Nothing Can Make You Happy

[Gili Trawangan]

20 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

If you remain alone and sit in diligent meditation and see the truth
that won't make you happy.  If you help people or contribute to people and love people it makes you happy. 
You have to take action to be happy.  But if you only want truth
you can have that too but then you will find yourself alone in the truth

 

You don't get it yet. Watch Rupert's video again

You ARE happiness. 

[Nak Khid]

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/which-personality-traits-are-most-predictive-of-well-being?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

The 5 Personal Paths to Well-Being

Each of these 5 personality traits were independently related to a wide range of well-being measures. In other words, these are 5 different personal paths to well-being. If you score high in any of these 5 personality aspects, you are probabilistically more likely to have high well-being across multiple aspects of your life.

1. Enthusiasm

People who score high in enthusiasm are friendly, sociable, emotionally expressive, and tend to have lots of fun in life. Enthusiasm independently predicted life satisfaction, positive emotions, less negative emotions, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations, self-acceptance, purpose in life, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and achievement.

2. Low Withdrawal

People who score high in withdrawal are easily discouraged and overwhelmed, and tend to ruminate and be highly self-conscious. As a result, they are susceptible to depression and anxiety. Lower levels of withdrawal predicted greater life satisfaction, positive emotions, and less negative emotions. Lower levels of withdrawal also predicted greater autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, meaning and purpose, relationships, and achievement.

3. Industriousness

People who are industrious are achievement-oriented, self-disciplined, efficient, purposeful, and competent. Industriousness is strongly correlated with "grit"- passion and perseverance for long-term goals. Industriousness was correlated with life satisfaction, positive emotions, less negative emotions, and more autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, meaning and purpose, engagement, and achievement.

4. Compassion

People who are compassionate feel and care about others' emotions and well-being. Compassion was correlated with more positive emotions, and more environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships, self-acceptance, meaning and purpose, engagement, and achievement.

5. Intellectual Curiosity

People who score high in intellectual curiosity are open to new ideas, enjoy thinking deeply and complexly, and tend to reflect a lot on their experiences. Intellectual curiosity predicted autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, self-acceptance, purpose, and accomplishment. Interestingly, intellectual curiosity was not predictive of the more 'emotional' variables, such as life satisfaction, positive and negative emotions, positive relationships, and engagement with life.

Two More Limited Predictors of Well-Being

While the 5 traits above were the clear winners when it came to predicting a large swath of well-being, these two traits were still predictive of certain aspects of well-being.

1. Assertiveness

People who score high in assertiveness are socially dominant, motivated to attain social status and leadership positions, and tend to be provocative. We found that assertiveness was positively related to autonomy in life (being independent and able to resist social pressures) but was also related to greater negative emotions. This makes sense considering that being autonomous often requires nonconformity and standing up for what you believe in, which can make us feel less happy in the moment. Interestingly, enthusiasm predicted LOWER levels of autonomy, as well as less negative emotions. As we note in the our paper, enthusiastic people may be less likely to go against social consensus if this makes social interactions less enjoyable, whereas assertive individuals may be comfortable with boldly voicing their opinions if this helps them to attain rewards such as status, even to the possible detriment of other forms of adjustment.

2. Creative Openness

People who score high in creative openness need a creative outlet, and appreciate beauty, daydreaming, imagination, fantasy, and feelings. We found that both creative openness and intellectual curiosity had independent associations with personal growth and engagement. Therefore, while intellectual curiosity appears to be more widely predictive of well-being, creative openness is still a path to two key elements of well-being: personal growth and engagement. This is consistent with prior research on the link between living the creative life and certain forms of well-being.

[Shin]

4 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

If you remain alone and sit in diligent meditation and see the truth
that won't make you happy.  If you help people or contribute to people and love people it makes you happy. 
You have to take action to be happy.  But if you only want truth
you can have that too but then you will find yourself alone in the truth

As a human, certainly, but you're not human.

If you truly realise what you are, there is no need of anything whatsoever to be infinitely happy and peaceful.

Even when the human you incarnate is sad you are still blissful, which can be a paradox from an ego point of view, but it really isn't.

I don't know if I'm minserterpeting what you're saying or if you misinterpreted what he said, but phrased like that it isn't true in an absolute sense, just relatively when we experience life through a human mind.

