You don't even remember last year this time what made you happy or sad. It's like the wind it comes and goes. It's best to not try to feel good all the time. It's best to just let what happens, happens and whatever feelings arises arise. That's what life is about. So what. No one wants to feel sad, but you will lose that battle eventually. You don't have to think positively or negatively, just feel the sadness or happiness and every other emotion in between and don't judge it or see ANYTHING WRONG (unless it's causing you or others harm as in anger or jealousy and you're acting out), other than that just let it be. Neutrality is what's behind the scenes and everything arises from that and will go back to that if you don't stir the pebbles. They all go back anyway but they linger less if you just let it be. You're not in control of that but the energetic response is; and because you claim everything as yours, (my happiness, my anger, my sadness, etc) you will feel less or more depending on how the energy responds to itself. 

 

Edited Monday at 05:52 AM by Princess Arabia

[Jordan]

The condition to happiness is you have to be able to accept the way things are right now. Most people are unable to do that most of the time. If you want to be happier then practice accepting the present moment exactly as it is and lower resistance you have to it. You can be happy with feeling like shit although it takes practice. You don't have to feel unhappy to motivate yourself to improve your situation. You can feel happy and still make choices that make your situation more appealing. 

Edited Monday at 04:19 PM by Jordan

[Jwayne]

17 hours ago, Nito said:

@Jwayne Yeah I agree with you. is there anything to do to kind of bullet proof yourself from suffering when you are old and ill? I saw a clip from Shinzen Young where he said with illness and chronic pain, you can tolerate it and not be bothered by it if you have very powerful mindfulness. So maybe I should start practicing that more lol, Specifically he was taling about "equanimity"

Whether you are old and/or ill, you want loved ones around you. Family and friends - even just one person - to be there to help take care of you and to give you company. If you have that then you can get through almost anything.

[Airendal]

On 1/16/2025 at 6:11 PM, integral said:

 Example: You wake up everyday in chronic pain. 

The body is not working properly in various ways. And there's no solution. That is now your life. Permanently.

The quality of every moment of your life is affected by this. Every experience you have is Tainted for life.

What happens is then you're forced learn to not care that you're suffering. And be okay with it.

While a normal person is living and bathing in premium biology and natural hormonal drugs that they have no idea is even happening.

And when you lose these natural drugs your body is flooding your system with, you experience a brutal soberness to life. 

There is no Grand Awakening and enlightenment to alleviate this, it's always going to be hard until you die.

You're only allowed to sit there and Bliss out if your body gives you the drugs to do so. You need premium biology to be blissing out.

I have been in a state of never-ending pain since age 11, while it's incredibly debilitating, at this point in my life I think it has offered me a lot, it has taken a lot to get to this point but the level of happiness I live in while having my condition entirely untreated feels almost unreasonable.

I wouldn't say this is a common thing, but it has also been the only path possible for me to have a good life. The pain I continue to be in has cleansed me and has turned into a deep source of strength, I strongly believe that people in such pain as I can use it as a tool for spiritual work. But I'm not ignorant to the fact that I am likely lucky in this regard, just I also wouldn't describe it as premium biology to be born with a body genetically predisposed to intense suffering. 

Regardless, it is very possible to turn such pain into something good. 

[Ishanga]

@Airendal I would say based on my limited experience with it since I have not have to deal with severe chronic pain, I do deal with certain issues as I've gotten older, at my work I walk allot and lift too, after a certain amount of walking my hip flexors get tight so usually everyday at work I spend half of it in some sort of pain from that, and my back gets stiff when doing nothing, mornings are the worst, so I've dealt with physical pain and mental pain, had a depressive episode a few years ago due to a break up, it was not fun, I got over it, and the physical stuff above I do things to make it better and able to deal with it, but its not fun for sure! 

The point is, dealing with chronic pain as a form of suffering, it will for sure give You strength and an ability to deal with it, but I think that is still living on the survival level of life, strength and being able to deal with things is not needed for Spiritual Growth, that is another level of life that most do not consider or explore, its getting more popular nowadays for sure though, but what is needed for Spiritual Growth, where the true Human Potential is, one needs Willingness and an ability to Strive to go beyond basic survival instinct of work, family, surviving by making money and then dying one day...we can do more with life than this...

