The example of Buddha is a very good one because he symbolizes this fact as he’s just sitting under a tree with very few possessions yet is in nirvana - he’s 10/10 happy.

He showed that we can go directly to happiness by focusing on generating the set of happy feelings within us, instead of taking the long road we’ve been taught to believe will, one day, deliver that experience.

If we’ve been taught, via our intensive schooling, that first achieving A,B,C and D will bring us happiness, then that’s what we will focus on. We will believe that jumping those hurdles is required before we can be, or deserve to be, happy. Over time, we easily forget that ticking those boxes is only relevant if they will deliver us happiness, and we struggle to change our focus/programming even when they don’t deliver the desired taste.

The formula/recipe we’ve inherited (A($)B, (career) C, and D = happiness) is just a recipe, and if that recipe delivers the taste sought - happiness - then great. But if not, we, obviously need to change the recipe - keep doing the same actions and we’ll get the same results - but we can’t do this if we don’t understand there are lots of other recipes to choose from. If we believe the programming we were spoon-fed when we were children is the only one, or the only ‘right’ one, for us as adults, then we just blindly walk the path we’ve been deposited on, yet there are many, many paths to choose from.

When u set your life course

U did not pause, nor a compass did u see

That's a shame

For it would of shown 360 different degrees.

'93

If we can understand that happiness is an experience, something we feel, and that these desirable feelings are generated within us - they’re largely independent of our external environment - then we gain massive flexibility as we’ve turned the formula around. Instead of believing only A,B,C and D = the feelings we call happiness, we now go; ‘Ok, Happiness is an experience, what experiences will make me happy?’ Our formula/recipe is now very flexible as its;

Happiness for me =what feelings? And those feelings are generated by what? Instead of H = A,B,C,D attainments that then (theoretically)= the desired happy emotions, we change it to H = X,Y,Z emotions/feelings and the reality that aids the generation of those feelings = what? We now have flexibility, we can experiment and, in time, become more accurate and so choose a fruitful path.

We make the easy very hard if we're seeking fool's gold, but it's very hard to discriminate between which motivations within us are fool's gold and which real gold unless we step out of our overgrown web of habits and beliefs now and again to get back in touch with our core. Once we've done the weeding, we can plant strands of motivations that we've consciously chosen and that are aligned and pulling us towards the real gold we're now focussed on.

Why take the long road to, maybe, happiness when you can go directly to it?

There’s nothing mystical or esoteric about this; it’s basic psychology. People are happy when they’re experiencing emotions they enjoy in the absence of painful emotions. While this is obvious, it’s not in society's interests that you or I think like this, as modern, sophisticated societies need their population motivated to spend their lives working. This is understandable, as a society that had most of its citizens relaxing at the beach with big, Buddha-like smiles instead of focusing on work would be relatively dysfunctional and have a low material standard of living. It would be weak, have a weak army, and so not be able to defend itself - it wouldn’t survive very long. That population would be displaced by more industrious, hard-working people, and this is what has happened.

So it’s understandable that we’re schooled (programmed) to believe as most believe, but this doesn’t mean an individual can't throw out, or refine that recipe. We can make our own.

In the game of life

The winners are the happy

The losers the unhappy.

Yet

We can make our own rules

And there's no opposition

2018

While we can go directly to happiness and not take the long, increasingly barren path to it, this is usually not easy, because we typically have strong resistance to change as we, over time, become emotionally integrated with our established beliefs/programming/recipe. In other words, we're already emotionally invested in the formula/recipe/programming we've inherited.

I won’t go deep into the mechanics of this resistance, as the model gets a bit complicated and will itself generate resistance in many as it contradicts the model most people have regarding our species operating system. Ironically, even though most people have no idea how they operate because they’ve never studied it, they will often resist learning, not because the new information contradicts their own model - they normally don’t even have a model - but because it contradicts the more noble and glorious way they are used to thinking about themselves. With little actual knowledge, which our schools don’t provide, we're free to believe whatever feels good to believe about ourselves. This is no problem if, overall, someone is happy - no need to change a recipe that’s delivering the desired taste - but it is a problem when the rigid beliefs are wildly inaccurate and limit flexibility in their operating system.

