Insight

Shortcut to Happiness

/ James Browning

what makes you happy

If the title of this blog sucked you in, I apologize…, well kind of. It was a harmless little piece of deceptive flim-flam to get your attention. There is NO shortcut to happiness. However, here are six quick sign posts that have served me well in adding more “happy” to my days.

* THE NOW – There is no happiness to be found behind you or located with any certainty at a future time. Happiness can exist only in the present moment and no other. Savor it.

* THE PAST – What has happened in your life previously is a recollection that is somewhere between partially accurate and delusional. What you recall did not happen exactly the way you remember. Let go thinking your memory is accurate.

* THE FUTURE – The only certainty about what’s ahead is it will NOT wholly unfold as you imagine it might or hope it will. Some things will. A lot will not. Plan; hope; pray; dream. BUT leave life plenty of room to just happen.

* FORGIVE – Let go of finger-pointing and holding on to ill feelings; most of all those you hold against yourself. Mistakes and the trespasses are the greatest teachers, but only when seen through a rear view mirror. Screw up. Size up what happened and move on.

* SLOW DOWN – One can not be present in the now, if most of life is spent moving from one point or another. Yes, almost all of us are dementedly busy, but everyone can grab a few minutes to top and take stock. Taste and savor being alive.

* IT WILL END – Everything ends; pain or changes or both; good times, struggle, joy and even life. What does not end, changes. Gratitude unlocks the “sweet jelly” in the hard roll of life and allows adjustment to “what is”. Thankfulness is the sweetener of existence.

Buddhism and psychoanalysis teach us that the very ways we seek happiness actually block us from finding it. Our first mistake is in trying to wipe out all sources of displeasure and search for a perennial state of well-being that, for most of us in our deepest fantasies, resembles nothing so much as a prolonged erotic reverie.

The root cause of our unhappiness is our inability to observe ourselves properly. We are caught in our own perspective, unable to appreciate the many perspectives of those around us. And we are unaware of how insistently this way of perceiving drives us. Only through the uprooting of our own self-centeredness can we find the key to happiness. Howard S. Friedman, Ph.D. Psychology Today

Eventually when I was able to truly accept disappointment, heartache and grief as a natural part of life, I became changed for the better.  Just as light and dark work together to make a beautiful world, life’s good and bad strike a balance. Only by living in harmony ‘tween the two does happiness become possible.

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.
Chinese Proverb

Sex Is Sacred

/ James Browning

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C. Joybell C. made a post on Facebook this morning I found moving. Here’s a portion:

Sex is sacred. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t matter what you tell yourself in order to get away from the truth, the underlying fact is that, you take into your soul a piece of another’s soul and you embellish a piece of your own soul upon another, when you have sex. Like it or not— we are not animals.

The Rosicrucians state that at the heart of the soul there is Love, Sex and Fire. You play with one, you are endangering the other two. Play with any, and you are endangering the condition of your soul. People walk around not able to see the holes in their souls created by their many meaningless sexual encounters, they think in their minds that they’re okay, but the soul is pulled and pulled into a thinner and thinner matter.

…I’m serious when I tell you— sex is sacred. It is to be done with those whom your soul has bonded to. That is, if you care at all about the form and matter of your soul. It doesn’t even have anything to do with morality and religion. It is in fact all about the immortality of your spirit. C. JoyBell C.

A year and a half ago my post here titled “If You Have Something to Say” was about the author of what’s just above. https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2012/07/14/if-you-have-something-to-say/

Her Facebook page says “I am a myth. The myth is real”. If you go searching for information about C. JoyBell C. you won’t find much other than her quotes which are deep and frequently inspiration. All I can tell from a photo (above) and short interview I found on-line is she is young with wisdom beyond her years.

C. Joybell C. is self-described as “an American born self-taught writer of Asiatic Anglo-Celtic European descent… grew up in-between cultures and crossing borders… great-grandfather was a Taoist High Priest… other great-grandfather was a Southern Georgia Baptist Herald. Fighting to live life for herself and not for others, she is defying her status quo in being a writer and this is exemplary of who she is.” She is the author of “Saint Paul Trois Châteaux: 1948″ and “The Sun Is Snowing: Poetry & Prose.”

