Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Rafa Euba Blog - You Are Not Meant to Be Happy

 So Stop Trying


Our brain doesn’t know how to be happy, or even content. It simply lacks the genetic instructions to carry out that task. It knows how to do a million other less important things, from writing a letter to maintaining our balance; from appreciating the music of Bach to smelling a rose, but if you ask the brain to be happy, it simply doesn’t know how to respond.

Psychology Today

17 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

Otoh, ... godliness with contentment is great gain. 1 Timothy 6:6

Peter Pan said...

Even Oscar the Grouch was happy.

Peter Pan said...

You are not meant to be happy, yet everyone has experienced happiness.

Happiness is Kaivey as he tends to his Twitters.

It's 1992 and someone is happy :)
It's 1967 and someone is happy (:

Mike Norman said...

"everyone has experienced happiness."

Maybe, but only for brief periods. Happiness is an illusion. No one is happy. It's bullshit.

Peter Pan said...

You can't deny that everyone experiences happiness, so you come up with an unrealistic standard?

How would you describe your default emotional state?

Ahmed Fares said...

The Germans have a saying, "Worries are like fish—the big ones eat the small ones."

As soon as we solve big problems, the smaller problems start to surface. It's a never-ending list.

Do you know who's not worrying about small problems today? The people in Texas.

Tom Hickey said...

Speaking from experience, observation and study, human experience cycles between the physical duality of pleasure and pain on one hand and the psychological duality of happiness and suffering on the other. Some people get more of one than the other in life or in particular periods, while others's experience is fairly balanced between the two.

There is another possibility, however, that can co-exist with the alternation of pleasure/pain and happiness/suffering and is not overshadowed by these dualistic forms of experience.

It is called "bliss," but a words cannot capture it. It is a a unique state that can be be continuous or temporary or vary in intensity (peak/trough) or be stable at a constant level. It is non-ordinary and therefore has been termed "transcendental." It has no opposite and it is either present or absent in one's life, although it admits of degrees if present.

Reports of this are found in the wisdom literature of the world, as well as accounts of how to gain it. Psychologist Abraham Maslow investigated this phenomenon and wrote several books about, characterizing it as "peak" (and valley) or "plateau."

I have found it worth while looking into and have devoted a good deal of time to it through various practices over many decades. It is both within and without and can be found in many ways.

Matt Franko said...

Tom, I think it’s just further demonstration that this paradoxical or dialogic methodology that most of mankind seems to be trapped in doesn’t work... when something doesn’t work, you have to make an adjustment (verb) leading to correction (noun)...

This is the way that everything works... you have to make an adjustment in the face of failure...

If you keep doing the same thing in the face of failure , thinking it’s going to turn out differently , some have called that insanity... may not be insanity but it is manifest failure...

The dialogic method is a manifest FAILURE.., yet probably HALF the academe still trains people to use that methodology...

Which I guess is better than before 1860 when ALL the people were trained by the academe In That methodology...

We seem to be only half way thru this current war...



Matt Franko said...

Tom, you are either grasping for straws that somehow the dialectic method is somehow going to end up working out (against all current evidence) or should consider that your consciousness is beyond the current era...

It may well be that your consciousness is beyond the current era but imo you’re going to still have to discard the dialectic method to get further along... because it manifestly doesn’t work....



Matt Franko said...

Tom , you put in A LOT of time and energy training in the dialogic method to get your degree.... A f_cking LOT...

The cognitive effects of that are mostly permanent... can be overcome but with just over as much energy it took to get there...

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, one doesn't get beyond thought to the nature of consciousness by thinking. Thinking has to get very refined and then stop.

"Yoga (unified awareness beyond dualism of subject and object) is the cessation of mental activity." Patañjali Yoga Sūtrāni, 1.2 (my translation). This is the experience of "pure consciousness," the nature of which is bliss.

Patañjali's view is representative of the wisdom traditions on this.

One has to lose one's (false) self to find one's (real) self. There are many means and while thinking can be helpful in some of these means, it is not necessary, and at some point thought must be transcended to even taste the nature of consciousness itself.

One of the means that involves using thought lies in inquiring, who am I (really)? This way, called "self-inquiry, was given by Ramana Maharshi. This recalls the dictum of the Delphic oracle to know oneself. It doesn't mean psychological introspection.

The means are many and varied, and every individual is unique. The challenge is to adopt the means most suitable for one's disposition and life situation.

My point is simply to report that there is something beyond the duality of pleasure/pain and happiness/suffering that is worth pursuing.

As Sufi master Bayazid al-Bistani reportedly said, "What we speak of is not found by seeking, but only seekers find it."

Tom Hickey said...

Oops, should be "Bistami."

Andrew Anderson said...

Funny how Tom is enamored of the philosophies of countries that have been left far behind, materially, by the West.

I think Tom ignores that a single, random, high energy cosmic ray, for example, could render his "lofty" thinking entirely void. Otoh, the God of the Bible remains faithful regardless.

Peter Pan said...

1. Mike "mental game/seal team six" Norman believes happiness is illusionary bullshit.

2. Anti-natalists posit that life is objectively shitty, except that most people don't perceive it that way due to cognitive biases.

3. The bliss seekers.

I'm in camp #2.

Peter Pan said...

Who told you that fish are thirsty?

Andrew Anderson said...

Who told you that fish are thirsty? Peter Pan

Excellent question.

Peter Pan said...

Sometimes ordinary people leading conventional lives come to the realization that they are living the life they want to live. From that point onward, they are happy.

And sometimes, children commit suicide.