The definition of happiness

(You won't find it in the dictionary...)

Back in the early formative years of my Buddhist practice, the leaders used to make a regular point of throwing all of us practicing members together, to collaborate in various incredibly awkward activities.

There was a definite reason for this; they saw this enforced collaboration in outrageously geeky projects, as a fast track opportunity for catalyzing our spiritual growth.

So if, for example, you cared deeply about dressing in black and being cool, (as I did back then) you were promptly issued a clarinet and a sparkly cowgirl marching band uniform.

The ensuing discomfort was the whole point. And yes, I went along with it.

This humiliating marching band thing was a faith activity, designed expressly for my spiritual-emotional evolution. (And for parades.) And as much as I disliked the process, I couldn’t help but recognize its validity. I also recognized how badly I needed it.

Because I was miserably unhappy in those days. I’d spent my adult life up until that point, habitually judging the crap out of pretty much everyone who wasn’t me. And of course, when judgment of others is fierce, self-judgment is always guaranteed to be off the charts. I lived inside a corrosively painful, if superbly stylish, prison of my own making.

So, yeah. I was ready to give anything a try. I was up for subjecting my witheringly cool, fashion designer persona to this be-sequined yippi-ti-yi-yay of badly played pop tunes and precision marching routines.

Adding insult to injury, at every weekend band practice, with utmost reluctance and extreme lack of graciousness, I followed orders issued by children half my age. (AKA the band leaders in charge.)

Not my marching band. But similar. (Photo by Beth Macdonald)

This intensely uncomfortable process, to which every Buddhist practitioner was subjected in one form or another, was likened to being a potato, loitering inside a barrel full of other potatoes.

Roll the barrel around enough, and the jostling of the potatoes against each other causes all the clods of dirt to fall off. Roll it some more, and those other potatoes smacking into each other over and over, will eventually knock off all your little sprouty bits—otherwise known as your ‘eyes’. [Your ‘I’s].

Yep, there they are, before the barrel rolls.

And therein lies the real point of the operation. Call it ego, call it the veil of forgetfulness, call it the personal ‘I’—this hard shell of fixed opinions, beliefs, limitations, fears, prejudices, preferences and learned behaviors.

Whatever you call it, we all have it, and it’s a major source of suffering for us all. The personal ‘I’ is itself a product of separation consciousness, which gives rise to painful judgment of self and other. It automatically blocks our embodied awareness of heaven.

The personal ‘I’ is the opposite of happiness, in other words.

And personally, this personal ‘I’ was sick of it.

So with all of the above in mind, that organized spud-bumping effort was starting to look pretty good.

The irritation, discomfort, anger and/or deep humiliation provides the ready catalyst. It inflames the ‘I’, bigtime. But it’s the act of combining that upset with fervent prayer, which brings real change. And Buddhist practice provided both in unlimited quantities.

The end result of all that jostling. (Photo by Liana S.)

The triggers are different for each of us, of course; we all have our own stuff. But throw loads of people together—each bringing different skills, ideas and preferences, not to mention different stages of their own spiritual journey—to work toward a common goal? Let the fireworks commence.

Each time one of these predictably frequent inner or outer explosions occurred: Voila! A perfect fire-in-the-belly chanting opportunity.

The hard shell of the ‘I’ softens gradually over time, when repeated triggers are combined with fervent prayer. In my case, it was a lumpy-bumpy evolutionary process…but it worked.

Life beyond the potato

Twenty years later, I was led to a very different practice: A Course In Miracles, and its use of forgiveness exercises. Although Buddhism and ACIM seem (and are) quite different from each other, forgiveness as practiced by The Course, turned out to be surprisingly similar to the potato barrel business, in its fundamental structure and purpose.

The fixed, calcified ‘I’ self is rubbed up the wrong way; tempers or emotions flare; after which a forgiveness exercise is performed. Forgiveness is a conscious choice to remember, however belatedly and/or reluctantly, the inherent divinity of the one who sparked the upset.

Both the potato thing and the forgiveness exercise call upon the sacred component of divine spiritual alchemy. (My description, not theirs.) The spiritual alchemy is always what does the actual work of softening the inflexible ‘I’. The sacred choice we make to remember the divinity of self and other, is the key that unlocks the divine alchemy and sets it working. The rest happens without you—or your mental ‘I’—in the driver’s seat.

Potatoes in the present moment

Fast forward to now. Much as I didn’t love those necessary early years of my Buddhist practice, there’s alot to be said for rolling around in a barrel from time to time…if only to gauge one’s ongoing progress in softening (or shedding) the hard shell of the ‘I’ self.

As a favor to a friend, I recently opened up my space as a venue, to host an all day event for 25 people. When humans get together in a herd, there are always some pretty crazy dynamics at play. The potatoes rolled thick and fast all day long, in other words.

One early example: During the critical peak heat of lunch prep for 25, a sweet little elf of a man turned up in my kitchen, arms laden with pots and ingredients. ‘Can I make myself some cocoa on your stovetop?’ he asked.