C. Joybell C., thank you for the insights you have brought into my life over time, most recently this morning. From my past is guilt of treating sex as less than ‘sacred’, but I learned better. My old habits hurt others, but it was me I hurt most. Now knowing the true value of sex (“you take into your soul a piece of another’s soul and you embellish a piece of your own soul upon another, when you have sex”), I am deeply grateful for the growth that brought me parallel to that insight.

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason
and mocks the power of all philosophers.
But, in fact, a person’s sexual choice is the result
and sum of their fundamental convictions.
Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive
and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life.
Show me the person they sleep with
and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.
Ayn Rand

We All Have Twenty-Four Hour Days

/ James Browning

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You can do anything,
but you can’t do everything.
David Allen

What has my attention at this moment? My thoughts are directed at words surfacing in my mind and typing them with a considerably lesser amount of awareness of music playing on Pandora. I’m vaguely aware of the surroundings of my home office, the art and posters on the wall and the noise of an occasional neighborhood car that drives by. That’s all my mind can take on at the moment.

People have a fixed amount that must be allocated according to need. To use a popular analogy, attention is like a bucket of water. People draw upon it as needed, but every dipper full and every teaspoon full leaves less for other purposes. Marc Green

Two interesting components have arisen with the increase of discretionary time I now have: 1) my perception of the world outside me has increased. I notice more, see things more deeply and generally feel good because of it. 2) With a richness of time, it is easy to let hours and days slip by with little to show for them. Some of that is good. Some of it is not so positive.

Zig Ziglar said, “Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” My conclusion is that expecting myself to settle into new routines within my first 60 days of semi-retirement was too much to ask. Already I feel better letting myself off the hook of that unrealistic expectation.

…the allocation of attention is largely automatic and occurs without awareness. As a result, it is not easily brought under conscious control. You may direct someone’s attention by saying “watch the step,” and temporarily cause a conscious allocation of attention to the step. However, there is a good chance that within a few minutes or even seconds, the memory trace will disappear and the next time the person will fail to notice the step. The same automatic factors that directed attention away from the step in the first instance have not changed. Marc Green

The paragraph from Marc Green helps me a good deal because it tells me that keeping a keen awareness of my desire to form new routines is a great start to having them. All I have to do is follow through on what I have concluded and stay aware with a sense of priority. Then new routines will simply fall into place. Whew. I am grateful to “get off my own case”.

I didn’t pay attention to time or distance,
instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion,
knowing it wasn’t about the finish line
but how I got there that mattered.
Sarah Dessen

The Nail on the Head

/ James Browning

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Of my favorite things few come close to two of them: 1) Finding good music I have not heard before 2) Discovering the meaningful work of an author I was previously unaware of. This week a writer unknown to me named Dan Millman came across my path. Dan’s a former world champion athlete, university coach, martial arts instructor, and college professor. His story goes that after an intensive, twenty-year spiritual quest, his thoughts formed into something he calls the “Peaceful Warrior’s Way”. He is an insightful man and his thoughts about life hit the nail on the head for me.

Life has three rules: Paradox, Humor, and Change.

– Paradox: Life is a mystery; don’t waste your time trying to figure it out.

– Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure

– Change: Know that nothing ever stays the same.

So be gentle with yourself; show yourself the same kindness and patience you might show a young child – the child you once were. If you won’t be your own friend, who will be? If, when playing an opponent, you are also opposing yourself, you will be outnumbered.

There is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all One, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life, just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too! It’s all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don’t worry, just be happy. You are already free!

Finding new expressive material that can help me gain new insight makes me feel like a kid  who received the birthday gift he wished for. I am grateful for the work of Dan Millman and look forward to knowing him better through his writing. Dan’s webiste can be found here: http://www.peacefulwarrior.com/

Be happy now,
without reason;
or you never will be at all.
Dan Millman

Nothing Is Holier

/ James Browning

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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.

Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” From “Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte” by Hermann Hesse

WOW! I will never look at a tree the same again. I am grateful to Mr. Hesse for widening my view.

