PERSPECTIVES: "The Mechanics of Happiness," and Birthday/Michael Gathering
Published: Sun, 10/05/14
It's said that we teach what we most want to learn. I've been thinking a great deal about happiness. Today's Perspectives is Part I of "Happiness and the Michael Teachings." Part II will be in the next "Perspectives."
TO THOSE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:
I'll be celebrating my 60th birthday October 15th. Barbara Taylor and I host a yearly social gathering in Orange County of Michael students and others interested in spirituality. I thought it might be nice to combine these.
On Sunday, Oct. 12, we're meeting at noon at Natraj restaurant (24861 Alicia Pkwy, Laguna Hills 92653). They have a champagne buffet brunch ($17) or you can order off the menu.
Then we'll head back to my place (99 Pearl, Laguna Niguel 92677) to continue socializing. Especially if there's a big crowd, some may wish to go to the beautiful beach park at Salt Creek, too.
For dinner, we'll go to Peking Dragon (34171 Pacific Coast Hwy, Dana Point 92629).
Please let me know if you're interested. All are welcome.
In the left column under News Feed, Facebook now defaults to Top Stories (based on algorithms from number of comments, likes, etc.) That's the reason you might be missing a lot of posts. If you keep switching it back to Most Recent, you'll see everything. I'd appreciate your "liking" my posts to keep them from disappearing, including those on the "Enlightenment for Nitwits" page.
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NEW RATES JANUARY 1
Charts will be going up by $10, written explanations by $50, hour-long Intuitive Readings by $30, and basic Channeling Sessions by $45.
NEW KINDLE VERSION OF "ENLIGHTENMENT FOR NITWITS"
I re-edited "Enlightenment for Nitwits" to cut or rewrite dated material and do some other small tweaks. Since it's no longer before December, 2012, I trimmed the subtitle to just "The Complete Guide." The only piece I cut entirely was "Important Announcement from the Mayan Calendar Committee." I rewrote and shortened the chapter "Lurkers' Rights."
You can receive the update through the "Your Account/Manage Your Content and Devices" page. Under the "Your Content" tab, click the "Actions" button to the left of the title. One option is "Update Content." (You can also set your preferences to automatically download all updated books through the "Automatic Book Update" feature under "Settings.")
I encountered glitches trying to update the Nook version, and don't plan to update the iBooks version, either. I'd be happy to email you a PDF if you own either of those. I won't be doing a new print version of EFN, but you can still buy the original directly from me. Otherwise, it's going out of print.
You don't need a Kindle device to read Kindle books. There are apps for most phones, computers, and tablets. All my books are available on Kindle. See my site, http://summerjoy.com, for links to them.
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HAPPINESS AND THE MICHAEL TEACHINGS
By Shepherd Hoodwin
[Many thanks to Lauren Jensen for transcribing the lecture upon which this piece is based.]
PART I:
THE MECHANICS OF HAPPINESS-EMBRACING WHAT IS
Some people seem to come by happiness easily. Either they have a naturally sunny disposition, and/or their life has had relatively few bumps in the road. However, happiness is partly a skill, and we can all improve our happiness chops with practice, as well as by cultivating perspectives that foster it. It is a particularly interesting challenge to start out as someone to whom happiness doesn't come easily, and learn to be happy. In this piece, I will explore how we can use the Michael teachings to increase our happiness.
THREE LEVELS OF HAPPINESS
The spiritual aspect of happiness might be referred to as joy. Joy is the surest indicator of spiritual advancement-not how much knowledge we have, our psychic abilities, or our soul age. Joy is the highest manifestation of our positive poles, the clearest indication of essence contact.
Joy could be defined as the free and refined expression of self through our spirit: our energy isn't blocked but neither is it out of control. A core Michael teaching is that all experience, whether joyful or painful, can lead to growth. By becoming more conscious, however, we can choose to grow more through joy and less through pain.
The free and refined expression of self through the personality (mind and emotions) is usually what is meant by happiness. Through the body, we might call it pleasure. Joy, happiness, and pleasure are each beautiful and important to our evolution.
The words used don't matter; there can also be mental and emotional pleasure, for instance. In this piece, I'm going to use the word "happiness" more generally to refer to the free and refined expression of self through all three levels, since the mechanics are similar with each. Body, personality, and spirit aren't separate-they are the three aspects of our incarnational vehicle.
FREEDOM AND REFINEMENT
Freedom is the cardinal side of happiness. It allows a larger quantity of self to come through because there aren't barriers. Refinement is the ordinal side: it allows a higher quality of self to come through because there is mastery over its expression. Just as our muscles must both flex and relax, in balance, for us to move, happiness requires both refinement and freedom. If we open up to too much quantity without quality, we can get to a point where there's no control and happiness dissipates, like a child who laughs hysterically and ends up crying. If there's too much quality (control) without quantity (freedom), happiness can be blocked because we're tense.