I looked at him; I looked at the two dervish-like volunteers at that moment careening in opposite directions around my kitchen, bringing chaos and destruction in their wake; I looked at my crankin’ hot woodfired cook stove, and could almost smell the scorched milk sugars that would inevitably bubble over onto the cast iron cooktop if I let him anywhere near it.

‘No,’ I said, smiling warmly.

‘Oh, okay,’ he smiled back, and left the room.

In this and a dozen other cases (of requests mostly fulfilled), I noticed my irritation, or judgment, or incredulity rising…but in that simple act of noticing, the ‘I’ self—with its opinions of how everything is supposed to be, and what is wrong with people anyway—automatically softened and receded.

Which left me free to surrender allegiance to the ‘I’ and its attack stories, and to remember instead that I was actually dealing with a divine being. From there, it was easy to choose kindness in the moment.

Mostly. The patience/kindness/helpfulness wore a bit thin by day’s end…but overall it remained fairly intact.

(By the way, the kind, or patient, or helpful me, is also part of that structure I’m calling the ‘I’ self. That’s easy to forget sometimes. Softening up the ‘I’ will weaken our automatic belief in its attack stories—and that’s an incredibly valuable beginning. Nevertheless, it’s useful to remember that merely replacing the unpleasant aspects of the ‘I’ with more positive ones, doesn’t actually do much in terms of spiritual freedom. It doesn’t lead to ultimate truth or happiness. It just makes your day go alittle nicer.)

The endgame of these times

Years and decades of prayer or exercises, all designed to be implemented after an inner or outer explosion occurs. Prayer after we’ve reacted in ways we’d rather not. It’s all brilliantly worthwhile and oh so necessary—but it’s not the endgame in and of itself. What we’re really after is the present moment forgiveness made possible by that pre-softened ‘I’.

Because, these days there’s so much more available to us, than just a softened ‘I’ self. In these magnificent transitional times, with the veil lying in shreds, every present-moment choice you make, for remembering the dignity and divinity of self and other, hastens the collapse of the remaining veil—both within and without. Turning away from the ‘I’ in the moment, and choosing divine truth instead, is what brings the world made of love into tangible earthly form.

This is where real happiness is found. Stretching that forgiveness muscle, often enough and hard enough, to the point where you’re free to remember love. Free to remember kindness and respect. Free, ultimately, to know yourself as you are in truth.

Whenever the conflict is actively inviting you in, it’s in that realtime moment of surrendered choosing, that the connection to your own divinity opens a little bit wider. A wee bit more of your own true self is able to trickle in, and find a home within your earthbound being.

Which is, of course, the actual definition of happiness.

Not a mood or a mental state, and completely independent of circumstantial events, happiness is the radiant sun of your divine self, making its warming presence felt within you. That’s what we’re really talking about, here.

Photo by yns plt

The perfection of imperfection

Full disclosure: You probably won’t be shocked to learn that things and people can still wind me up now and then. I’m not beyond reacting to triggers, by any means.

In fact, I fell into my old judgey ways a bit, while I cleaned the kitchen the morning after the event. As I worked, I ruminated for at least 10 minutes, on the many stupidities and bad decisions made by the kitchen volunteers, some of which had resulted in the ruination of a perfectly good potato salad. Among other things.

Just then I noticed the scratches inside a beautiful cake tin lent to me by a friend. With slow-dawning horror, I realized it was me who did it—I’d been the one who used the wrong tool and scratched its nonstick coating. Not the volunteers.

Guilt and shame started to rise in the ‘I’ self; in the old days I’d have been swallowed up by this self-recrimination. But it couldn’t get a foothold.

Because in that same moment, I recognized the hilarious perfection of the lesson: I AM those cluelessly destructive people I was judging a minute earlier. We are one and the same—both in our shared divinity, AND in our brainfart culinary choices. I was awash with admiration and awe for the workings of the universe, which can so sweetly and elegantly remind me of what is true and what is not.

In the split-second recognition of all of that, I automatically softened and relaxed into self-kindness. No guilt, no shame, none of the old ferocity against myself for making a stupid mistake.

The self-kindness remained even when I went online intending to replace the pan, where I discovered it was a vintage tin and they’re not made anymore. (Shit. Fingers crossed it wasn’t a family heirloom.)

Invitation issued by the ‘I’: Should I fire up the guilt and shame again, since I won’t be able to replace the ruined pan with an identical new one?

Choice: Nah.

(I bought her a new, slightly different pan, which she accepted graciously.)

I bring all of this triviality up now, because it’s in exactly these kinds of mundane examples that we learn to choose differently. Sacred choices about relatively inconsequential upsets, made in the heat of the moment, for happiness instead of attack. This is what it’s all about.

Especially these days, with the veil in tatters, this higher-aligned choice to remember the shared divinity of self and other, is imbued with supercharged potency. The power of choice is your most valuable superpower in these pivotal times.

So hey, glorious potato, my advice is this:

Let that inflexible ‘I’ be jostled. Expose it to the divine light of spiritual alchemy (in whatever way is right for you) at every opportunity. And then, in the sizzling heat of the present-moment frying pan, use your sacred power of choice again and again, to disregard the ‘I,’ and fall instead into a world made of love.

Happiness (and possibly french fries) are just around the corner.