That is one of the most asked questions at this time in our society. As if happiness was a thing, hidden away from you somewhere, and all you need is the right instructions, maybe a map, to find it. Well, there’s good news, good news, and more good news.

1. Happiness is not hidden away from you,
2. there are instructions and a map, and
3. you have been looking in the wrong place, and that is good news because now you can stop.

Most happiness seekers find ways to lower stress, make time for favored activities, seek a love relationship, get a better, higher paying job, take a vacation, buy a new home, have a baby, etc. Notice the common trait and hidden assumption in each one of these: 1) every one is an attempt to change something outside of you, 2) implying that happiness is outside of you, and so therefore you assume need things, people, or events in order to have happiness. But just where does happiness reside? In looking for things, people, or events, we have been missing the obvious.

Take a new car, for example. There’s not one ounce of “happy” in two-tons of steel. I was working with a client who was not really enjoying the last few days of her seaside vacation because she was thinking about how she had to leave it and go home. What is the assumption there? That the happiness is in the location, or the seaside.

She was sitting on a yacht, looking out over the deep blue, commenting on how wonderful it was, while I asked, “So there you are, lounging, looking at the sea, feeling good…and, tell me, where is the good feeling? Is it in the water?” I asked. She looked around…”Nnnoo…” She said. “Is the good feeling in the air? the chair?” I asked. “Nnoo…” she replied. Then it dawned on her, “It’s in me, my body, all around my body!”

And you are always with you, aren’t you? That is how you can know permanent happiness. That’s not to say that you won’t experience flashes of anger or sadness, but that they will not stick to you, they will not form an angry or sad story about yourself or the world, and if you apply Alchemy, there will be fewer and fewer “bad” events even perceived. It’s not that you become “stronger” and overcome people, things, or events; it’s that you become free from them.

Everyone asks where do you find happiness? But no-one asks where is unhappiness? What is the cause of unhappiness in the first place? It is in dissatisfaction with what is. Peace, love, and joy are your natural, effortless states. As Mooji says, you don’t need a thing to be happy – you need a thing (like a bad feeling though) to be unhappy. Wanting is an example of a bad though-feeling. When you see something you want, and you believe that you need it (to be happy or not unhappy) you agitate yourself until you either get it (or forget it). When you get it and stop agitating, there is instant relief, which feels good, and that feeling is confused for the object itself (and even confused with happiness itself). But beyond stopping agitating yourself, beyond relief, there is a happiness available to you, within, that needs no object and asks no price.

It’s so obvious – sitting there in the midst of a Garden of Eden, my vacationing client not only misses the garden, she feels bad in it. So is the seaside the cause of her joy? What is the cause of her unhappiness? Putting the power of her attention on the bad thought-feeling: “Oh, I only have two days left and then I have to go back and miss all this.” Miss all what? This bad missing feeling? Hahaha, the nature of confusion is funny, when you realize it.

How do I find happiness?

I never leave it. So there is never dissatisfaction. The moment you begin seeking it, you have lost it. Your immense power of attention goes off onto some bad thought-feeling, which you believe, and therefore experience. That is why and how Alchemy works: it redirects your attention from what you don’t want, onto what you do want. But that may not enough, because if your false beliefs are left intact, you will find yourself repeatedly feeling bad. If you were okay with feeling bad, knowing you can shift your attention any time, then that may be enough to eventually erode the fundamental belief that things, people, or events can hurt you or hold your joy. (More often, people will blame themselves for feeling bad, which is just the slippery, suffering mind returning through the back door.)

To get a permanent transformation faster, you can use the good feeling state. If you shift state so completely, and use that to look back on the beliefs, you can blow them so far out of your reality that you burst into laughter. (Check out the audio clip on this program’s page; it’s hilarious! http://InnerPeaceofMind.com.)

Where to find happiness?

Okay, so here’s where to look: within. Yourself. Yes, you . Stop looking outside, and turn within, look at your direct experience, as it is, right now. Stop, then feel into your body, feel your feet, feel the top of your head, take in your peripheral vision while looking ahead, and feel the breath rising and falling; do it all at once.
Already that feels better, right? I call this “coming to your senses.”

There is life energy in your body, which when noticed is pleasurable, and you need to do nothing but notice! Enjoy your life this way. Then appreciate the good feeling and see what happens. Alternate between enjoying and appreciating for a few in and out breathes… There, now who or what did you need for that? Nothing, right? If you need a little help practicing this and being led through the questions that can free you and unleash your happiness, you can get a free one with an Alchemy Audio Program.

