There are some people who seem to always be happy, regardless of how meager their situations appear to the outside observer. There are also people who cannot seem to sustain happiness, no matter how great their lives are perceived to be by others. This dichotomy exists because the inclination towards happiness manifests in different degrees in different people, with little correlation to their circumstances. While some people are born with a consistent tendency to be happy, I maintain that those who feel that their propensity for happiness is insufficient can increase it considerably over the course of their lives.
Before I describe how this is done, let me first explain what I mean by happiness. We all believe we know what happiness is since most of us have had bouts of it, regardless of our relative inability to sustain it. But if you ask most people what it means to be happy, you typically get a list of effects and synonyms but rarely a good characterization of the underlying cause.
I regard happiness as the appreciation of the absence of need. In this context need is our separation from completeness. At first glance this would seem to indicate that only those who have achieved completeness (the topic of another essay), can be truly happy. But from a deeper perspective it means that happiness is more readily available to those who have greater awareness of their proximity to completeness (or, as is often the case with simpler folk, less awareness of their separation from completeness).
Bear in mind that happiness is not our ultimate objective. In general, sustained happiness is simply an indicator that we are near our true objective of completeness. The closer we are to completeness, the fewer needs we have to focus on and so the more likely we are to be happy. Mind you, those who lack a sufficient propensity for happiness will usually just place a greater emphasis on their remaining needs.
Viewed this way it looks like it is theoretically possible to be too happy. For those of us who still see ourselves as far from complete, our needs are our primary incentive to grow. As such, if we still have needs but our happiness has us directing our attention away from them, this incentive to grow would no longer be effective, thus potentially retarding our growth.
We are protected from this eventuality by our other important incentive to grow. Where need is our negative incentive to grow, our positive incentive to grow is love. Again most of us believe we know what love is since we are of the impression that we have experienced it either directly or indirectly at some point in our lives. But when asked to define love we typically put forth a litany of symptoms, not an explanation of the condition.
Love is the empathically induced completeness that we feel through our awareness of our proximity to completeness. In other words, love is the feeling we get from our realization that we are a part of something truly wonderful. The existence of this positive incentive to grow allows those who are both needful and happy to be inclined to grow through their love, which will draw them towards the ultimate source of the completeness they feel.
Love is the basis of our propensity to be happy. This means that those who feel they lack the inclination to be happy simply do not have enough love in their lives. Such people are insufficiently aware of their proximity to completeness.
To resolve this situation you should first cultivate an awareness of the existence of a state of completeness that transcends all need and is the source of all love in the world. Whether you call this state God, Unity or the peace of perfect equilibrium, the existence of such a state is easy to recognize if you are open to it.
Once you accept the existence of this complete state, you can increase your propensity to be happy by nurturing an awareness of your proximity to it. I maintain that each conscious being is separated from this state of completeness by a single thought. The specific nature of this thought is different for each individual. The trick is figuring out what that thought is for you. But in the interim, you can be happier simply knowing how close we all are to the resultant state of completeness.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Thursday, December 13, 2007
The Death of Santa Claus
My 12 year old daughter just confided in me that it is becoming increasingly difficult for her to continue to believe in Santa Claus. That she sees the existence of Santa Claus as still worth considering is a testament to the sophistication of her perception of his (its) nature. I explained to her at a relatively early age that Santa Claus is the name that many European-influenced cultures give to a seasonal spirit of selfless giving.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Which Should You Trust More - Your Head or Heart?
This year the Great American Think-Off solicited essays on which we should trust more, our heads or our hearts. Here is my answer to this question:
If you are a typical human being, you should generally trust your head more than your heart. This is due to the fact that few of us have achieved a degree of empathy that exceeds our lofty (from a terrestrial perspective) intellectual capacity. Yet, as I will endeavor to explain, this is what must happen for us to be able to consistently trust our hearts more than our heads.
To appreciate why this is, we must first look at the nature of trust. I see trust as simply the belief that something is what it appears to be. Trust represents the perception that there are no divergent intentions hidden in its object. It is not the presence of a deviating intent, but the effort to hide it that is the basis of mistrust. If people admit to their underlying objectives, they are trustworthy to the extent that the admission is accurate. For instance, if I tell you that the large wooden horse I am leaving for you is full of soldiers, intent on killing or enslaving everyone on your city, this revelation renders my efforts trustworthy, if not benign.
Our trustworthiness is a reflection of our selflessness. This is evident in the fact that to merit trust total we must give it without reservations. It is our concern for some aspect of our wellbeing that causes us to be less trusting. This is because the more self-centered we are, the more focused we are on what we feel we have to lose and thus the less trusting we will be. Where this occurs, there is an increasing probability that our actions will contain concealed objectives that favor or at least protect the self upon which we are centered. Whether or not we actually have a hidden agenda in a given case is irrelevant since it is the selfishness-induced probability that we do that defines how untrustworthy we are.
In this context, whether the head or heart is more trustworthy becomes a question of which is less self-centered. To answer this let us now consider the nature of the “head” and the “heart”. I regard the head as our outwardly focused reasoning abilities that produce the observations, ideas and rational thoughts that represent our view of the world around us. I see the heart as our inwardly focused emotional faculties, which generate the moods, feelings and intuitions that reflect our perception of our internal state.
Initially the head sees the world as an incomprehensible collection of seemingly unrelated phenomena. It advances beyond this stage by reaching out into its surroundings and creating the extrinsic connections that we call knowledge. In doing so, the head renders its world more comprehensible. We perceive this intellectual advancement as increasing understanding.
