HAPPINESS AND INNER SELF

 

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it’s all within yourself,

in your way of thinking”

-------- Marcus Aurelius

The above quote by Marcus Aurelius is very significant and perhaps not many people would understand the profound import of these words. It means that man creates his happiness and it does not come from any source in the external world but from the way he thinks about the condition he is in.  The issue that I would like to address here is why happiness comes from inside and not from the glitter, glamour and materialistic affluence of the external world. Well, that is primarily because we human beings are mentally conditioned to the external world. And that is why the sense pleasures and materialistic desires are objects of gratification that pleases us the most. But in chasing these, only a few people realise that those are only transient and the pleasure derived from these are temporary, as these fade away fast with time. And after that, the reason for happiness no longer persists, it also evaporates very fast leaving us again back to square one

A wise man realises this and so considers chasing sense and materialistic gratification as a futile endeavour.  

First of all, let me put in a very simple and generalised language what happiness means. It can be stated as the experience of a positive emotion generated in the mind in absence of any physical discomfort and also being in a mentally stable state (free from any worries and anxieties) that a person is at any moment. This is also accompanied by a sense of joy.

Now putting into proper perspective that includes all dimensions of happiness, as stated by an American psychologist in the below words.

“ Happiness is to do things that are harmonious with who we are, with what we can do, with what we like, and with what we think is right.”

                                      ----- Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (spell as chick-sent-me-high) 

When suffering from any physical discomfort or mentally not in a stable state he would not experience a sense of happiness. Because the mind would be focused on the body or in whatever thought that is destabilising the mind. And that till the time these persist happiness would prove to be something elusive.

A wise person dwells in the inner self because he knows that true happiness comes from the bliss experienced by dwelling in the deepest core of the inner self. And that is because he realises that happiness arises from something related to his own identity. That is the reason why the source of happiness has to originate from the inner self if it has to impart a lasting elevation of the mental state. And in this way, it deviates from the sense of pleasure that comes from reasons that are in the external world.

Thus our self-identity is related to the nature of our perception of realities experienced by us. Giving up pleasures and comforts of the physical world is a matter of mental deconditioning. And hence can be given up to a certain extent, retaining only the minimum requirements of self-sustenance. The deconditioning of the mind is possible thru physical and mental restraint to the level of the minimum requirement. And focussing ourselves more on the inner self by calming the mind from all deviations of the external world. The best way to achieve this is thru the practice of meditation because during this the senses are drawn inwards into the mind (i.e. senses are non-judgemental now) which thus becomes reinforced to focus on the inner self. And this brings in a state of bliss that is much more profound than the happiness experienced from the external world.