Are you happy?

The most important question which people ask each other is: Are you happy?

 And if you want to know from someone, what is it that they want in life, they say ‘I want happiness or I want peace’.

 Both these words have different meanings for different people. ‘Happiness’ and ‘peace’ are almost synonymous. When I ask someone what happiness means to them, they provide a long list of items. And looking for those items, pursuing them, trying to find them, searching for them, is a long quest. And in that journey of finding those list of items which can bring you happiness, or peace, one gets lost.

I have always emphasized the importance of sitting down and observing silence to everyone I know. Observing silence is the first step to looking at that list, in its true essence. 

When you look at that list, many items out of that list drop out. Whenever you try to look for things outside, where they are not, you will not find them. It is the search for things, the search for those items, the search for those relationships, and the search for that feeling or emotion from the outside that takes you farther away from yourself. But you keep looking for them. 

And in this journey, you find many teachers or mentors or guide those who tell you if you do this, then you will get closer to that. And by the time you grow and become mature, or wise, you have a list of workable solutions, which can take you to that list of items that can make you happy. 

 You try one solution, another solution, another solution, and the feeling of happiness comes and goes. 

The first message to any seeker is to stop seeking. You seek something which you don’t have. If you already have something, why seek it? You should let that noise settle down in you. As soon as that noise subsides, you’ll find that it’s there- It is already there and you stop looking at it. 

But you are not ready to experience this, why? Because maybe this is the game,

A mother playing with her child shows that she has thrown the ball forward, but she’s hiding it behind her back and the child is looking everywhere but the ball is right there with the mom. So this happiness and finding peace solutions are not workable. They are esoteric. They need rituals. They need experiments. We have to learn to live without them. 

 

YouTube Channel Name: Dr. Alka Chopra Madan

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