Happiness

And why we fail to find it outside of ourselves

The desire for happiness is the root of all other desires.

It’s that natural longing to return home to ourselves, to remember our wholeness, after a lifetime of constantly being told that there is something missing.

As children happiness was easy and effortless, it accompanied everything we did. But after years of trauma and conditioning, we lost touch with it, we innocently came to believe we are separate from it.

So we became seekers. Searching wide and far in the hope that we might rediscover this happiness in some experience, person, place or object.

Yet despite our most sincere efforts, lasting happiness eludes us. We experience brief moments of it but they quickly fade away.

After we have exhausted all possible paths to find happiness, tried everything the world has to offer, we have nothing left to do but sit with our despair and frustration and confusion about why we aren’t able to find happiness.

Sitting with the pain, with nothing more to seek, we begin to recognize the presence that is observing our situation.

This awareness sees the repetitive and unsuccessful cycle of seeking happiness. This seeing doesn’t come or go, it is that which is aware of all things that come and go. This presence has been here all along, during the moments of childhood happiness as well as during the trauma and conditioning.

As the cycle of seeking breaks down, we recognize the significance of our presence, our very beingness. We see that it exists prior to all things that can be found.

We begin to cease imagining happiness as something outside of ourselves. We give up the idea that it’s something separate that can be discovered in the future. Even though all the people around us and all the messages in the media may be expressing the belief that happiness is just a few more steps away, we no longer believe it.

We start to realize that happiness is inseparable from our innate presence. We see that happiness effortlessly exists in the absence of desire (which is really just an act of imagination). No longer believing the message that happiness is found outside of ourselves, we begin to smile and remember we are home here and now.

Happiness can’t be found because it’s already here. Who we are is happiness.