Quote

 

4 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

If you remain alone and sit in diligent meditation and see the truth
that won't make you happy.  If you help people or contribute to people and love people it makes you happy. 
You have to take action to be happy.  But if you only want truth
you can have that too but then you will find yourself alone in the truth

 

 

 

Quote

 

5 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

On Novenber 24 I mad a thread about this very same video

It's like what Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche said in the video different people have different tastes or ways of being happy.
So if Rupert Spira seems a little flat to me relative to Mingyur Rinpoche seems  more that is relative to the particulars of who I am and may not
relate to your personality as much.
My point was that Rupert Spira is more intellectual and articulate in English but to me, feels a little glib.

I also find the statement "nothing can make you happy" a little extreme and not really true.  I think you have to do certain things to be happy and I see that as a thing even if outside of external things.  It sounds more of like something to say to catch your attention .

No you don't.

It's the belief that you need something to happen, or be doing to be happy that is precisely why you aren't.

Do you see a baby needing anything to be happy ?

You can say that he needs to be able to eat when he's hungry and cleaned when he is dirty, and you would be right, he's still an ego, but that doesn't explain why he is blissful 99% of the time when those desires are met.

And the reason is simple, he has no subconscious beliefs about what happiness is.

And what happens when there is no beliefs about happiness ?

You are happy ALL the time ???

5 hours ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@cetus56 I can recognize happiness in the moment. But then i get caught up in distraction then i'm back searching for happiness again. I can bring it back to the present, but it's not consistent in the present.

You can't bring it back to the present because it's ALREADY THERE !!!

Already there means you can only realize it RIGHT NOW !

And not as something else than you, because IT IS YOU !

If you were searching for your legs to walk, you wouldn't go very far would you ? ?

You're like a beggar sitting on a bag full of gold, asking for some cents to eat ???

Edited December 16, 2019 by Shin

[SoonHei]

Nothing Can Make You Happy

 

Happiness is what results when there is no seeking. Happiness is the zero. It is the wave crashed back into the ocean. 

Happiness is what remains when there is no desire or fear. And happiness is what remains when there is nobody there. You are never happy. Whenever you are, there is happiness in the future. You are the raindrop on the windshield. The raindrop on the windshield is not the windshield. Happiness is windshield only. And only when there are no raindrops, there is the windshield. Until of course you recognize that you are never the raindrop and were always the windshield. Then raindrops or rainstorms cannot shake your happiness.

Be the windshield. Be yourself. You don't become Happy... you ARE happiness itself. 

 

[Nak Khid]

3 hours ago, Gili Trawangan said:

You ARE happiness. 

poppycock

57 minutes ago, Shin said:

Do you see a baby needing anything to be happy ?

A tit

Babies cry and fuss several times day in their helpless state
And when they sit there quietly looking blankly into space you can't assume they are happy

11 minutes ago, SoonHei said:

Happiness is what results when there is no seeking. Happiness is the zero.

that is what you think it is not

 

14 minutes ago, SoonHei said:

You don't become Happy... you ARE happiness itself.

poppycock pt 2
_____________________________________________________________

Happiness is not a neutral position.
It is cultivated by action

 

[Shin]

39 minutes ago, Nak Khid said:

poppycock

A tit

Babies cry and fuss several times day in their helpless state
And when they sit there quietly looking blankly into space you can't assume they are happy

that is what you think it is not

 

poppycock pt 2
_____________________________________________________________

Happiness is not a neutral position.
It is cultivated by action

 

How what you are could ever be a position or cultivated ?

You are it already ...

Happy to disagree ?

 

Now it's dangerous for an ego to hear this, because it validate his lazyness and ignorance.

There needs to be actions taken until there is the realization there never was a need to do anything ?

We could say the journey was useless then, but without the journey we would never realize that nothing had to be done ??

And then you laugh your ass off of the prank you did to yourself all this time ???

[SoonHei]

@Shin yeyyyeyeyeyeyeyeeyyeyeyeyeye

 

[Eu Sint]

@Shin ??❤️

[Amandine]

Happiness is so annoyingly fleeting, paradoxical and elusive, I've just never been bothered looking for it to be honest.

It's like playing a mindless game of "now you see me, now you don't", just can't be arsed.

Life's too short, I prefer to wait for "happiness" to come to me, if and when it deigns to.

Perhaps we're most happy when we're not aware of it?

 

I feel that happiness is more like a "mood" or an "emotion" than a state, and you know what they say about moods.

Who wants to be at their mercy?

Also it depends more on external factors and triggers (things, people, places, events).

 

I prefer to aim or settle for fulfillment, or contentment or serenity or Peace of Mind.

These are more more tenable, durable, permanent states of being.

And by that I'm no way settling for 2nd best, I'm as ambitious as the next guy.

It's just wisdom and experience tells you there's no real stable sustainable plan with "happiness".

