Happiness Beyond External Circumstances.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
I have done a lot of work toward getting rid of my anger, depression and other negative thoughts and instances that have held me back in my life. But days like today make me realize how much further I have to go. How do I make the leap from having my happiness in everyday life be a state of mind, not contingent upon circumstances? I find myself happy if people from work want to have a drink with me. Then I find myself becoming depressed when they talk about everything they have in their lives — families, houses, children, relationships, all things that I don’t have. I like them, and I’m happy for them, but why does my acknowledgement of their happiness have to include a corresponding feeling of pain in me? I feel so needy and evil when that happens, but no matter what I do or what I tell myself, it continues.
I have learned a meditation practice and I have begun exercising and watching what I eat to help myself become a healthier person, but these feelings have been with me regardless of my weight or job situation. Because I never got married or had kids or have a boyfriend, I always feel like I don’t belong. It is reinforced through all my social situations every time. Are some people just destined to want everything they don’t have?
Response:
The work you have done for yourself on anger and depression has helped a great deal and has prepared the ground for you to take the next step forward in your well being. People aren’t destined to want what they don’t have, but they are conditioned by social expectation to want things and expect that obtaining them will make them happy. Becoming free of that conditioning requires you to develop an experiential sense of your core Self, and a dedication to finding satisfaction and completeness in reality as it is. Happiness and satisfaction are not things to be obtained in the future when you have a certain job, partner or healthy body. You have an unexamined belief that your lack of a partner, children and a house, is what is making you unhappy. It is actually the thought that you need those people and things not the people and things themselves, that is making you unhappy. If you spent time with your friends after work and you didn’t have that thought that you need what they have, you could feel like you belong and just enjoy them for who they are. When you can see how you generate these mistaken thoughts as substitutes for experiencing your actual reality and experience in the present moment, then you will be able to let go of those thoughts and beliefs that are trapping you into unpleasant emotional responses. It will take some time, persistence and loving patience with yourself, but you will get there.
Love,
Deepak
