Happiness, Inside look you must.
Being Happy
Happiness is an inside job, and, for many, it is a “subjective feeling of well-being.” Subjective feelings are inside creations. Since each thought you have produces electromagnetic and chemical signals in your body, happiness is an effect of what you are thinking. Your thoughts cause you to feel the way
you do in your body, including happiness.
We will use different terms to describe a range of positive feelings in our body, including joy, pride, contentment, love, gratitude, etc. Most of us probably don’t believe we need a formal definition of happiness because we know it when we feel it. But here is the thing, you don’t feel it in the body. We have looked outside of ourselves to find happiness for the most part. We have looked to a situation, an object to purchase, travel destinations, or relationships to make us happy, and they are all good things. However, it is not what is outside that causes us to be happy. It is how we interpret the outside from what we hold inside of us, and how we do that will determine how happy the outside will seem to be. Everything is in the mind first; therefore, if we are happy inside, whatever happens outside, will affect us in happier ways.
Which came first?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We will never know. However, in feeling happiness, we know the thoughts must come first. Every feeling you believe is in the body is an interpretation in the mind. The body only responds to the mind. The mind always determines what signals the brain will send to the body, and the body will respond in agreement with those signals. As the body changes and reports back to the mind, the mind interprets the happiness or not-so-happy things from those feedback reports from the body. Look closely here. It is not the body that makes you happy, but your interpretation in your active mind, and then your perception in the conscious mind. The body is an output device of the mind. What the mind perceives the body will respond to, and it cannot respond to the mind. If you feel happy, it is an interpretation of the active mind and perception in your conscious awareness.
Think about this for a moment. Outside of you is everything. The good and the bad, the perfect and not so perfect, the beautiful and the less than beautiful, everything is there outside of you. With that in mind, why have you selected to hold onto what you have inside? Why have you chosen the world you have in which to live? What are you keeping inside of you that is causing the world you have to manifest? All that there is is just memories. If you want a happier world, guess what needs to change?
Determining happiness
What determines your happiness? Your feelings, as was stated before. What determines your feelings? Your interpretations of the feedback data from the body to the mind. What determines the interpretation in your mind? Your past experiences. What are your past experiences now? Only unreal, untrue, and incomplete memories of gone events that will never come back. Look closely and notice, it is never what is happening outside that causes you to feel anything. It is your inside interpretations that are creating the feelings from information filtered through your thoughts and beliefs. You never see or experience the world the way it is. You can only experience it the way you are. Therefore, your happiness has nothing to do with outside activities. It must always be created from what you hold inside. The outside is meaningless until you think about it and interpret it from inside you.
You select and cut out of everything only what will fit through your filter. You can only be as happy as your filter will let you feel. What is your filter? Your thoughts and beliefs. What creates your thoughts and beliefs to be the way they are? Your past beliefs and experiences. What are your past beliefs and experiences now? Memories, only memories. Are your memories real? No. Will you believe they are real? Yes. And because of the egoic world you live in, you will believe what is outside of you makes you happy or sad. Did I mention we live in an illusion? I should have. Your present happiness is determined by your mind’s interpretation, as seen through the lens of your past. To get a happier present life, heal your past. Why not? Nothing in the past is real anyway; there are only distorted unreal and self-created memories.
Peace
Michael Faff, MA-LLP, CMHt, Reiki II
Oakland Psychological Clinic
Michael Faff is an author, speaker, and therapist. He holds a Master’s of Arts in Humanist and Clinical Psychology, and his undergraduate degree is in Electrical Engineering. He is also a Certified Medical Hypnotherapist, Reiki II practitioner and uses tapping and other alternative approaches to heal the past and change the present.