GRATITUDE AND POLARITY
Spiritual teachings often emphasize gratitude. Gratitude increases happiness because when we are grateful for something, we embrace it-we love and approve of it-so our energy flows freely through us out to it. It especially affects the quantity side of happiness, but gratitude has a high vibration, so it also improves quality.
Gratitude can exist on all three levels. When our body likes something, such as being touched affectionately, it is grateful for it. Our life force flows out to it, and it forms a circuit with the life force flowing from the other person. That movement of energy gives us pleasure.
When we embrace something intellectually and emotionally, recognizing and appreciating its value, our personality energy flows out to it, forming a circuit that gives us happiness. Emotions are the substance of our personality, and thoughts are the containers. Emotional healing is a large part of creating happiness, because when our emotions are stuck, this flow cannot occur.
The body and personality live on the physical plane, which is a plane of polarity (opposites): light/dark, female/male, sweet/sour, etc. In polarity, we are always weighing things, trying to discern one thing versus another so that we can learn. The goal isn't to get rid of polarity, which isn't possible; the goal is to use it constructively. Polarity itself has polarities-it can be used in either a positive (constructive) or negative (destructive) way.
The body naturally moves toward pleasure and away from pain. In the negative pole, it goes out of balance and becomes addicted-it loses refinement in favor of freedom, which becomes license; it gains quantity but loses quality. Or it gains quality but loses quantity by becoming anxious because it is afraid of pain.
The mind uses polarity as comparisons; mental gratitude might compare how much better off we are than others. This can be useful for putting our life into perspective. However, being grateful only because others seem to have it worse can lead to comparisons with those who seem to have it better, and complaining about it, which isn't useful to building happiness. It judges one's present situation as being wanting rather than loving it as it is. It gains quality (discernment) at the expense of quantity-love stops flowing. Or the mind goes out of balance in the cardinal direction by gaining quantity, being overenthusiastic about the thing it judges good, and losing quality (discernment).
Emotional polarities are similarly built on comparisons. Let's say that one's partner is enjoying someone else's friendship. Emotional gratitude might frame this as one's circle of love expanding, making more love for all three of them. If one is insecure and contracts, one may become jealous: the comparison concludes that one is getting the short end of the stick. The opposite imbalance could lead to a lack of healthy boundaries. The way we frame our experiences is as important to our happiness as the experiences themselves.
The highest form of gratitude is the gratitude of essence, which loves and is grateful for everything-essence is outside polarity. When we experience that, it brings joy. Essence is our core, our potential that resonates with the three high (abstract) planes where love, truth, and beauty are directly experienced. It sees all experiences as part of our journey of evolution through the universe. Our soul is the outer layer of essence that incarnates. It straddles the physical and astral planes. There is much less polarity on the astral. Therefore, our spirit, the emanation of our soul, is capable of pure, unconditional gratitude, without comparisons.
Nature demonstrates unconditional gratitude. Trees, for example, don't have any judgments against their environment. There are no barriers, so we enjoy that rich oxygen, which is an expression of pure gratitude by the trees, while they enjoy the carbon dioxide we exhale. Our experience of pure gratitude is similar.
In unconditional gratitude we see the value of everything, even if it is something we don't like. All experiences can teach and deepen us. We look at all people and see that they are perfect exactly the way they are. They provide lessons for themselves and others, and are growing toward their potential. Seeing the perfection in all things brings joy.
It doesn't serve our happiness to pretend that we like something we don't. It does serve it to embrace what is, changing what we can and making the best of what we cannot. We need not contract our energy because we don't like something. Finding some way to keep it flowing even in uncomfortable situations is a key to happiness.
ESSENCE
As our consciousness rises into alignment with essence, we are better able to transcend polarity and therefore use it constructively. We are no longer controlled by it, tossed from one extreme to another. We no longer participate in the illusory war of good versus evil. We reside in equanimity. We discern the polarities, but see everything as a perfect part of the whole. Being human, we still have likes and dislikes, but they aren't extreme or inflexible.
Michael teaches that growth occurs through essence contact. Essence is ultimately what we are. Our experiences are the raw material for growth, but the actual growth occurs when we open it up to the light of essence. That is how we transform our soul from a lump of coal into a diamond. That is what joy is.