In the beginning the heart sees its possessor as the only truly significant being. It matures beyond this phase by looking within itself and seeing the hearts of others, thus creating the intrinsic connections that we call love. This arrangement allows the heart to increasingly be able to see the world from the perspectives of others. We regard such emotional maturation as increasing empathy.
Because the heart is inwardly focused, its perspective is initially almost completely selfish (as the caregiver of a typical infant or toddler can confirm). By contrast, since the focus of the head is the world around it, its earliest outlook is less self-centered than that of the immature heart. This selfless focus is why it is that, until the role of the observer was expanded by quantum mechanics and postmodernism, our greatest rational thinkers tended to underestimate how much our uniqueness shapes our perception of the world.
As the human heart becomes more capable of adopting the perspectives of others, it can attain a degree of selflessness comparable to that of the head. At this point, the head and heart are equally trustworthy. If its empathy continues to increase, the selflessness of the human heart can exceed that of the head, rendering the former the more trustworthy.
As an adult human male I have observed that we are rarely inclined to trust our hearts because the biotic and societal influences that define “manhood” tend to constrain the development of our empathy. A human male is generally considered “less of a man” if he can be influenced by the “mere” feelings of others. By contrast, complementary influences encourage human females to be more open to the feelings of others. This promotes the growth of their empathy that provides women with less self-centered hearts that are generally more trustworthy than those of men.
Yet the typical woman still cannot consistently trust her heart more than her head. This is because among humans, the exceptionally intuitive state in which our hearts are generally more trustworthy than our highly developed heads requires an inward focus so profound that it blurs the distinction between the self and others. Such great empathy was arguably achieved by the founders of our great spiritual traditions and other less renowned but equally remarkable individuals. But the evident rarity of such people among us means that you are probably not one of them. If that is the case, your heart has not matured to the point where you are justified in consistently trusting it more than your head.
If you are a typical human being, you should generally trust your head more than your heart. This is due to the fact that few of us have achieved a degree of empathy that exceeds our lofty (from a terrestrial perspective) intellectual capacity. Yet, as I will endeavor to explain, this is what must happen for us to be able to consistently trust our hearts more than our heads.
To appreciate why this is, we must first look at the nature of trust. I see trust as simply the belief that something is what it appears to be. Trust represents the perception that there are no divergent intentions hidden in its object. It is not the presence of a deviating intent, but the effort to hide it that is the basis of mistrust. If people admit to their underlying objectives, they are trustworthy to the extent that the admission is accurate. For instance, if I tell you that the large wooden horse I am leaving for you is full of soldiers, intent on killing or enslaving everyone on your city, this revelation renders my efforts trustworthy, if not benign.
Our trustworthiness is a reflection of our selflessness. This is evident in the fact that to merit trust total we must give it without reservations. It is our concern for some aspect of our wellbeing that causes us to be less trusting. This is because the more self-centered we are, the more focused we are on what we feel we have to lose and thus the less trusting we will be. Where this occurs, there is an increasing probability that our actions will contain concealed objectives that favor or at least protect the self upon which we are centered. Whether or not we actually have a hidden agenda in a given case is irrelevant since it is the selfishness-induced probability that we do that defines how untrustworthy we are.
In this context, whether the head or heart is more trustworthy becomes a question of which is less self-centered. To answer this let us now consider the nature of the “head” and the “heart”. I regard the head as our outwardly focused reasoning abilities that produce the observations, ideas and rational thoughts that represent our view of the world around us. I see the heart as our inwardly focused emotional faculties, which generate the moods, feelings and intuitions that reflect our perception of our internal state.
Initially the head sees the world as an incomprehensible collection of seemingly unrelated phenomena. It advances beyond this stage by reaching out into its surroundings and creating the extrinsic connections that we call knowledge. In doing so, the head renders its world more comprehensible. We perceive this intellectual advancement as increasing understanding.
In the beginning the heart sees its possessor as the only truly significant being. It matures beyond this phase by looking within itself and seeing the hearts of others, thus creating the intrinsic connections that we call love. This arrangement allows the heart to increasingly be able to see the world from the perspectives of others. We regard such emotional maturation as increasing empathy.
Because the heart is inwardly focused, its perspective is initially almost completely selfish (as the caregiver of a typical infant or toddler can confirm). By contrast, since the focus of the head is the world around it, its earliest outlook is less self-centered than that of the immature heart. This selfless focus is why it is that, until the role of the observer was expanded by quantum mechanics and postmodernism, our greatest rational thinkers tended to underestimate how much our uniqueness shapes our perception of the world.
As the human heart becomes more capable of adopting the perspectives of others, it can attain a degree of selflessness comparable to that of the head. At this point, the head and heart are equally trustworthy. If its empathy continues to increase, the selflessness of the human heart can exceed that of the head, rendering the former the more trustworthy.
As an adult human male I have observed that we are rarely inclined to trust our hearts because the biotic and societal influences that define “manhood” tend to constrain the development of our empathy. A human male is generally considered “less of a man” if he can be influenced by the “mere” feelings of others. By contrast, complementary influences encourage human females to be more open to the feelings of others. This promotes the growth of their empathy that provides women with less self-centered hearts that are generally more trustworthy than those of men.
Yet the typical woman still cannot consistently trust her heart more than her head. This is because among humans, the exceptionally intuitive state in which our hearts are generally more trustworthy than our highly developed heads requires an inward focus so profound that it blurs the distinction between the self and others. Such great empathy was arguably achieved by the founders of our great spiritual traditions and other less renowned but equally remarkable individuals. But the evident rarity of such people among us means that you are probably not one of them. If that is the case, your heart has not matured to the point where you are justified in consistently trusting it more than your head.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
