You’re seeking happiness where it is not found

 

How many times have we yearned for that new car, that holiday, that dress, that relationship, that degree and yearned for the joy of fulfilling that dream? How long did that happiness last? An hour? A couple of weeks? Why is this?

Because happiness is not to be found in our relationships or achievements; happiness already lies within you. How often do we feel that empty sensation within us and we seek to fill it up with a relationship, a change in career or a child?

This is not to say that these don’t bring immense joy or that you shouldn’t aim for them, but the problem is, so long as we are yearning for this as a source of happiness, we are attached. And attachment as Buddha taught us is the root of sadness and misery.

Wanting a relationship, a child or anything which we perceive to not already have, as a way to become happy is also the route to giving away our power or choice over happiness because once achieved (that relationship or happiness) we now live in threat, the threat of losing our source of happiness.

In the case of our desire being delayed or not obtained, we live in pain because we are attached to the idea that without it we cannot be happy. Watch out for what I'm about to say, some of you may not like it. This idea is false, this is an illusion. Nothing outside of you can give you happiness, not permanently anyway.

Why? Because happiness lies within you already.

But why does it feel like we are not? It's like the average sky in London, the sun is always there but the clouds don’t let us see it. The sun is our natural state of happiness and the clouds our attachments (what life should look like or what I should have, which I do not).

So how can we still aim for something without it becoming an attachment or an illusion that we will then threat about losing? Well, the not so great news is that unless you’re one of the mystics, we human beings, naturally become attached and struggle to not seek happiness outside of us.

HOWEVER, the good news is, we can become AWARE.

Aware of the fact that we are seeking for happiness in things or people that may then cause a threat with their leaving or not behaving how we would like them to.

To become aware of that yucky anxious feeling we get when we are becoming attached to a desire or to a partner is where the key lies and in that moment of awareness we begin to free ourselves.

And for now that’s all we need to do, become aware, notice your intention behind your actions, is it tightening or is it freeing? Nothing else.

What we become aware of we transcend. We can then make more conscious choices, knowing they come from a space of love, not fear.

Anna Garcia
Relationship Specialist
www.relationshipsintensive.com