Are you sure that you want to be happy at any cost?
If this is your determination, then, you have a solution.
No force on earth can prevent you from being happier except your mind!
Your mind is the mischief-monger. Your mind prevents you from being happy, and there is no doubt in it!
The first culprit is ‘Regret’
We are experts in regretting!
Whenever we meet our childhood friend, first thing we do ist to compare our achievements with theirs!
Why didn’t I do that?
This is a common question, we ask.
The compulsion to recall our past, and brooding over it is the root cause of our problems. This can be considered a main cause of unhappiness.
Justifying what we did, or condemn what we did is a sure path to depression.
It is the past that haunts us like a devil but we dare not cut our ties with it.
What would happen if you drop the past just as you drop a piece of hot charcoal that has fallen on your palm?
You would instantly become happy!
Happiness can never be achieved by the process of recalling our past and connecting it to the future in the present.
This exercise of connecting the past with the future in the present is a sure way of becoming unhappy in the present, that is ‘here and now’.
Do you know that the past and the future are pure imagination and only the present, the so called ‘now’ alone is real?
The past is only ‘memory-recalled’ and the future is just an imagination!
Why are we the slaves of this automatic recall of the past and imagination of the future?
The reason is our software, our mind.
We have hardware in the form of the physical body and the brain. The software ‘mind’ is subtle, meaning, it is beyond the perception of our senses. All of us experience the origin of thoughts; which suddenly appear in us. We don’t know their origin, but they appear. We have no control over these thoughts. The screen over which these thoughts appear from nowhere is indeed the ‘mind’.
The nature of the mind is to create time, space, and subject-object divide. It gives a sense of continuity to events that appear one after the other in the form of stills.
If reality is the reel of still photos, the mind runs them fast so that an artificial movie is created out of these stills. The mind is indeed the built-in software which has the blueprint of recalling the past and imagining the future in the present.
The mind creates the continuity and attachment to the external world and the physical body. As human beings, we have all identified with this mind entirely. It is something like a wild horse over which we are seated. We have no way to control this horse and we accept the journey on its back as a real situation. We want some rest but horse does not stop. We are forced to gallop on horseback as though we are possessed. This is our fate. Because of this, there is no human being in this world who is happy!
However, you have a choice to become happy this second!
As the horse gallops, become wise, and wait for the horse to stop on its own when it gets tired. You descend from the back of the horse and try not to get on its back but tame it. The process of taming the horse (mind) is called meditation.
We tame the horse when we live in the present. Refuse to recall the past or imagine the future at least for a few hours in a day. Just stay in the present. Have a pair of scissors in your mind and keep cutting the thoughts of the past and the future regularly. Have no other job except scissoring the thoughts that appear from nowhere. Steadily, it becomes a habit and the flow of thoughts becomes slow.
Your happiness is directly proportional to the reduction of thoughts generated in your mind. A stage is reached where you enjoy a brief ‘now’ without any thought. This is happiness. This stage, if extended for a longer duration is called bliss.
It is possible to become ‘blissful’ this moment if you follow my suggestion.
If you can’t, it is not the fault of my suggestion but your inability to get off the wild horse!
Thank you
Dr R N Sreenathan
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