JUDGMENTALNESS
Judgmentalness is the negative side of polarity (discernment is the positive). The Garden of Eden story (and similar stories in cultures all over the world) says that humans were kicked out when they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. A lot of people interpret that as meaning that when humans gained knowledge (intellect), they lost the garden. But that's not what it says. It says the knowledge of good and evil; in other words, when humans became judgmental (and started withholding love).
Discernment, seeing "this" versus "that," isn't itself judgmental. Jesus suggested that we be wise as serpents (and gentle as doves). A serpent resembles a brain and spinal cord. We're supposed to think-just not judgmentally. Discernment is a vital part of the growth of consciousness.
Judgmentalness, however, lacks compassion and understanding. It points the finger. It arbitrarily classifies some things as being good to the exclusion of others, fragmenting the whole and confining parts of reality. It makes some things wrong simply for being what they are. Everyone has different ideas about what is good and evil. Some churches believe that dancing on Sundays is evil, for instance. Disliking something is a personal truth; judging it as evil tries to turn it into a universal truth, when it may not be. Dancing on Sundays is in the eye of the beholder; committing karma is not.
Judgmentalness pervades humanity, and has for a very long time. It's difficult to step out of that mindset where we are constantly judging ourselves and others. If we are judging ourselves, we are surely judging others as well, even if we aren't conscious of it. And if we are judging others, we are surely judging ourselves, even if we aren't conscious of it.
Why are we so judgmental? It relates to our animal-level hardwiring, automatic mechanisms designed to keep us safe. A stranger or someone who seems different might pose a threat, so our unthinking reaction is suspicion and criticism-we look for danger. These simplistic mechanisms are designed to be foolproof, to operate when "nobody's home." They are embedded into our brain and spinal cord-the serpent. The serpent has been blamed for the fall of man because it influenced Eve (emotions) who, in turn, influenced Adam (intellect). However, the personality need not be controlled by hardwiring. When somebody is home, we can make more sophisticated evaluations and choices. Then we can dismantle our automatic, predictable reactions. As we become more conscious, we become less judgmental. The tendencies of the human animal are gradually supplanted by those of the incarnate soul. With discernment, we're awake and see what is, apart from
biological and societal biases.
KARMA
Karma is a natural law that stands outside subjective judgments. Negative karma is violating others, such as killing or robbing. If you commit karma, you experience the consequences. Something isn't karmic because of a person's subjective judgment that it's evil; it's karmic because there is a factual violation that shows up in the energy. However, even negative karma is included in the perfection of what is-it's part of how we grow. When we insist that something shouldn't be the way it is when it is the way it is, we set up a contraction in ourselves. It's more useful to fully feel our pain without resistance so that our energy can move.
There are some karmic acts so shockingly heinous that it's hard to believe that someone would commit them. We may be temporarily stunned into inaction because they are far outside our usual reality, and then the actions we take may be inappropriate. However, the quicker we grok that they did, in fact, happen, that they're part of reality, the quicker we can discern them and take appropriate actions.
In a sense, this is a loss of innocence, but the existence of extreme karma doesn't negate the existence of love, truth, and beauty. We need not become soured on life because we encountered something heinous. Ultimately, even that serves our evolution because it brings into sharper focus what love, truth, and beauty are.
Accepting what is, even when it is horrible, frees us to move on. Revising our view of reality can be stressful, but being frozen in resistance makes us victims, stuck in the past. In fact, anytime someone disappoints us because we had expected different behavior, the quicker we revise our expectations to match the facts, the happier we can be. When we're disillusioned, it's helpful to frame that as gaining useful new information that will help us work more effectively with what is. We had expected one thing-naively, it turns out-but now we have a better idea of what we're really dealing with.
ACCURATE EXPECTATIONS
We live in a highly imperfect world, and each of us has many flaws. The paradox is that all these imperfections are perfect just the way they are as starting points for what is to come. We can only start from where we are. And if were were already perfect, we'd have nothing to do.
True acceptance is not being complacent or passive, but simply being peaceful and embracing the opportunities for creativity that our challenges give us. Maybe they are not the opportunities we would prefer-they often aren't-but we just waste energy lamenting that. When we react negatively to annoyances, it's a good idea to ask ourselves, "Is this worth giving up my happiness?"
Embracing "what is" is actually the fastest way to create the future we'd prefer to live in. This isn't really positive thinking-it is practical thinking. Sometimes negative thinking is also useful, if it gives us an accurate picture of what is. Sometimes positive thinking is a hindrance, if it leads to denial of what is. Both positive and negative thinking are useful if they lead to acceptance and constructive action. The measure of our thinking isn't whether it is positive, but whether it's useful (although positive thinking is usually more useful and accurate than negative).
