July 2, 2012
It’s Hard to Be Happy
One unforgettable day in New York City, over ten years ago, I was crossing Park Avenue on my way to give a lecture when a Yellow Cab that had decided not to stop at a red light careened out of control at about forty miles an hour. It sideswiped me and my wife, shortly after we had stepped off the curb, before hitting a few other people and crashing into another car. I can clearly see the picture in my mind’s eye even now. I was standing in the street, my right arm badly broken, dangling as if by a thread, and my right calf so deeply ripped open that later I was told that my shin bone was clearly visible. My wife lay unconscious at my feet with blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. In that instant, I thought she might be dead. Hours later, in my hospital bed, having received the news that she and I would recover and be more or less as good as new within a year, I remember witnessing the thought, “How could this happen to me?” arising in my awareness. And then the answer came, “Why shouldn’t it?”
For some time now I have been reflecting upon the bizarre irony of the fact that so many of us at the leading edge of Western culture—the wealthiest, most highly educated, and privileged generation ever to exist on the face of the earth—have somehow gotten the idea in our heads that we deserve to be happy, healthy, and prosperous. It would seem that many of us, consciously or unconsciously, believe that before we incarnated, we signed some sort of contract with our maker stipulating that we would be willing to endure a certain degree of fear, stress, and insecurity as long as sooner or later we got to be happy. And the wealthier and more privileged we are, the greater, it seems, is this expectation.
After more than two decades of working intensively with men and women who claim to want to transform and develop spiritually, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the reasons it is so challenging for us to attain and sustain higher levels of spiritual development is that we expect so much and are willing to give so little in order to get what we think we want. The truth is, it’s hard to be happy. These days, it’s become almost a truism that simply fulfilling our narcissistic and materialistic desires is not enough to make us deeply happy. But how many of us have really dug deeply enough to reconfigure our own ideas of what happiness means in light of a higher set of values than those held by our crazy culture? For our values to change in a way that is nothing less than dramatic, we have to be willing to make a hell of a lot of effort. These days, many people are turning to the spiritual dimension of life. But it is telling that many of the most popular expressions of postmodern east-meets-west spirituality are based on a philosophical orientation that endlessly trumpets the promise of effortless peace, joy, and happiness, as if that’s the ultimate life experience.
Why, for the luckiest people who have ever been born, should happiness be a birthright? Why should our spiritual aspirations be focused on the pursuit of inner peace alone? Did God create the universe so that you and I, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, could be happy? Is that really all there is to this fourteen-billion-year process? And why is it that so many of us presume that we deserve to be happy in the first place? What is it that we have actually done to give us such an innate privilege?
It’s fascinating to observe what happens to our perspective when we don’t assume that we necessarily deserve anything, especially not the promise of happiness or perfect peace. Just give it a try. You may be surprised to discover that a whole universe of previously unimaginable possibilities opens up to you. You may even begin to awaken to the overwhelming revelation that the very process that gave birth to your own capacity for life and consciousness urgently needs your willingness to make effort and even, I dare say, suffer, for its higher development.
I’m convinced that this evolving Kosmos is in desperate need of our conscious participation in order for its creative potential to continue to develop. Our postmodern spiritual pursuit of peace may in fact just be taking us out of the game. As our spiritual values evolve, if we reach high enough, we may come upon a surprising revelation: that in order to experience a happiness that is profound, we must be willing to struggle to find nothing less than a Kosmic sense of care for the life process that will set us free but, ironically, will never leave us in peace.
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This post was originally published on Andrew Coheh’s BigThink.com blog, The Evolution of Enlightenment
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
Thank you Andrew, well said. It is as if the “spiritual community” through leadership from people like yourself, Jean Houston, Ken Wilber, Genpo Merzel, Michael Murphy understand there is a mission here, at this time for our existence on this Earth. It is about evolution and our real capacity to create how we humans evolve. It is about consciousness do we continue up the spiral of consciousness creating the structures to do so, or not.
Yes, Andrew! While I hope and believe in the potential for (more or less) continual peace and happiness, when people talk of “deserving” things like happiness and enjoyment (particularly when it is connected to money and material), I often think to myself that it is not about “deserving” it, in the first place (at least, that is my opinion).
