(This is Part 4 of a series. Go back to Part 3.)
Now might be a good time to pause and put a few things into context, and in particular, a good time to look at the "context" of happiness.
Let's start by saying that nothing said in this series, or for that matter, this website, is the truth.
Why? Because the real truth is not something that can be written down in words. We can see the truth in a sunset or a smile; we can hear it in a breeze flowing through the trees. But not in words.
Truth is not actually expressible in words, because words are an inadequate tool, grounded in duality. For the truth is ultimately the Truth. And it's too profound, too deep to ever be expressed by any kind of phrase, tool, system or algorithm at all.
And that's the thing. Ultimately, happiness is about the Truth. Nothing less will really take us there.
In my opinion, the best that words can do when talking about the Truth is to talk in terms of hints and whispers. So at various points this website has attempted to present a few hints and whispers about Truth in the form of various tools or maps for approaching happiness. Let's make an attempt now to put them in a context:
Let's say there are three stages to happiness. Now of course these stages don't actually exist, because there are no stages to the Truth. But let's pretend, just for fun, that there are three stages:
The first stage in our journey to happiness is to learn that we can exert some control over our life and our world on an external level. We learn to manipulate, we learn to shuck and jive, we learn to play the system to derive some benefit from it.
We gradually put together a persona, a sense of self that learns to make its way in the world. We all do it, and it's quite necessary to do it. Our persona is what carries out the everyday motions of life. It's our role as mother, brother, friend, boss, employee, scientist, political idealist or whatever.
Our persona is what gradually learns to negotiate with the world to make our way. It's needed. Yet, in the end, it is the barrier to our real happiness because it has taken over. We become fused with our persona and come to believe that that's who we are. The mistaken identity is the real source of our inner unsettledness.
So the first stage of happiness is the creation of a persona or self-concept which develops some degree of mastery in dealing with the external world. Indeed, one of the endeavors of this website is to suggest some good ways to enhance this first kind of happiness, that is, to become good at getting what we want.
Sooner or later, though, we do notice that we can never achieve all the control we'd like to have. Even if we become extremely good at creating our external world the way we'd like it, we may notice after awhile that our happiness is still incomplete, that there are still things about our life or the world that interfere with our happiness.
Above all, we notice after awhile that this kind of happiness is very fragile. It can be lost in a moment. We get some bad news, or something that we didn't want happens, and suddenly we can be plunged into unhappiness.
It is this increasing realization about the inherent fragility of our well-being that sooner or later launches us into the second stage, a spiritual search.
(This is the end of Part 4. Go to Part 5.)
—jim sloman, 4.9.06
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