Love the trees until their leaves fall off,
then encourage them to try again next year.
Chad Sugg

Heard, Understood and Touched

/ James Browning

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I have no idea who “K.” was but Virginia Satir was an influential 20th century psychotherapist and notable author. She described her work as helping others in “Becoming More Fully Human”. What is below Ms. Satir wrote for a twelve-year old patient who said “What is life about anyway. Life makes no sense. What is the meaning of it all?”

I am Me.
In all the world,
there is no one else exactly like me.
Everything that comes out of me
is authentically mine, because I alone chose it.
I own everything about me:
my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice,
all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.
I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.
I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.
Because I own all of me,
I can become intimately acquainted with me.
By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts.
I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me,
and other aspects that I do not know,
but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself,
I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions
to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me.
However I look and sound, whatever I say and do,
and whatever I think and feel at a given moment
in time is authentically me.
If later some parts of how I looked, sounded,
thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting,
I can discard that which is unfitting,
keep the rest, and invent something new
for that which I discarded.
I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do.
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others,
to be productive, and to make sense
and order out of the world of people
and things outside of me.
I own me, and therefore,
I can engineer me.
I am me,
and I am Okay.

I am grateful for my favorite used bookstore (Gardner’s) where I found Virginia Satir’s simple book filled with the insightful words above. Her thoughts give me sharpened insight here at the start of a new month.

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive
of having from anyone is to be seen by them,
heard by them, to be understood and touched by them.
Virginia Satir

Photo credit: Pol Ubeda Hervas
(“I am not there” series)

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You

/ James Browning

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Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage!

Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all.

Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you.

Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!” It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is f@&king love.

Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to.

Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment… Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other… Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention. Ryan O’Connell

I love this piece and am grateful for its blunt clarity. Love is not a special one or two things, it is everything.

Individuals who want to believe
that there is no fulfillment in love,
that true love does not exist,
cling to these assumptions
because this despair is actually easier
to face than the reality that love is
a real fact of life
but is absent from their lives.
Bell Hooks

In Doing, I Find My Way

/ James Browning

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“Everything I do is a step on a path to where I end up”. That’s an almost too obvious statement and maybe the reason most know the words but don’t grasp the full meaning. A million course changes, intentional and not, make up the route of this ship of life I ride in. Each happening, choice or splinter of destiny set me in the direction of exactly where I am today.

In retrospect, a lot of time slipped by before the wisdom of forward motion soaked in. Often I thought, “I’ll decide/make a choice/figure it out” tomorrow, next week or after so and so happens. The days came and went with no insight or inspiration arriving. Instead frustration grew.

Some of my best decisions have been rooted in the illogical notion Sir Richard Branson frames as “screw it, let’s do it”. When something feels right, it usually is, even if logic can’t reassure that. My breakthroughs come from making a choice and just getting on with it. Conversely, logic and reason have pushed me into a lot of decisions that in hindsight were mistakes.

More often than not waiting for inspiration has meant letting time expire without much to show for it. Revelation has usually come while I was busy implementing some uninspired choice. Insight has rarely come while sitting still and instead usually shows up while I am busy painting myself into a corner. Need is a rapid and prolific incubator of concepts, ideas and possibilities!

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case. Chuck Close

“In doing, I find my way”. That sums up one of the more insightful pieces of wisdom life has taught me. In movement, no matter how uninspired, purpose is found. Sitting motionless in one spot trying to decide is akin to being partially dead. I am grateful to realize living is always in the trying, even if I fail.

The only thing standing
between you and your goal
is the bullshit story
you keep telling yourself
as to why you can’t achieve it.
Jordan Belfort

To Better Practice What I Already Know – Part Two

/ James Browning

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Tomorrow Part Two of Ms. Marshall’s “Twenty Six Ways To Love Life

Eight months ago my post here ended with those words. It was my intention was for a back to back ‘two-part’er’ but the second installment got lost on my hard drive and was never posted. Albeit late, I am making good on posting the remaining half.