Humanity is a long way from enlightenment. We're better off being realistic about the generally low consciousness of people. Rather than wasting energy with excessive, chronic shock and outrage (such as about politics), it's more useful to concentrate on being a source of constructive change. The news is full of the same-old-same-old-there's not much new about it. This week's car chase isn't much different from last week's. This month's fill-in-the-blanks "scandal" isn't materially different from last month's. Why are we shocked? It is as though we expected humanity to be elevated, and keep being surprised and angry that it isn't. We've already had plenty of evidence that it's not. Many people are addicted to adenalin-they like being angry; it makes them feel alive, in contrast to their normally dulled senses. But being agitated isn't being happy.
If we view life as the school for souls that it is (among other things), we can take full advantage of the education it affords. If we think that life exists only to give us what we want and make us comfortable, we will be continually disappointed. There's nothing wrong with getting what we want and being comfortable, but we can't count on that happening. We can only count on our ability to embrace whatever comes and make the best of it.
EVIL
Seeking to compassionately understand human shortcomings in general helps us understand ourselves. We're all in this together. "Good versus evil," a meme that pervades popular culture, presumes that evil is only outside us. Evil is simply the part of all of us that is not yet evolved, that is still in darkness. (See my essay, "Compassion for Evil," at http://summerjoy.com/evil.html.) Embracing our own unevolved shadows allows us to be a true force for good.
When someone does something egregious, he is at a particular level of consciousness and may not know any better at that point. If we really know better, not just intellectually but in our being, we generally do better.
Intellectually, we might say, "I shouldn't eat that piece of cake because I'm on a diet," but then eat it anyway. We haven't yet gotten to the point where our whole being really understands and is in equilibrium, where we can easily make the choices that are best for our health. So, in a sense, we don't know better, at least not entirely. When we've come to a deep balance and clarity around food, it's relatively easy to make wise choices without a lot of willpower. Good is not battling evil in us; the emotional charge is gone. It's not cut-and-dried, though, because our bodies are hardwired to seek sweets, dating from a time when they were hard to find, so some self-control may still be needed. There can also be metabolic factors, such as our body seeking a quick boost of energy. We need not judge ourselves when we "fail." The most useful approach is to learn from it, plan better future strategies, and move on.
That's a trivial example, but those who do heinous things usually don't truly know better, either. This doesn't excuse their actions-we're all responsible for our choices and must accept the consequences. However, it's more useful to understand how they have been damaged and might be helped, rather than taking a merely adversarial approach to them. On the level of the two-dimensional war of good versus evil, there is no solution, because most people think they're the good guys, or at least rationalize their behavior. Healing must come from a higher place of compassion that addresses causes.
Once someone is classified as being evil, withholding love seems justified. After all, evil people don't deserve love, do they? However, withholding love harms the withholder as much as the object of that withholding. Contracting our love energy cripples us. It's easy to see how contracted prejudiced people are. Being habitually judgmental makes us chronically tense. It's said that the sun shines on the just and the unjust alike. Deservingness isn't an issue to unconditional love. We love not because of who others are but because of who we are. As far as the universe is concerned, everyone deserves love, even if they have little capacity to receive it.
CHOICE
A key concept in the Michael teachings is that all is choice. We are constantly making choices, many times unconsciously. Taking ownership of our choices is essential to our happiness. When we believe we are primarily victims of things happening to us, we do not take full advantage of our ability to make choices and change our circumstances.
We often have a lot more choices than we realize. Fully considering our options is an important happiness tool. We are powerful when we make the choices that are ours to make, to the best of our ability, and let other people make the choices that are theirs to make, to the best of theirs. Other people's choices are usually out of our control and aren't our business, so it makes sense not to waste energy fussing about them, even when they are ill-advised or even karmic. It's fine to express our concerns when there's a chance they will be heard, and to prevent harm when possible, but others have the right to choose, even to choose to create karma. Being invested in the choices of others is certain to diminish our happiness. It tangles up our energy in theirs and dilutes it.
Other people's choices certainly affect us, but we can't do much about them. Sometimes we are in a position to control other people's behaviors, and this can be appropriate at times-for example, when raising children. But even with children, no one can control their internal choices. We can only control our own.
However, emanating unconditional love through our emotions, truth through our intellect, and beauty through our body, to the best of our ability, sets a tone that reminds others of the possibility of making more loving, truthful, and beautiful choices themselves. Love, truth, and beauty are the fundamental vibrations of the cosmos. Everything else comes from them. Negative energies are merely distorted, blocked, or immature expressions of them. Pure love, truth, and beauty, therefore, are more powerful than any other vibrations. The highest contribution we can make in any situation is to love, truthfully and beautifully.
[In Part II, we'll explore using the overleaves to increase our happiness.]