To those of you who disagree, when a majority of the world’s people live in incredible need (an understatement), by what rationale do you think that you “deserve” to live in a huge house, make millions of dollars, and then have the (intellectual) gall to think that you should not have to pay a higher percentage of your income in taxes to regularly and automatically “give back” some of your great fortune and blessings?
But we are all such incomplete, imperfect, immature, yet forgivable beings (at least at the level of typical everyday consciousness). THANKS AND PEACE!!! Warren Freedlund
When we talk about happiness, it seems to be mostly related to well being in a material sense, and maybe so more in the western world. Have I got enough money, have I got a big house, a smart car and other material goods. Even, have I got the most beautiful/handsome partner, the greatest kids, the most successful friends.
And that is sometimes not even enough to make me happy.
So my reflections have let me to the conclusion that as we in general define happiness, it is predicated upon my judgement, that happiness is a manifestation of the material world and grounded in my feelings and emotions.
So my conclusion is that happiness is of the material world and is fleeting. Here one moment, gone the next.
However, when I am connected with my higher self, my soul, my being and am living my life based on my purpose, as I can best define it, and contributing to the evolution of myself and being in service to others in their pursuit of their evolution, something wells up in me that I might call happiness. But it is much more than that.
It is what I have defined as Joy or Fulfillment. It is of a much more lasting nature. It is a source of energy, that drives me to pursue my purpose and understanding of why I am here, as a human being. That we are all here as part of a greater evolution.
Finally, there is a much higher elevated state of happiness, that manifests itself, when I am on the rare occasion totally connected with my Authentic Self or Spirit. When I know that I am one with that infinite part of myself, that I cannot even define with our limited vocabulary.
Then I experience Bliss.
From that experience of Bliss springs an understanding that:” Peace is a state of mind contingent upon my ability to let go of all things, physical, emotional and mental.” ( Including this definition ).
I just read your July 2 response re the question/state of “happiness”, and I entirely agree with you. What we need, I think, is a tiered definition of the word, one that advances from a state of material comfort and emotional satisfaction to a state of spiritual consciousness/evolution and the fulfillment of purpose, which embraces “joy” as a more evolved form of “happiness”. I think, although I don’t know if he ever states it, that that is what the Dalai Lama is really talking about when he says that the purpose of life is to find happiness, or to “be happy”. This higher form of happiness takes the inner work that allows us to arrive, maybe over many lifetimes, at that elevated and consistent state of consciousness. Mainstream culture, however, knows nothing or very little of this state of aspiration, and, I think, merely interprets “happiness” as our material birth right. Like many words in common usage, there are nuances of meaning that do not go get adequately explored or addressed.
This week a conversation between Krista Tippet and Jacob Needleman aired on the radio called “The Inward Work of Democracy” (http://www.onbeing.org/program/inward-work-democracy-jacob-needleman/222)
As part of the conversation it surfaced how in the Declaration of Independence, the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right to all Americans. The problem Mr. Needleman argues is the “adolescent view of happiness” we share.
In his view the founding fathers meant something much deeper and rooted in classical thought. “There is no happiness without virtue”
Happiness is better translated as well-being,”and well-being doesn’t mean continual or lots of pleasure. It doesn’t mean egoistic satisfaction. It means being what you are supposed to be as a human being.”
In conclusion, pursuit of happiness “implies a relationship to a truer self within yourself”.
Hi Cynthia, That’s a great addition to this post by Andrew!
Thanks!
When I chase happiness, it escapes; when I am least expecting it, it settles on me like snow flakes falling gently steeping me with a feeling of well being, some thing like ” God is in heaven and all is well with the world “. But happiness and peace comes at a price, that Andrew has spoken of- i.e. one has to suffer for it. Material prosperity does give a feeling of well being but this feeling is evanescent as we are not usually content with what we have and desire for more and the struggle starts. Spiritual happiness or bliss is more lasting because it is not dependent on ‘ things’ but on a state of mind which transcends the mundane and the changeable. ‘Letting go ” is the first mantra to attaining spiritual happiness.
I really like what Andrew said. Keeps me busy for days already, so I had to post this finally today.