Is Happiness A Fish You Can Catch?
I was just sitting in the bathtub and as often happens when my mind settles and I relax, I start to remember things I haven't thought of for a while.
I love being in warm water as it eases any tensions I may be carrying and in that release, again, my mind starts to open up.
My mind wandered to the subject of happiness. I was brought back to one specific period in my life where I felt a lot of happiness. It caused me to wonder:
When have I experienced true happiness in my life?
I am thankful there are many memories of experiences when I have felt pure open happiness, yet there is one type of happiness that came to the forefront of my mind just now.
Outside of Dallas, Texas
When I met Ini, he kept bringing up the Vipassana retreat as a lifechanging experience for him. I had heard of this from others and as I was really digging this Ini guy, it really solidified my desire to TRY THIS THING!
For those not familiar, Vipassana is a meditation experience that goes for 10 days during which you're silent the entire time.
You learn a meditation technique sculpted by this guy Goenka, but it's really an inspired refabricating of techniques gathered from India. You meditate alone and with the entire community, gathering for meals 3 times a day, remaining in silence the entire time.
The first time I went to one I probably experienced some of the most pure moments of happiness I'd ever had in my life.
I was living outside of Los Angeles at the time and took a greyhound bus to this retreat center in Texas. Nearly 2 days on a bus was a bit much, but it got me there.
The center in Texas is one of their biggest and nicest facilities (they're all over the world) and we each got our own room and bathroom- kind of rare I know now as I've been to others and usually you share a room/bathroom. It was perfect for me to get my own room during this time as one of the things I loved most about this retreat was the opportunity to be in silence and basically ALONE the entire time.
In fact, during those 10 days increasingly as layers were peeled back through the silence and developing quiet mind, I felt that the space of aloneness was so nourishing.
It was like my body was feeding on the silence, and in the lack of activity, my mind and soul were being strengthened.
Sometimes it's still difficult for my mind to grasp: that in the absence of activity, of "doing" anything, "thinking" anything, "being" anything, that I found the greatest happiness.
A poem by the beloved Hafiz comes to mind:
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel…
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing!
What a paradox that in the absence of these things, these counterfit coins, and in fact only in the peace of mind did a very pure and particular spacious happiness arise.
In fact, it's humorous that in a world that promises so much happiness outside of us, there is actually a wealth of happiness inside of us if we only uncover it.
I learned many things during that mediation retreat and there were some neat experiences that perhaps I'll write further about later, but for now I just want to leave you with these thoughts and ask you:
When have you experienced true happiness in your life?
So in this meditation journey you learned that happines is inside you?
that is a true of life.
we first need to be happy with ourselves and then we will make other people happy, they will feel just good with you, because you are good with yourself
yes indeed!
This is the kind of post I'd like to start my day with, every day :)
I'll just go with the first thing that popped into my head and I was when I has nothing but my backpack, not knowing where I was going, or staying the night. Freedom, with little, no worries and wants for anything :)
Thank you for sharing this with us!
<3 :)
ah! i so can relate to that kind of happiness and when i was thinking of my memories those were some of the top of the list for me, too.
lately i've been wondering how to experience that kind again now that i have a lot more responsibility! seems a little more difficult, but i think it can be done.
thanks for the resteem!
The poem is so serene. Such a happy, calming post. And I loved how honestly you wrote how you were digging Ini. Haha
:) you know how it is when you're first liking someone, you're quite open and impressionable to them ;) <3 i had just gotten out of the bath when i wrote it, maybe had something to do with the happy calm ethos lol <3 so glad to see you back !!
wow that is amazing that you found the space of happiness during a vipassana retreat! That must be testimony to the inner work you have already done because peeling back these layers to reveal our bliss is a long and courageous process. Congratulations to you!! <3
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
So, you've got a bathtub now???Oh I looove that poem by Hafiz. Beautiful reminder in your text how our bodies and minds can feed on silence...
haha i'm at my sister's house as she just had a baby boy so was bathing in her tub ;)
yes... as a very sensitive person that silence was so nourishing. i could feel myself eating :)
Oh, congratulations with your new nephew. Ok so no bath yet... I also feel that just sitting and doing absolutely nothing helps me sometimes...
Way back, early in my steemit days, I posted a short story about a guy I met in an Outback town seven years ago. He borrowed money from me so he could buy petrol to visit AA in Dubbo and spent it on the horses instead, and never repaid me the money, either. But I met him again recently. I'd just been scammed a lot of money through a binary options scam operating online (I was contacted through a cryptocurrency group of friends via a friend I trusted). I lost over AU$82,000. I shake my head about this now. Silly, silly me :) So trusting - because I couldn't do something like that to another person. Anyway.... out of the blue, the person I wrote about contacted me and asked me to come to another Outback town where he was posted. I did - and it's saved me from bankruptcy. And he's changed. What changed him? Meditation :)
love how that came full circle! life is amazing like that... <3 meditation has a way of shifting us from within!
He is a totally different person now compared to seven years ago. Amazing :)
Oh and thats Bagan... I have been there!!! And that was happiness 💙💙💙
Happiness is the most desired by many people, although in some cases few fight for it because things happen that you do not expect, but I think that if there is full happiness and inner peace, you just have to do what we like best, be in the quieter places and in solitude at times since you need freedom to think clearly and that is accompanied by love, in my life I have had happiness but it goes away when bad moments pass but that is part of daily life So you just have to be a real person to earn happiness at all costs
its cool!!
what a moment!!!!!!!
very nice!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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