What is happiness? What is the meaning of life?
These are questions that run free in my mind, on a daily occurence, since as long as I can remember. I’ve always been infinitely curious with the meaning of life and what truly makes us human happy.
I’m not thinking of satisfaction, instant gratification or pleasure, but rather, true lasting happiness. While pleasure and satisfaction will faint, true happiness will remain. So how can we attain this lasting inner state of feeling more than content?
Buddha defines happiness as “the absence of suffering” and I don’t think anyone could disagree with that statement. While very insightful, that affirmation did not fully satisfy my pursuit for answers on the matter, and I went on an amazing journey through life and it’s meaning.
During these years of looking for answers, I got to live an eye-opening and transformative spiritual experience where I embraced happiness wholeheartedly. That being for a short moment of time, before my old habit of getting caught up in my thoughts came back quickly. That was in 2020, and I spent the last five years since then trying to reconnect with the most magical feeling I’ve ever experienced. Here’s what I learned along the way.
Happiness is an inside job, a state of plenitude, a sense of inner peace and serenity that makes simply existing in the present moment fulfilling and enough. Yes, enough.
While happiness is deeply personal and can look different for everyone — some will find happiness can come to them from spending time in nature, pursuing hobbies, enjoying simple moments with loved ones… for others it might come from meaningful work, creative expression or helping others — I discovered that happiness is attained in the same way by every human being.
True happiness can never be attained through external factors like success, personal achievements, relationships or material possessions. While these things may provide a brief fleeting sense of happiness, chasing and achieving them often leaves us with a void — a feeling of meaninglessness and lack of purpose.
The happiness we all are looking for, the real kind, naturally arises when we live fully in the present moment, free from constant mental chatter that keeps us trapped in the past or future.
I believe lasting happiness comes from within, from cultivating a mindfulness practice of meditation and contemplation & a mindset of gratitude and acceptance of the present moment, no matter what it brings.
That being said, happiness is not something to be reached or attained. The toxic cycle of “I’ll be happy when… I’ll be happy if…” falls short for everyone at some point of their journey. Working on self improvement, finding true love, pursuing alignment, finding your purpose and realizing your goals won’t necessarily make you happy. Not because it’s not a component of true happiness but because it is not needed, not required in order to experience true happiness.
The most eye-opening truth I discovered is that happiness is already there, deep inside of us, always available to you and waiting for us to connect to it by reaching a deeper level of consciousness, calm and presence. Happiness simply happens when we are conscious.
According to Eckhart Tolle, the mind often creates false needs and desires that keep us from experiencing the fullness of life, and by letting go of these attachements, we can find a deeper sense of joy and contentment, a sense of inner peace, presence, fulfillment that lasts.
Without realizing it, by falling for the internal chatter of our mind (aka our ego) we resist happiness most of the time. Shifting to a state of deeper awareness, consciousness and presence, allows us to no longer be at the mercy of our thoughts and judgements, free from attachements to outcomes or external circumstances, which are what create most of the suffering we experience daily. By becoming an observer of the mind through presence and focused attention, we can access this inner state of calm, peace and happiness, undisturbed from obsessive thoughts and feelings of lack.
Through the practice of presence, focuses attention and meditation, I found that happiness comes along a calm and relaxed nervous system state.
