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What does it mean to live a spiritual life?
We are taught--by society, our families, our peers--that happiness is available outside the self. That if I just can get X, Y and Z lined up it'll all be good. If so-and-so would only behave properly I could be happy. And we are willing to tie ourselves into knots of anxiety and worry and uncomfortable behavior in order to accomplish our goals.
And yet. No matter how much we work for these things, happiness is not found. Or if it is, if we succeed in getting everything perfect for a moment, the happiness is entirely transitory. Because X, Y and Z always are going to move again, and so-and-so is going to find another way to misbehave. And even if this were not the case, the happiness I found from these outside sources would fade, and I would have to come up with a new set of ideas of how the world must be before I can be happy.
This is a system that doesn't work. It will never work.
What can we do instead? We can introduce to ourselves the concept that happiness only can come from within. We can remind ourselves that seeking to force the world into shape is guaranteed only to make us miserable. We can do the work each day to ask ourselves what we are, if we are not these wants and needs and desires and the fulfillment, or lack of, that we find in all the moments of our life.
Today I will question the logic by which I am living my life. I will begin to examine the beliefs for which I sacrifice a life lived in present moment awareness (which in fact is the only place happiness ever is found).
Clouds at Sunset, Desert
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Kober
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