Stop doing battle with bad feeling-thoughts like “I just can’t seem to allow myself to feel good,” “I don’t know how,” “I was conditioned to suppress it,” etc. Rubbish! Throw out the trash. You have that power because you created the trash. You are capable of much more joy than you have lived–or imagined! In fact, it is the above kind of imagination (the trash) that has kept you from it. Begin to feel better, and better, keeping your attention on the good feeling–and not on the thoughts about how you “should” or “should not” feel–and you will destroy all belief in all limiting thoughts.

How do you find happiness?

How does that question feel, good or bad? It’s an unhappy, needing, wanting, dissatisfied feeling-thought itself, right? But only when you put your attention on it.

What is assumed within that question? That happiness has been somehow “lost”. Misplaced. Out of reach, here and now. The only thing keeping you from happiness is this false knowledge that happiness has been lost. Rubbish. With that false knowledge people begin looking for reasons why they can’t be happy. And they will “find” them in painful thoughts; more false knowledge and imagination. More rubbish. So the first thing to do it to throw out the trash.

The answer to the question “Where do you find happiness?” is that you don’t.

You just stop imagining that you have lost happiness (by looking for it). Stop playing hide and seek. Stop looking outside yourself, and then just notice what is already here. Then not only will you know happiness that never left, but you will find infinite inner peace of mind, freedom, and joy too.

The real reason why I urge people to seek joy…

Recently someone unsubscribed from my newsletter, politely and usefully leaving the comment that they are “beyond” what I offer. It made me wonder, did they know what is truly available and offered?

Is Alchemy really only about a warm fuzzy feeling? No.

There is a purpose with far more value beyond that band aid.

Perhaps some people have discovered all that they need to know to live a reasonably happy life. Maybe they have explored many different spiritual paths, tools, and practices. Perhaps they know to communicate directly and honestly with their partner, to meditate to calm the stressful stream of thinking, or to walk in nature if feeling stressed.

But what if stress did not even appear, and therefore
walks were not needed?

This is possible.

Feeling comes and goes, is impermanent and so it can appear of little value. Yet feeling, both good and bad, can be used. It can point to your attachments so the light of your awareness can shine on them, so that they can be seen for the false illusions that they are, and disappear.

Even if one has tools to “cope” with life, or if the outer world is arranged as desired (temporarily), still there remains a deep dissatisfaction and longing because there are unanswered questions on the nature of existence, and on life and death itself.

Your life can be so busy that you can distract yourself and temporarily repeatedly feel good, but inevitably, the matters of old age, illness, and death demand your attention.

While you live ignoring these, attached to needing the outside to be a certain way, struggling to manipulate things, people, and events to your liking, you are voluntarily tethered to the uncontrollable winds of change-–in the midst of freedom!

Bound like this, you will perpetually need spiritual paths and practices, meditations, walks in the woods, and other maneuvering strategies–-and sometimes they will work (temporarily), and sometimes they won’t. Whether or not they work, you are still bound.

Final freedom is possible

What I learned is that when you discover the inexhaustible, completely self-fulfilling, inner source of love and joy, turning inward, you turn away from needing the outside. You turn away from attachment; you untether yourself from the world. It will result in:

1. dropping away of agitating need and want,
2. the end of worldly seeking,
3. joy beyond belief, for no reason, and the
4. unmoving peace of equanimity.

Like what happened to me, that can free you, leaving you with only one of two final questions, with

One single minded purpose, to either know:

1. God/Source/Divine, or
2. your true Self; who or what you are

And it will leave you with the focused desire to know this not as a belief, an idea, a concept, not as a –thought about– God or your Self, but with actual and direct Knowing, because nothing else will satisfy.

It is said that when you seek to know your true Self, you discover God, and when you seek to know God, you discover your Self. After all, there is no separation. There can only be imagined, illusory separation. But while you seek the momentary pleasures of the world, you overlook and miss the Eternal.

You can return to infinite, everlasting Truth, sanity, and peace

Compassion for suffering drives me, (even as I know suffering is unnecessary, because while that is true, even still, there it appears). So please do use Alchemy to feel better, even if just as a band aid initially, and you are invited to use it to stop looking outward, and turn inward where you can investigate That which is beyond suffering and non-suffering.

Cindy

Remember: If you are going to seek, don’t seek outer reasons for your pain. Seek joy! Inside.

—-
“We don’t want things, people, or events. We want the feeling we mistake them for.” ~ C. Teevens, Author of Alchemy

A conversation that changed my life forever

There’s something not quite right about the crooked set of his jaw, but unless he told you it was built of titanium you’d never know it. I must have walked past him and the kitten three or four times that weekend. It was Sunday night, the third and final day of the workshop. We finished early and this time I had no real place to go, and nothing to do. A stranger in a new town, I was completely free.

The kitten paid absolutely no attention to the hustling and bustling people of Philadelphia, who mostly mindlessly charged up and down Market Street. She luxuriated, outstretched without a care, oblivious to the dire situation of her companion, James.

