“When the world disappears, i.e., when there is no thought, the mind experiences happiness; and when the world appears, it goes through misery.”
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
Let those words settle. (Don’t rush to the end… please.)
You might wonder how, without anything to focus on i.e. a state of no mind, happiness is your natural state.
As hard as it is to comprehend, our natural state – the Self – is the essence of happiness.
Our thoughts, as much as we think they define us, corrupt our assumed understanding of happiness.
I accept that these few words are hopelessly abstract and, without more, unlikely to lead you very far; but I would invite you to consider that true happiness can only be found within. But more than that from awareness of Self.
For most people they assume that if they can continue to chase down one happy experience after another, and blot out or limit unhappy times that that is how they should live out their lives. But these feelings are no more than mental constructs and like all thoughts, good or bad, they fade. Also, we experience a feeling or sense perception from doing or getting something ‘nice’; and we draw all manner of conclusion that if only we can get more then we will be more happy than sad.
But it never works.
We end up chasing one thing after another. Or, rather, our mind does.
Of course, you might be very comfortable with the happiness paradigm that asks you to become something or to get something. But ask yourself in setting up this pattern of behaviour do you feel aware of your innate happiness or only at certain times (by innate you might like to think of the last time your mind was quiet – this tends to happen when you are close to nature)? In other words, is your life a roller coaster of happiness-despair-uncertainty? Don’t worry, you are not alone. Even those people who outwardly seem happy, still wrestle with the same demons as the rest of us.
For me, the teaching of Sri Ramana deserves more than a cursory glance.
It doesn’t require any conversion to anything. It just invites you to look inside and discover your true Self.
How hard can that be?
I accept that these few words can’t possibly do justice to his teachings. In fact, they may even amount to a betrayal of what he said, but I feel compelled in a way that is hard to explain to share them with you. For me, if I reach one person to explore Who am I? (his seminal work) then I will feel that I’ve achieved something.
At this stage, rather than me expound further on what is a complex area I have laid down a few more words on Soundcloud if you’re interested.
With this blog, I know that I’ve moved a very long way from where I started but I don’t feel that I can continue to talk about issues that contradict my own awakening to I Am.
It’s not a case either of saying that ‘normal’ service will be resumed… soon. But, rather, I’m drawn now to write and speak about something where true happiness is at the root of what I do. Of course, I have bills to pay but that doesn’t mean I have to be two completely different people.