The Second Type of Happiness – Part 1
The second type of happiness is founded upon meaning. Meaning can not be attained by aiming at it directly. It can not be attained by looking for meaning in the world. Meaning is founded upon living from a loving heart. This loving is only possible to the degree the heart is not bound to any of the conditions of the world. That is, not wanting. Rather the second type of happiness is dependent upon movement towards being in a loving state all of the time, through action.
There is nothing to do in order to be loving or to act and experience from loving. Rumi the great Sufi poet said: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Living from a state of love all of the time is enlightenment. Loving can only exist without any sense of self wanting. This is the path to freedom from suffering.
To begin the Way of happiness…
All “Suffering” is the exact opposite to living from a state of Loving consciousness. The perpetual state of loving consciousness is the highest embodiment of meaning. All meaning that one holds to and grows in, eliminating all reasons for not loving, is the greatest task and leads to the highest experience of meaning. So it would stand to reason that having a heart brimming with loving-kindness, would be a most certain path for the sustaining of non-suffering. To be clear, this does not mean allowing yourself to be abused or used. This is not loving. It does not mean that you go along with what is unacceptable. It is a new age misunderstanding that acceptance is the same as loving. It is not. When one is living from inner calmness dedicated to loving action, there is no need to accept or not accept anything because loving is an action, not something to get or in itself a way to feel. To come to a place of acceptance, one must first feel that something or someone is unacceptable. A true loving state does not have to overcome nonacceptance in the first place because loving as an action is not dependent upon other people or circumstances.
How then does one achieve this loving-kindness, in a world that constantly challenges an individual in being loving? To answer this and as a method of attaining freedom from suffering, the Buddha himself began this path with the cultivation of clear Awareness. Clear Awareness as a path, releases an individual from all biases of ego & emotion so that only clear mindedness results. Clarity of mind frees the heart to live fully. This clarity arises out of the first type of happiness, which is not wanting, or contentment. Contentment begins with the practice of carrying meditative calmness, into daily life until there is only calmness.
When clarity of mind occurs, that is, the mind is freed from details and features of all suffering, that mind sees clearly how to bypass all further suffering. This is the path of skilfulness because it is the skillful use of an unattached mind, that can conquer all forms of suffering. Awareness which is beyond all senses of a personal self may then be made into the baseline for practising the removal of all suffering. The result of such a concerted practice is an inherent automatic tendency to flowing with the greatest of energies in life. From this practice, a freedom from suffering is made into habit so as to permeate throughout one’s whole living consciousness and life. This practice is the means to flowing with all Life energy. Hence enlightenment may be cultivated & thereupon be a means to the (Middle) Way…
Meaning does not come from anything outside yourself. It comes from within you. Meaning is the strongest when it’s associated with love.
Hi Don,
Would you be able to clarify something around the concept of acceptable and non acceptable? When you were speaking of this, I noted that, on the one hand, one is not to go along with what is unacceptable and on the other hand one is not even to think of things or people in terms such as acceptable or non acceptable. In what way were talking about what is unacceptable in the first reference and how does it differ from how you used the terms acceptable and non acceptable in the second reference?
Most Respectfully,
Matt
When one is living from a loving state of consciousness there is no need or desire to judge in any personal way, life circumstances or people. This is so, because love does not judge in the first place. As such what is acceptable or not, simply becomes functional.
See the next post for a more detailed explanation…
Thank you, Don