An Introduction to Happiness

What is happiness?

Can we magically attain the material things that make us happy?

What is the method of obtaining happiness?

"The important thing is to not stop questioning"

Albert Einstein
































"If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it as the old woman did her lost spectacles - on her own nose all the time"

Josh Billings

Is there a 'magic' way to attain our desires: money, status, love, and could it always make us happy?

People often use that question as a weapon, forcing you to justify yourself, yet if we accept that all our thoughts and actions are towards that end, then it's a valid question that should be considered.

I'm assuming that you don't have a state of complete, unbroken happiness right now. You do!. Then you're wasting your time here - better to surf . If you're still here, then I presuppose your happiness is a cyclical thing like everyone else's - between feeling happy, unhappy or neutral. You desire certain things, situations, objects, circumstances - when you don't get them you're unhappy, happy when you do, and neutral the rest of the time. But when you do gain something, like a new car say, you feel great, but not forever. The special eventually becomes the mundane. A week from now you'd be thinking of the car less often. A year from now you'll rarely think of it in a way that gives you a good mood. Of course, then it could break down or be stolen, so it would eventually cause unhappiness. This is true of all the things we desire - money, status, spouses, computers. When we lose things it doesn't kill us because we have lots of other unfulfilled desires left and can dream of their potential. So our lives go between attainment and loss, our moods from contentment to despair. This is pretty much what we're all doing. Having goals and dreams in life, striving to realise them, attaining or not attaining them - decided by application but also luck, and our happiness waxing and waning with our good or bad fortune. Yet I wonder...

Is it possible to be happy, not in the sense of good or neutral moods outweighing the bad ones, but as a constant feeling of happiness that never goes away?

Is it possible to acquire all of our desires in life, money, status, social change, and be happy also, independently of them, so as attainments come and go the happiness they brought is unwavering?

Sometimes we're happy, sometimes we're not. When we are, how have we done it, how did we make ourselves happy?

We've achieved circumstances, possessions, social status that were desired. Say you've just got a new bathroom fitted and it's made you happy. Great. So you wonder what's wrong with that.

It won't make you happy forever. It's special now, yet in a year's time you will go in and sit on the toilet bowl and it will be so mundane that it won't affect your mood in the slightest. In the future it will deteriorate, go out of fashion and begin to cause you growing unhappiness until you replace it.

It doesn't really exist. That spanking new bowl is simply a collection of photons, nerve impressions going to your brain and is only present as a chemical/electrical response. Those expensive blue tiles on the wall aren't even blue, they're colourless, reflecting white light in a wave. The wave hits the photoreceptors in our eyes at a certain angle and a message gets sent to the brain so it can fire chemicals/electricity to perceive blue - but it's not blue! There is no blue outside your mind. Other animals perceive colour in different ways - they don't see what you see. It doesn't exist.

What the hell are you saying, that I shouldn't have bought a bathroom?

No, listen. If you've just bought a bathroom I'm sure it's lovely, and if it shall make you happy for a time, then I'm happy too. Send me an air-ticket and I'll even come and use it - and I promise to wipe the seat. I only want you to be happy all the time. I want to give you a system whereby you can create all the things you want in life and be always happy despite of them. An unchanging inner-contentment. Imagine if you acquired something new. You dreamed of it for a long time and then found a way to magically attain it, maybe lots of things, but as you obtain them, the happiness they bring never diminishes as they never become mundane. Not only that, but the contentment and attainment your life delivers is no longer tinged with fear, as that same magical system also brought you immunity from loss. Am I bad?

Actually, it's great. Your bathroom doesn't exist. It's all electricity, just like happiness and unhappiness. Humans can control everything in the world except their moods. Well, I guess we have some control. We could sit and think of happy memories until we feel good, or we could get all worked up about something. Already we have some control, but control of what, what is mood? Are we just chasing electricity? If we fly kites in thunderstorms, will we be happy? I doubt it, but there's a better way. Read on!

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