This time I stopped, happy to be still and rest. I sat on the cardboard “help” sign in front of her, scratched her white and orange chin, tossed some coins into her bed, and asked James where she came from. That started a conversation that changed my life forever.

He found her dumped in a garbage can while he was looking for food. “Autumn” seems to have benefited from at least one of her lives when she was rescued by James, a man who has lived on the streets for over half a year.  As I sat enjoying the conversation, at least three generous people handed James canned and dry cat food in passing, obviously planned. Autumn would eat for a month. She needed medicine for her ears and requires monthly flea medication, which James buys. A small carrier is her cozy home. For her, life is good.

For James it’s another mouth and body to feed and care for, and he cannot take occasional advantage of the cheapest housing, a hostel, because cats are not allowed there. But she gives him companionship, hope, and nonjudgmental and infinite love—and a purpose beyond himself in this world.

Compassion should compel us, not judgment

Recently there was an article in the Ottawa Citizen about a woman on disability who could not afford medical care for her injured cat. Ultimately she gave it up to the Humane Society who gave it the care it needed. Then she wanted it back, but they refused. I do understand that the Humane Society’s job is not to provide free veterinary care, but that situation sparked a debate on whether or not low income people should have pets. Instead of judging people and making such decisions for them, all of that energy would be better served directed at ways to assist people and pets in a time of need. Compassion should compel us, not judgment.

Engineering degree

James was an engineer with a full time job when yet another tragic event in his life brought him to this place in time. Many people judge the homeless, perhaps thinking that they have it easy, are lazy or stupid, and perhaps believing that they don’t work. However James is no different from us; he has strategies and goals, and he works every day like us—but unlike us he is in a daily battle for survival.

What happened to him could have happened to you or me, or your child or sibling. (James was an only child.) Being more alike than not, once again all of that judgmental energy would be better directed at doing something useful.

Poet

James’ parents, his mother a poet and his father an artist who shared a studio with Peter Max at one time, passed their creativity on to him. He used to write poetry, often as a way to deal with previous life trauma, but people passing by, taken with his story and passionate words, would offer to buy his poignant prose, and desperate, he tore the sheets out and sold them. What is left now only exists in his memory, and due to a brain injury he has difficulty spelling. He began to force himself to write and spell as an exercise to “regain his intelligence” and is, in his words, “improving day by day.”

Contemplating how long it takes to recover from brain injuries, if ever, it struck me that the reason I know that is because I have a friend in the brain injury association who was thinking of writing a book as a fundraiser. “Click!” It hit me.

What I had to do was obvious

I am an author, not only presently gifted with so much more material abundance, but also with tools, resources, and skills that could easily help change things, and not just for a day, but for life. It would be practically nothing to me, but may mean the world to him, and to Autumn. The plan fell together; we would get him a voice recorder that he could dictate his poems and stories of the street into. I would post these in a blog and start a fund to help restart his life, and we could put a booklet together for him to sell. We hope a paralegal who has befriended him will help facilitate the plan. We would also accept donations to cover the recorder, batteries, printing of poetry booklets, any shipping costs, a vending license, and hopefully daily living costs. Yes, oddly, living homeless still costs.

Sitting beneath the news ticker with him, he read these words reflected in the window: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. That one plays a lot, he said.” It was a quote I had been re-tweeting just before traveling. I was gratefully amused.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. ~ Aesop

James gave me a tour of the subway system and helped me save on cab fare. When I returned to the second part of the course the next day and told people about him, we received his first five dollar donation. It bought him dinner that night, and hope for the future. Looking at James’ photo, one man’s jaw dropped open, and he told a story of a young child who, after leaving the public bathroom exclaimed, “There’s a man washing a kitten in the sink!” It was the same man and cat, he said. Autumn gets more love and better care on the street than many house-bound cats do.

A day will never go by that I do not think of James and Autumn, who may still be on the streets in the deadly winter.

Both parents killed

I am doing what I can to help a man who gives so much, and who also believes in paying it forward. As part of that, I will donate a buck a book to James for every copy of Alchemy sold. I look forward to sharing more details of James’ story and his wisdom as he speaks from the streets, and for now will leave you with the poem he wrote while dealing with grief after both of his parents were killed in a car accident.

Cindy

PS—If you would like to make a donation, please use the button below. You will be thanked with a photo of James and I together. Note: this is not a registered charity (yet) and a receipt will not be issued. Please subscribe to this blog to be automatically sent his new posts from the street.

Heaven Sent

(I made up this title because I do not know if there is one, and I cannot ask James right now.)

