I woke up this morning feeling happy happy happy! Grabbed my matcha and went for a long lovely foggy beach walk. Strolling blissfully along, I said to my friend, “this is my favorite kind of happy.” I was feeling happy for no reason, happy not based on external conditions.
According to Buddhism, there are two kinds of happiness – relative happiness and absolute happiness.
*Relative happiness is dependent on circumstances. It’s about feeling good when things seem to be going our way and feeling bad when they don’t.
*Absolute happiness, on the other hand, is unrelated to conditions. It’s about feeling good from the inside, no matter what’s happening “out there.”
Growing up as a sad, scared, disappointed child, happiness seemed an impossible dream. But the desire was strong and discovering how to be happy became my life goal.
Along the way, I sampled lots of external [relative] happiness – men, alcohol, food, drugs, distractions of all kinds. Eventually it dawned on me that seeking happiness “out there” is a poor and temporary substitute for the real thing – the kind that comes from the inside and is not based on “the stuff.”
“The joy I have – the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.” — Shirley Caesar, gospel singer
Once upon a time in my early 30’s, diligently seeking happiness “out there,” still determined to get other people to make me happy, I received a card that said Happiness is an Inside Job. I remember thinking, “Oh, yeah, that’s right,” which was immediately followed by the thought, “But I don’t know how to do that.”
Law of Attraction to the rescue. LOA helped me:
*Stop expecting other people / circumstances to make me happy
*Let go of the I’ll-be-happy-when focus
*Understand where true happiness comes from [it IS an inside job]
*Trust that all is well, even when it doesn’t appear that way
*Raise my vibration and align with my natural state of well-being
To be clear, I enjoy all flavors of happy. I do love it when other people and circumstances give me reasons to feel happy. But not depending on external happiness frees me to seek internal, absolute happiness and thus experience it more often. And that is my favorite kind of happy!