 

Happiness is like the clouds that float by in your mind's eye during meditation.

You are the "atmosphere" and you let the clouds (happiness) float by.

You don't try to control or manipulate them or "catch" them.

You're just aware of and accept their fleeting, transitory passage.

Try to grab onto one cloud and you miss the next one, you miss the Moment, the Present.

 

At the moment, I'm seeing floaters in my eye, you know those annoying squiggles in your vision (when looking at a bright sky) that scurry away as soon as you try to focus on them, the pesky buggers never stay still.

Happiness is like an eye floater.

The more you seek it, the more it sneaks away.

When you stop chasing it, it actually comes back, it dares to approach, to hover, to linger.

 

Another thing I notice about happiness is its "infinite" insatiable nature.

Just listen to millionaires talk about how they thought they'd be happy making their first million.

No, once they make a million, they want to make a billion.

As long as there's a next level above ...

 

Spiritual development can be seductive like that.

You think you won't be happy till you reach a certain level of consciousness.

Haha, good luck with that, such happiness won't last long.

It's the very nature of the beast.

 

Happiness is not static. 

You'll just repeat "at the next level" what you're doing now.

You'll start thinking (again) that you can get happiness if only you attain an even higher consciousness.

Which itself will reinforce the sense of unhappiness.

Ha, that's even without the ego backlash getting involved.

 

I have found one secret though that immediately makes me "happy" and that's Gratitude. 

Gratitude is deceptively simple but powerful stuff.

I've been through massive traumatic events in my life, real hell.

And yet I've always been a "naturally happy" person, always grateful, counted my blessings.

The smile on my face doesn't mean my life is perfect, far from it, it just means I appreciate what I have and what God has blessed me with.

“People can be as happy or unhappy as they make up their mind to be.”  - Abraham Lincoln

 

Affirmations are also powerful, I never underestimate the positive messages they can relay to the subconscious mind:

“I Am Enough. I Have Everything I Need To Be Happy Right Now"

This is absolutely true. You are enough exactly as you are right now. And you have everything you need right now in the present to be happy. When you believe that happiness is only possible once you’ve achieved this or that, it’s time to bring yourself back to a place of self-love and self-compassion and know that you are always already enough. 

https://www.actualized.org/articles/self-love

https://www.actualized.org/articles/how-to-love-yourself

How To Stop Beating Yourself Up: 

 

 

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.  (Marcus Aurelius)

 

@Raptorsin7 Examine your subconscious, self-defeating thoughts like the ones you've shared here (that I've copied below). I feel it is them that might be causing your present unhappiness.

 

"I understand the depth of what you said, but I feel like i can still get caught..."

This erroneous subconscious belief is probably where you're going wrong, if you don't mind me saying.

 

"...but it's not consistent in the present".

By its very essence It never will be consistent, it's a fickle, capricious little fucker.

 

The only consistent permanently happy people I've ever seen was probably in the film "One flew over the cuckoo's nest". 

I wonder if people are deceiving themselves (or using the wrong word) when they claim to have permanent states of happiness or joy. What happens in a crisis? In the midst of chaos, suffering? When they lose their job? When they go and spend Christmas with their family?

Such exceptional, extraordinary people are surely in the realm of the "saints" and company. 

 

Your title "Nothing Can Make You Happy" is not entirely true.

There is something (ironically) that can make you happy: 

Unseeking happiness can make you happy.

Counter-intuitive but true.

 

“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking, you cannot find.” - Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

 

*******************************************

But on a purely practical level, happiness can be better found just by living an authentic life, living in alignement with your ideals and values, being in touch with who you are at your deepest core, staying true to yourself, free to live your ultimate life purpose and highest potential, your actions and words matching your beliefs and ethics.

It is just being yourself, not what you think you should be or told you should be, but by following your own path, not fitting into the mould of someone else's expectations and restrictions, but by freeing yourself of the chains of unconscious relationships, not being stifled by anyone or conforming to society's materialistic demands or to a life others want or expect you to live, just to keep them happy, but being radically truthful with yourself and with others. 

Be a free spirit. Make decisions for yourself and either embrace those who accept that or move on to things (and people) that better serve you. 

Also eating clean helps a lot with happiness. You are what you eat, it is difficult to be happy if one's diet is poor, if one just eats for example junk food.

Failing that, go out and buy a cute little kitten, such permanent bundles of pure joy! 

*********************************

Haha, if it's any consolation, I am definitely not happy at the moment.

One of my daily writing goals is "Be Brief".

Ha, talk about frigging self-sabotage! 