[Airendal]

@Ishanga Yeah, I think you are definitely correct in that. What's pushed me towards spirituality was never my pain, rather the isolation from spending a lot of time alone rather than going to school and the self-study I required from that. The experience of being in pain for the majority of my life has still been immensely valuable for that though, and I don't think I'd have been as strongly motivated to stay in this pursuit without it. But it remains true that many in pain do not do that at all.  

Something I'm curious about is whether the hypersensitive nervous systems that develops from chronic pain also opens up to the possibility to experience blissful feelings more potently as well. At times there definitely appears to have been a switch that flicks the pain into pleasure, although it's only ever been a randomly triggered experience to me. 

[Nito]

22 hours ago, Ishanga said:

Realizing that alone will stop all Stress from happening within You, via these two things Responding, Free Will will arise naturally, no more Reacting Compulsiveness will happen then, once that is established then Peace is Your natural Experience and Kundalini will start to rise up naturally.. 

Seriously thank you for all you've given me and taught me, its amazing. It won't go to waste!

Im still a bit unsure what you mean by the thing above in the quote. So did you mean that responding and reacting are needed to not be stressed? What is responding vs reacting? And how do I do it? And what does free will have to do with any of it?

Hope I made this simple to reply to, don't want to confuse you

[Ishanga]

13 minutes ago, Airendal said:

@Ishanga Yeah, I think you are definitely correct in that. What's pushed me towards spirituality was never my pain, rather the isolation from spending a lot of time alone rather than going to school and the self-study I required from that. The experience of being in pain for the majority of my life has still been immensely valuable for that though, and I don't think I'd have been as strongly motivated to stay in this pursuit without it. But it remains true that many in pain do not do that at all.  

Something I'm curious about is whether the hypersensitive nervous systems that develops from chronic pain also opens up to the possibility to experience blissful feelings more potently as well. At times there definitely appears to have been a switch that flicks the pain into pleasure, although it's only ever been a randomly triggered experience to me. 

I agree that dealing with pain and suffering and/or overcoming it to someday not have to deal with it is for sure a valuable lesson to learn, and so many have had to do this, even in my own family we have had some tragic events happen and family members have had to deal with emotional and mental pain/suffering allot, it has for sure made them wiser and such, but it did not lead them to Spiritual Awareness, for some reason I was lead to it on my own and via my curiosity to Find out Truth and a bit of luck as I just stumbled upon Spiritual literature and found it super interesting then I went further into it and now can't stop lol...

Bliss imo is not an Emotion but a State of Being, its part of what it means to be Highly Conscious, Sat Chit Ananda, which means Truth Consciousness Bliss, so Bliss comes when Your Highly Conscious as a natural Experience, its not like being High or Stoned or just Happy dancing and partying, its more intense than that.. So we all have this Potential within Us, everyone at some point has been Blissful or felt something like it, but maintaining it is the key, its can't be done via thinking or normal intellect, but it can be done once certain things within You are lined up, even when one is dealing with chronic pain and such..

[Airendal]

21 minutes ago, Ishanga said:

Bliss imo is not an Emotion but a State of Being, its part of what it means to be Highly Conscious, Sat Chit Ananda, which means Truth Consciousness Bliss, so Bliss comes when Your Highly Conscious as a natural Experience, its not like being High or Stoned or just Happy dancing and partying, its more intense than that.. So we all have this Potential within Us, everyone at some point has been Blissful or felt something like it, but maintaining it is the key, its can't be done via thinking or normal intellect, but it can be done once certain things within You are lined up, even when one is dealing with chronic pain and such..

Yes you are correct they are separate things, I did not consider this but it makes sense with how I've been experiencing things as of late. I don't think I am all that there yet, but something has definitely changed in the last few months to make me deeply at peace and I find myself meeting things in a perspective fresh to me. It is not high or stoned as you say, yet still more potent and simultaneously clear-headed. I hope myself to not get lost in this as more growth is needed.

You have given me things to consider, in that I appreciate your perspective here. Thank you.