photo credit: Wonderlane

Ever wondered what it would be like if the everyday things going on around you were things you couldn’t comprehend?

What would it be like to have no clue what people are on about? What would you think when the world interacts with you?

A Glimpse into Not Understanding

Learning japanese and martial arts have given me a chance to taste what it would be like as a child trying to understand something incomprehensible.

When you truly do not understand, you do not even know what understanding means

Attempting to converse with native japanese people in the beginning with free speech is a very interesting experience.

I hear the sounds, I know there is information but absolutely nothing registers.

It is like my brain is hollow, the words pass through without triggering anything at all. Like a silent lake where rain does not even create ripples.

At times like this my brain can not even comprehend what it would take to understand. There is simply nothing that can take that experience and translate it into anything else. That is where the beauty is.

What you know you don’t know, and are willing to accept, remains pure

Because I know I don’t understand, I’m willing to let the words flow through me without trying to manipulate them and make them fit the world I already understand.

When you don’t touch the world around you but rather let it meld with you without reserve then you can touch into the present moment. That is a wonderful sensation.

Ignorance is not bliss, acceptance and oneness leads to bliss.

The state of mind wherein you just want to take in everything around you without transformations allows the perceptions of things that are not understandable by the mind.

Perceiving such things is understanding, that is the beauty of not understanding.

photo credit: liber

Happiness can be thought of like a set of keys.

Whenever you have lost your keys it is always because you put them down and forget about them or they got hidden under a pillow.

Happiness is the same.

We put it aside and carry on with our lives and then when we want it we can’t seem to find it.

Or worse, our happiness gets covered by a negative emotion and we believe that it is lost forever, nowhere to be found.

How to Find your Happiness (And your Keys)

1. Systemise where you put it so you can find it easily. Create a method which you can reliably bring yourself back to happiness. This could be using affirmations, knowledge of your right to happiness, smiling or meditation.
2. Don’t cover it up. Emotions will always cloud over your happiness if you let them dwell. Whenever you begin to be taken by a emotion, see it and then let it pass by. Keep your happiness at your fingertips.
3. If it seems really lost, ask a friend. No matter how hard you look sometimes you can’t find it in your house. Rest assured it is always there and turns up eventually. Sometimes all it takes is a friend to take a fresh look at you.

How do you find your keys?

Or maybe I should rephrase that to say that peace and happiness in life is simple to achieve… always.

After reading that you will be roughly one of two types of people.

Type 1: ‘Huh? What is this guy on about! If life was simple I wouldn’t have to worry about anything, he must be tripping on something. I have bills to pay, family to support, work to do. Clearly he doesn’t understand my job, it is very complicated and requires a huge amount of my time. This then makes my wife irritated which just skyrockets the complexity of my life. There is no way I could be peaceful dealing with all these responsibilities let alone managing my wife and kids!’

Type 2: Nods and maybe even smiles. They already know what I’m talking about.

So let me explain for all the type 1 people, type 2 people can read on if they want to keep smiling.

The Only Way to Find Peace and Happiness

The reason people find themselves so overwhelmed and busy is because they identify with the thoughts and feelings that tell them life is complicated.

As long as you are identified with thoughts and feelings you won’t find peace and lasting happiness.

The only way to find peace and happiness is to break free of the autonomous cycle of thoughts and feelings. While we continue to associate with the thousands of thoughts and emotions we continue to be too busy to discover peace and happiness.

Peace and happiness do not need to be achieved. They are something that flourishes spontaneously when we break free of thoughts and emotions. You cannot understand real peace and happiness with the mind, they can only be experienced.

The Level of Happiness

The level of happiness that you experience is not determined by external factors. It is entirely based upon your internal world.

It does not matter what your relationships are like, what your finances are like, what your career is like. When you go on a holiday you do not automatically get happier, your thoughts still occur. If you are happier on holidays it is only because it is easier for you to let go of the thoughts. Easier for you to ‘not worry’ about things. Generally most things still bother people even when they are on a supposed holiday, after all you can’t take a holiday from everything in life.

Your level of peace and happiness all depends on your ability to separate from that which takes you away from peace and unhappiness. That being your thoughts and feelings.

The more you can separate from them and watch them occur the greater your happiness will be.

A very important thing to note is that this peace and happiness is accessible anywhere at any time and in any situation. Remember it is entirely based on your internal world.

So How is Life Simple

To achieve peace and happiness in life is very simple. All you have to do is put in the effort to stay free of your thoughts and feelings. That is it. There is only one thing to do. This is why it is simple.

But (”Finally the catch!” says the type 1 person) it requires effort to reach simplicity and maintain it.

We are conditioned to live a complicated life and we do it automatically. Everyday we run around like a headless chicken doing everything that must be done and then thinking about what else we must do or wish to do. Compulsively we think, feel and do. It is so compulsive and automatic that we do it without realising.

With years of training ourselves to hold onto thoughts and feelings it is easy to live a complicated and unhappy life. Most people live unhappily because it is easy, we are professionals at being unhappy and complicating everything.

To Learn How to Find Peace and Happiness

To start breaking free of thoughts, feelings and experiencing peace and happiness is very hard. It is not complicated but it is hard because it requires actual effort.

As I mentioned, we are used to having our lives and actions effectively run by our thoughts and feelings for us. We are not used to living through our own effort.

To break free you have to actually pay attention to your internal world and see thoughts and feelings arising. To maintain this attention requires a large effort particularly in the beginning. After all we are changing a life long habit of inattention.

Once we see thoughts and feelings arise we then have to exert further effort to resist getting carried away by these into our autonomous life. Another life long habit.

When we manage to keep ourselves separate we start to see the gap between thoughts and feelings and in it we discover lasting peace and happiness. I will write more about breaking free in the future.

To begin with atleast life is very hard, but it still very simple. Make the effort and discover peace and happiness.

How do you describe your life? Simple?