Edited December 29, 2019 by Amandine

[Nahm]

@Raptorsin7

‘Apply’, ‘yourself’. 

 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Raptorsin7 what is your baseline emotion, if not happy? Sad? Angry? Melancholy? (that was mine) 

[seeking_brilliance]

@Raptorsin7 don't seek happiness. The search makes it elusive. Seek what's right now. Feel what you feel right now, and be at peace with it. Seek peace.  Then, happiness will find you.  

Edited December 29, 2019 by seeking_brilliance

[Moreira]

I disagree with these kind of Gurus that spread the message of : Do nothing, surrender, seek nothing.

Its kinda suspicious, like the elites paid them to make people meek and accept with passivity everthing.

Its for sure that we need deep work to achieve happiness, mainly because we are being programmed since birth with wrong belief systems and paradigms.

[seeking_brilliance]

@Moreira @Raptorsin7 seeking the happiness is part of the journey. It's not to be discounted.  But he's displaying that he's tired of seeking, and we are telling him it's OK. It's time. 

[Raptorsin7]

@Moreira The reason you have to stop seeking happiness is because when we seek we are basically telling ourselves yea happiness isn't in the moment it's another moment somewhere down the line. But when we move happiness to the future and accept that our current state isn't enough we're fucked because happiness can only ever exist in our current state. I agree that deep inner work must be done to uncover happiness, but that's different from the traditional path of seeking happiness out there in the world. The elites have nothing to do with this fyi. If you live in the 1st world the reason you're down isn't because of the "elites" it's because you're making poor decisions over and over again.

@seeking_brilliance I have begun to do that. I can feel what there is to be felt in any moment, but i still think part of my psyche is resisting the present moment because i don't feel truly connected. I am tired of seeking. But even when i feel what there is to be felt in this moment it doesn't feel like happiness. It just feels neutral or bland.

The baseline is just bland or neutral. Low energy. Not miserable or sad. Just numb. Little feeling.

 

Edited December 29, 2019 by Raptorsin7

[purerogue]

2 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

 

@seeking_brilliance I have begun to do that. I can feel what there is to be felt in any moment, but i still think part of my psyche is resisting the present moment because i don't feel truly connected. I am tired of seeking. But even when i feel what there is to be felt in this moment it doesn't feel like happiness. It just feels neutral or bland.

The baseline is just bland or neutral. Low energy. Not miserable or sad. Just numb. Little feeling.

 

Best I can come up with is this line, " all taken in and nothing left out "

Right now you made separation from  ego, can you take ego in, while still staying in same "state".

[seeking_brilliance]

29 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@seeking_brilliance I have begun to do that. I can feel what there is to be felt in any moment, but i still think part of my psyche is resisting the present moment because i don't feel truly connected. I am tired of seeking. But even when i feel what there is to be felt in this moment it doesn't feel like happiness. It just feels neutral or bland.

The baseline is just bland or neutral. Low energy. Not miserable or sad. Just numb. Little feeling.

 

So now's the time to spark the heart. It's important not to hold expectations but to jumpstart the heart and just continue feeling what comes. Do an act of kindness.  Find other ways to spark your heart and get a feel of which emotions arise.  Don't chase them, just seek them out and feel them when they arise.  (yes I did say to stop seeking happiness, but you still put an effort to induce/create moments of happiness. A seekless seeking ?‍♂️) These emotions act like a beacon, and as I said, happiness will find you.  Just feel. Live moment to moment. Whatever you just stopped doing was a dream, hopefully a nice dream.  What are you doing, and feeling, now? 

[Raptorsin7]

@purerogue Not sure what you mean by ego. You mean the thinking revolving around me?

[purerogue]

5 minutes ago, Raptorsin7 said:

@purerogue Not sure what you mean by ego. You mean the thinking revolving around me?

It just form of expressing, what you did there was only entering other state,dimension, striping yourself of previous states,dimensions, does it make more sense? 

Edited December 29, 2019 by purerogue

[Raptorsin7]

@seeking_brilliance I gave myself a little pep talk and i cried a little bit. But no intense feeling. It helps when my hold my hand in prayer and close my eyes and just feel. It feels like my mind is speaking to my inner being. 

The main thing i'm planning on doing is inner child work and self love practices moving forward. Plus meditation. I also have a buddy who's getting me 200 dollars worth of LSD so i can do trips on the weekends.

So is my issue right now based on my heart and feelings? A lot of what i want comes down to feeling. Like i want happiness, i want enlighenment, i want to feel amazing. All this stuff comes down to how i feel moment to moment. Because most of the time i feel numb.

Are you past this point in journey @seeking_brilliance