The Simple Reason Why You’re Missing 40%-90% Of Happiness
Are you addicted to the correct kind of joy?
Your Western lifestyle has brainwashed you into being ignorant about this — there are two flavors of happiness.
One is free, and the other demands practically everything from you. We ignorantly keep forgetting which is which!
Most people assume an ideal partner, job, & recognition will “finally” make them happy. Would it really, if it’s all bound to end one day?
Isn’t there more to life than arranging external conditions?
This question is the beginning of a gigantic leap in self-growth.
Unfortunately, most people just don’t have the words illuminating enough to answer it.
Let’s take it back to more ancient, wiser times.
- Eudaemonia was the Greek word for inner bliss; a deep sense of satisfaction separate from the excitement of the senses. It’s a sense of fulfilled well-being and alignment, typically coming from a purposeful life, aimed at fulfillment of potential.
- Hedonia is stimulated pleasure. When your inner states are all engineered, consciously or not, by external triggers.
So all you have to do is choose the one over the other, right?
Wrong.
Here’s why you can’t simply switch.
When an addict (or social media user, a.k.a. you) engages in what gives them their hit, they’re totally ignorant of a critical event.
It’s what happens after the stimulus is gone.
It doesn’t just leave a vacuum! It leaves something called karmic tendency. This is what monks and nuns in Tibet spend years (if not decades) trying to overcome.
Each case of mental grasping conditions (and hence changes) the space of the mind, in a certain way.
Everything, from the motivation to approach something — to the way you notice it while engaging with it — to what you do afterward influences the mind’s karma.
It means the path to permanent eudemonia is totally unknown, because the mind you carry only knows how to recognize hedonia.
The path is slow, but it works.
To go from hedonic → eudemonic (gradually) you first have to empower yourself.
You don’t blame external events and chase after them anymore. You simply notice how much agency you have, but are ignoring each moment.
In your immediate control is intention and the karma it sets into motion — namely, attitude & belief surrounding your place in the world.
Next is your genetic behaviour — unchangeable for most people. Unless…your mediation practice is so profound that it’s shifting your epigenetics.
Which is actually a proven effect of serious contemplative practice, in a 2020 study.
This means only 10% of your happiness is directly related to things you can complain about. So cheer up!
Dig in to what you can change right now.
The simple reason you’re not getting the happiness you could be is lack of access — to underlying inner bliss.
There are impermanent, hedonic stimuli within your mind blocking it. Let alone ones in the external world!
But once you conquer the inner ones, no outer one can touch you. And they aren’t mysterious.
Here are their faces:
- Childhood traumas and coping mechanisms (ie, running to play Video Games or TV instead of exposing yourself to social situations).
- Avoidance of difficult emotions in your subconscious (ie, fear of facing your loneliness, covered up with constant activity)
Guess what happens when you put in the work?
Freedom; a bliss that can’t be put into words, because even words are stimuli clung to.
Eventually, your habits will become weaker than the light of knowing, shining, ever-present awareness within your being.
Just existing will be happiness, at that point. No matter what happens around or within you.
Millions have attempted this and succeeded. You will too!
It’s only a matter of time (and persistent, correct efforts).
Here’s my story of liberating my happiness.
I lived a happy, privileged life in Canada.
Growing up near Toronto, the most multicultural place on Earth as per the UN, I didn’t even face racism growing up.
It was only after moving to the countryside for higher education & work that my bubble burst.
What I thought I could depend on for happiness — my numerous communities and their social circles — lay collapsed in the chasm of time.
All my bonds with previous friends ended in separation. All sense of my own importance collapsed with the changes in the environment around it. Depression crept in and stole my will to live.
What I thought was true happiness — eudemonia — was actually just purpose & alignment enslaved to the happenings of the social bubble around me.
Even despite that sense of purpose coming from inside my mind!
I knew then: it wasn’t so simple as “look inside to find happiness.” The Greek definition of eudemonia felt incomplete.
I spent the next half decade cutting my tethers.
After leaving university, I spent six months studying Eastern philosophy in the library. I had two big questions, and I knew the answers existed.
- How can we free our consciousness from getting caught in the happenings of our (delusional) mind?
- What inspiration do we need to face our difficult storms of emotion — the ones that keep us chained to cheap hedonic remedies?
From books I got a glimpse of the path. But I hadn’t walked much.
For inspiring guidance, I travelled; receiving esoteric yoga teachings on kriya yoga, training with Tibetan traditional artists, and living at Vipassana meditation centres.
I worked on an organic farm, serendipitously meeting a Tibetan reincarnated master living nearby. I even travelled to India, on pilgrimage to major sacred places.
I met folks who were further along the path than me, to show me how to walk it. And they taught me something shocking!
Real eudaemonia isn’t ‘normal.’
To undo genetic conditioning, you access what’s beyond your “regular” body/mind. You recognize non-physical, non-mental awareness, and cease the habit of losing it.
This takes dedicated practice!
To access the remaining 50% of potential happiness, you change every single intention you generate — through each mental, verbal, & physical action you take.
This demands a whole restructuring of worldview!
The way became clear.
One day, I’ll follow in the footsteps of the ‘abnormal’ masters of joy of the past.
I’ll put in the work, continuously, until my happiness is so strong it can shake off the sorrows of this ever-impermanent world.
But before that, I need to put in the work to be able to put in the work.
What does that mean, exactly?
- It means noticing every time I fall for a hedonic stimulation
- It means reflecting on why I did so
- It means bravely facing the storms of withdrawal to hedonia (out of love for the result that will come)
- And it means always noticing the difference between [eudemonic] awareness & [hedonic] mind.
The Buddha remarked in his most famous discourse on mindfulness: anyone who practices being aware (continuously) can awaken after just 7 days.
To get to such continuity, you have to practice continuity.
Until you fail so many times that you can start to see it coming — and choose differently.
ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः
May all beings experience happiness.