14.Travel. Explore different places. If you can’t afford to fly, drive. You don’t have to go far. just go. Learn how to travel on a budget and go twice as much.
15. Celebrate Mondays. Mondays are 1/7 of your life. Do something special on Mondays so they feel like Fridays. Notice the attitude you have on Friday compared to Monday. How can you make Mondays special.
16. Volunteer. This will add to your mental and emotional health. It’s a feeling money can’t buy. Do your part to make the world a better place.
17. Play. Balance life with play. Play cards. Play with children. Play outside. Play games. Play for fun. Play to improve yourself.
18. Live in the present moment. When we are anxious we are either living in the pain of the past or the fear of the future. Learn to take one moment at a time. Live in the present.
19. Respect elderly people. Spend time with them. They are worthy and wise. You will be old someday yourself.
20. Read. You can learn something new everyday. Never stop learning. Never stop growing.
21. Breathe. Learn to breathe properly. Breathe deeply and often. It will decrease your tension and anxiety.
22. Be patient. Learn to wait patiently. We spend between 3-5 years of our life waiting in line. Learn to be patient with others. We don’t all grow at the same pace. Learn to be patient with your children, it is a wonderful gift to give them.
23. Learn to deal with your emotions. It’s a scientific fact that the center for emotional control is not in someone else’s behavior it’s in your brain.
You can talk with a friend, journal or exercise, these are a few methods for dealing with your emotions. Anger covers up pain, pain covers fear. Recognize your feelings, emotions and know how to remain calm in chaos.
24. Take the high road. Know what your values are and live by them. If a cashier gave you an extra five dollars back in change would you give it back?
25. Simplify. List the areas of your life that need to be simplified. Choose one area of your life and begin. Keep it simple.
26. Love. Learn how to express your love to others. Speak loving words and take loving action. Decide to contribute love to the world.
http://theboldlife.com/2009/01/26-ways-to-love-life/

I’m glad items number 14 through 26 came back into my field of consciousness. No time will be spent regretting my forgetfulness that caused close to a year to pass between part one and part two being posted. I have faith that part two was something I needed to read NOW. Several of the items are precisely on target for what I needed to be reminded of this morning.

I am grateful for a rich and rewarding life. It’s sometimes grueling, complicated, and agonizingly painful… but my life is ALWAYS good even at its most difficult.

Always be fearless. Walk like lion,
talk like pigeons, live like elephants
and love like an infant child.
Santosh Kalwar

Disappointment: Hurt to Gratitude

/ James Browning

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With disappointment, there are multiple layers of sadness that one experiences before being able to look on the bright side.

As adults, we do not often face disappointments in manageable doses; as such, we are stuck with the disappointment dilemma. After emotional and even physical preparation when disappointment comes, we are faced with the immediate and aftermath reactions.

Preparation anxiety: Anticipation can be exciting when we feel the adrenaline rush as we prepare for a celebration, a special date, or even dinner with friends. But what happens when you are let down by a last-minute change or cancellation? Unless you are a pessimist, mild hurt and disappointment set in.

Immediate and aftermath reactions: The most often heard immediate response to serious disappointment is this: “I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach.” But because someone else was in control, the person who was hurt can do little more than make some feeble statement such as, “It’s alright, I understand.” In many cases, it was not alright, and you didn’t understand. But you said nothing and took the high road.

Resolution or regret: If a person in one’s life disappoints once or twice, it might be understandable. But what happens if it becomes a pattern? It can only become a pattern if you allow it. This is where choice comes in and you take control.

To protect yourself and maintain self-respect, say something in a kind, but firm way. You may even wish to give the other person some wiggle room. But if you say nothing, your disappointment may soon turn to regret.

Regret is a feeling we experience because a personal choice we make does not turn out as expected. But unlike disappointment, making that decision is within our control. From “Disappointment: Three Layers, Hurt to Gratitude” by Rita Watson, MPH http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-and-gratitude/201209/disappointment-three-layers-hurt-gratitude

While not a major disappointment with lasting impact, plans for an evening with a dear friend had to be shelved. I was looking forward to doing what we had planned for over a week. However, it was not to be. The reason for the cancellation was not specifically within anyone’s control. Rather, it is an outgrowth of where my friend placed them self. That fact has now become self-evident.

Showing that I am a true friend, I expressed my disappointment and not a lot more (even thought this is the second time my friend has recently canceled long made plans). I am thankful to realize the best thing I could do was show understanding and empathy, even thought initially I wanted to spout off. I am grateful I didn’t!

Disappointment to a noble soul
is what cold water is to burning metal;
it strengthens, tempers, intensifies,
but never destroys it.
Eliza Tabor Stephenson