What do I mean when I say that consciousness is intrinsically subjective? Life is lived from the inside. At the end of the day, it’s not important what you gained or who you defeated. It’s not important who you impressed, who you deceived or what they think of you. Externals like that are trivial. What really matters is whether you are happy. And happiness has nothing to do with externals.
I’ve seen people who have everything and work very hard to look happy. And if you ask them, they will insist that they are happy. But if you watch them, they are continually on guard against anything that threatens their “happy act.” They are so tense, they cannot possibly be happy in the sense that I use the word.
On the other hand, I’ve seen people in India who have very little in the way of material things, yet they are very happy. I’ve seen people living in a cardboard box next to a garbage dump who are happier than people with million-dollar McMansions in gated communities. What kind of happiness is this?
It is a kind of inner spiritual happiness that has nothing to do with what you do or have. It has nothing to do with your external personality or image. External happiness is phony and temporary.
I am talking real happiness, the kind of happiness that comes from inside, directly from consciousness itself, from what you are as a spiritual being. I mean happiness that is unaffected by material conditions, that springs from a deep recognition of who you are, apart from this body.
Can you tell me who you are before you are born and after you die? If not, then you are not capable of the kind of happiness I am talking about. If your only sense of identity is in relation to this body, then the only happiness you can have is the temporary, external kind.
If your only sense of identity and happiness is in relation to your current body, then you are in trouble. No matter how well you think you’re doing now, something is going to come along and change your situation—something called time.
Remember when you were 3 years old? What kind of body did you have then? Where has that body gone? You are separated from it by time. Similarly, time will also separate you from your present body.
Everyone tells themselves a story that they are working on a perfect body, and that they are separated from it only by time. To support this rationalization, they try to position themselves in relation to things that symbolize that perfect body to them: possessions, relationships, labels and designations.
People go to the gym and the beauty parlor, seeking designations like ‘handsome’ and ‘beautiful,’ ‘muscular’ and ‘slim.’ They seek relationships with people who will advance their career, knowledge or social standing. They work so hard to increase their bank balance or decrease their waistline.
But all this effort will not make them happy, because all these relationships, possessions and designations are external. These things are not happiness. Happiness comes from knowledge of eternity and spiritual wisdom. It comes from deep meditation and success in self-realization. It comes from a certain transformation of one’s world view or ontology.
Practitioners of the Esoteric Teaching know how to find real happiness; we have known for many thousands of years. But as long as people continue to seek happiness in places where it is not found, there is little we can do to help them. As long as people continue looking outside themselves, as long as they deceive themselves with counterfeit stories about their quest for a perfect body, they cannot be helped.
What really matters at the end of the day is knowing that whatever happens, one’s happiness is assured. When happiness is found within, external changes cannot shake it. And when happiness rests on one’s sweet realization of the Absolute, nothing can destroy it. This is real happiness.
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