This status quo - someone wants to be happier, but they can’t change their actions/path because they don’t have any flexibility with their existing beliefs - is the bane of psychotherapists everywhere, and this manifests more as people get older - can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

We have two paths of action when it comes to improving how we feel. We can change our external reality to better match what we like and/or change our internal reality to better fit our external reality. Buddhism, which arose in India amidst a very rigid caste system that made it essentially impossible for millions to improve their external reality, focuses on the second option and is very effective, hence why it became, and is still, so popular. I saw many examples of this ‘contradiction’ (it seems a contradiction to typical western thinking) when I lived in India decades ago, and here is an example that I wrote about at the time for anyone interested. The Serene Taxi Driver.

So Buddhism, with Buddha himself being the extreme example, focuses on generating happiness and contentment regardless of one's situation in life. In other words, it teaches how to go directly to the experience of happiness instead of believing one needs to be ‘successful’ before one can be happy. Techniques such as Vipassana mediation greatly aid in this endeavour as they weed out desires/wants/motivations that are superfluous or just hard to obtain. If we no longer want something, then we are free of the burden of needing to acquire it. Less is more, and the hard becomes easy.

Conversely, the typical modern western orientation is that more is more. The belief that the more we acquire - the more certificates on the wall, the more $$ in the bank, etc - translates to more happiness, and that happiness without those things, without jumping those hurdles, isn’t ‘real’ or valid happiness. The problems with this programming are many, with the first obvious one being that, left unchecked, it’s actually impossible to be happy and content, as the more we have, the more we want. Therefore, we’re always wanting, always craving - we drown in the midst of plenty.

The more we believe we need to acquire to be happy, the more we need, and needing/craving is not a pleasant feeling - it lowers our level of happiness, so what’s the point? We end up running away from happiness, and this compounds because we’re likely to suffer from stress, neglect basic care of our bodies, and then suffer ill health, as we only have a certain amount of time and energy and we're expending that time and energy chasing.

Ultimately, we want to choose the middle path. Ideally, we want to build or take ourselves to a reality that is beautiful, comfortable, and nourishes our core emotional needs, but then not keep piling more and more on our plate. For what do we need more? More is just more to worry about and maintain. Relax and enjoy life.

Relax and enjoy. But, for many, this is not easy as they're stuck in '5th gear', and because that's the gear they've always been in, they know no other and think there is no other. 'It's the way I am'. But no, they're just stuck in 'overdrive' - their brain is racing in Beta frequency, they've become addicted to dopamine and their nervous system is in the stressed sympathetic mode. It's a competitive world, we're thrown into classrooms when we're still very young, and we've got race to get ahead, so it's not surprising most people in modern societies are permanently in overdrive mode and don't realise they can switch modes and relax without feeling agitated or bored.

When we understand, we understand that joy, love, and all the actual important emotions are received, not conquered, and receiving them depends on our capacity to receive/feel them. If we want to get technical, it comes back to a primarily serotonin orientated happiness as opposed to a dopamine one.

To get a quick understanding of dopamine and serotonin this Doctor explains it well here:

'7 key differences between pleasure and happiness' 10 minute video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3svaOilIis

This little blog post is getting long, longer than intended but;

Dopamine is fun, serotonin is joy. Dopamine pleasure is out there, something we run down and catch. The dopamine buzz is fleeting and needs to be constantly repeated. It’s loud music.

Serotonin, on the other hand, is an internal, warm, pleasant feeling, and it’s always there. OK, technically, dopamine is also generated and consumed internally as it’s also a feeling - just a different flavour - but the difference is that it’s triggered - the dopamine ‘tap’ is opened wide - via an interaction with the environment, whereas serotonin is just always there - it’s independent of the environment. Serotonin is soft, quiet music that's omnipresent, but we can’t hear it, we can’t connect with it if we’ve got the much louder dopamine music playing at the same time.

Serotonin is the state our ancestors were mostly in. It’s our default, with dopamine motivating us to get out of our slumber and hunt, etc. Dopamine is our reward for doing, as obviously we need to do sometimes to survive and thrive. Dopamine is great; there’s nothing wrong with experiencing ample dopamine. The issue is that modern competitive society puts us firmly and permanently into being orientated just for dopamine without even knowing, because we’ve never experienced it, that there’s another, delicious option available.

Which is why stepping out of our overgrown web of motivations and habits for a time can be so beneficial as we, often for the first time, get away from the loud music and get a chance to connect with the softer, joyous music that was always there, but we lacked the capacity to feel.

Once we know it’s there and know how to tune into that frequency, we can switch ourselves into dopamine mode whenever we want. To obtain our objectives from the environment, it’s often useful to be in dopamine mode, but we can return to real happiness and contentment whenever we wish. Sure, it'll likely take some days of detoxing to switch over, but we understand this.

Learn to switch back and forth, and it becomes very obvious which reality - dopamine or serotonin - is by far the best. The added bonus is that we’ve made the hard easy as dopamine is something we chase and catch, while serotonin comes to us.

It’s easier to see this if we look at extremes, as then the principle is clearer. Buddha was an extreme, an exception, which is why what he symbolizes is so useful. With the above in mind, if we visualize Buddha under a tree, totally happy with that massive smile on his face, and him saying, as apparently he said, " By doing nothing, I do everything," we can maybe understand what he was pointing to with those words. Given that he had already achieved 10/10 happiness, what was there for him to do? What motivation can there be within him to do anything? Motivation is dependent on a need or want; we must feel a lack to have motivation, yet within him there is no lack, no craving, no frustration, and so he just sits, smiles, and enjoys.

Between Buddha at the 'top of the mountain’, and the masses of people craving and chasing instant gratification in the swamps far below, we find our own level. It’s not about trying to be like Buddha, (none of us could anyway), it’s not about trying to reach 10/10, it’s about realizing a comfortable level of happiness generally. We all have to do things we don’t really want to do to move forward, and shit happens now and again - we all bounce up and down. This life thing is not maths, not an exact science, but we don’t want to make it harder than it has to be; we want to make the hard easy, or at least easier, and to do this, we need to understand ourselves and what happiness actually is for us. How can we get to a high level of happiness unless we first know what that looks like?

As Socrates was fond of saying; 'Know thyself.'

It's about finding the right balance for us. We don't want to try to control things too much, as we don't want to squeeze the joy and fun out of life. Ultimately, it doesn't matter to the universe what we do or don't do, what we experience or don't experience, as the universe will keep doing its thing regardless of what happens in our little flicker of life. But, as we're going to experience something between birth and death, it might as well be pleasant; therefore, it's probably worth putting some effort into making our future moments happy ones.

Again, those who already have a tasty recipe don't need to change it, regardless of what it is, if they're confident that recipe will continue to deliver happiness into the future. For them, all is good and if there's anything to improve it's maybe just their capacity to enjoy their good fortune.

The lens through which we experience reality needs to be cleaned now and again.

While the above is some of the basic theory, to really 'get it', we have to experience it. Detoxing, especially our hybrid detox, or a ten day Vipassana meditation course, helps people experience it.

The point is to hunt for the desired experience - the feelings, the emotions - and not the label that our brains have been taught to attach to an experience. When we focus on the translated meaning that we assign to an experience, we’re splintering and diluting the organic experience.

What is just is, and any meaning/label we give it only exists in our heads, and while this ability to judge is important as we need rational decisions to guide us, we also need to be able to sidestep what is just the label, we’re currently programmed to see, and dive into the experience. Judging, labelling, is useful and needed, but when this gets out of control, when the organic balance between brain and emotions is overturned - commonly from prolonged intensive education - we start to consume mere labels, and our lives become confused and anemic.

What’s important is what we feel, we have to hunt the desired emotions, even though emotions are invisible. To obtain the desired emotions, we have to hunt that invisible game.

Strength is vanity, truth is illusion

I feel u breathing, the rest is confusion

Your skin touches mine; what else to explain?

I am the hunter of invisible game

There’s a kingdom of love that needs to be reclaimed

Yeah, I am the hunter of invisible game

Springsteen. 'Hunter of invisible game'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HVuTCfixwA