The past, the present, and the future
are all pre-written.
In the future, when I present my past,
I hope it will give vision
to those listening.
So when you left
I learned about loss, and how to embrace it
Living a life so short,
yet having so much meaning
you made so many people happy
when you were born
yet there were twice as many people
left here to mourn.
If you knew you were going
would you say goodbye
or would you have kept it a secret
to avoid seeing me cry?
Does a sympathy card give me comfort?
Does a hug give me strength?
I guess you went back to where you came from
since you were heaven sent.
So as the rain falls
and the wind blows out the flame
that once lit so steadily,
goodbye for now and I’ll see you
when God’s ready for me.

~ James Matt

 

NOVEMBER 8, 2012 UPDATE

James has found a shelter, and Autumn has found a new home. She will soon be spayed, thanks to the contribution of donors.

 THANK-YOU! May all you give come back ten-fold! (Or more :- )

and why that is a good thing…

The car was selected, a cheque written, the insurance coverage arranged, and on the day of delivery a friend drove me to pick-it-up. The first thing I did was show her the car. The first thing she said was, “It’s not a hatchback.”

She knows me well. I once had a sedan, and after later getting a hatchback, I would never go back.

I said “What?!” It’s been so long since I had a car that I just forgot that preference, and with her comment it all came flooding back. The deal was off.

The deal was off

There was nothing else that was suitable on the lot. I headed back home, and back to the internet.

The new home was selected, agreed to, plans were in motion, public retreats scheduled and announced, and I began socializing with the new neighbors. Then the move was delayed, and relayed temporarily into the adjoining house. Ok, I can work with that. With only three weeks left, the move was delayed again without a confirmed date, and relayed into either last minute arrangements into a trailer or a condo far away. Once again, the deal was off. So I headed back to the internet.

Once again, the deal was off.

Both of these events happened the same week.

To many people, all of these sudden and sizable changes would have been disastrous and stressful for them. When it was obvious that the decision was to not buy the car, I did not hesitate and went looking again. I found one that night, which turned out to be a better deal. It was the same for me when I realized that the house deal was unworkable, and that night I found a new property, saw it the next day, and signed that week. There was a sense of fun and adventure, not knowing what was coming next and being free and available to the possibilities. It too was a better deal, and better for the both the business and my cousin who has joined me this summer (after I had selected the first house).

I love the saying “Man makes plans, and God laughs.” We only appear to make plans, choices, or decisions–when really we are merely responding to what is.

We only appear to make plans, choices, or decisions–when really we are merely responding to what is.

When you know that, then there is no struggle when things do not go as planned. Only adventure. Only unlimited possibilities.

On Facebook today, this image caught my interest:

It caught my interest because it is both true and funny. Everything we try to run away from is in our heads, and so what we are trying to do is impossible. It also points out that there is no thing to run from.

There does seem to be recognition of this truth within the masses, because people are trying to do something about it. This is demonstrated by the person who posted it, adding: “Everything we feel is based upon a thought – so if we don’t like the way we are feeling – change the thoughts we are having : )”

The problem is, that thought is also in your head.

So how do you change your thoughts?

Engaging in a mental head battle is not the solution, so how do you change your thoughts? Well who says you must? If you believe thoughts are the problem, now you have to find a solution. But what if you questioned the idea that thoughts are the problem?

…who says you must (change your thoughts)? If you believe thoughts are the problem, now you have to find a solution. But what if you questioned the idea that thoughts are the problem?

You are off the mental hook

You don’t need to change your thoughts, because you can’t. If you could control your thoughts, you’d never have a bad one to begin with that needs “changing.” There is no way to “change” a thought. That is another convoluted, humorous idea. A thought is here, or it’s not. By the time you notice a thought, it has already arisen; that is how you notice it. But thoughts themselves are not a problem. By themselves, they are inert, harmless; mere possibilities for experience.

So what is the problem? Believing thoughts as truth, giving them your interest, power, and attention, brings them to life, feeding a feeling. Generally, people also believe that bad feeling is a problem. But whether it is a thought or a feeling that you believe to be the problem, it is you who is doing the believing in them; you are the power source.

While a bad feeling is also not a problem, it can be used as a wake up call to what bad thought-feeling you are entertaining, believing, and putting attention on. Instead of trying to “change” it (which puts more attention on it and power into it), use the noticed thought-feeling to uproot false ideas. Pain is a pointer to false beliefs.

Pain is a pointer to false beliefs.

If you use it to dig down, you can find freedom. You can detach from need and return to your natural, self-sufficient, peaceful, joyful state that does not even need peace or joy.

Realize your awaiting freedom

Until you are free, everything you feel is based upon a thought, but it is also true that everything you think is based upon a feeling. When you feel bad, bad thoughts flow easily and effortlessly. When you feel good, good thoughts flow easily and effortlessly. How do you break out of this catch-22?

Until you are free, everything you feel is based upon a thought, but it is also true that everything you think is based upon a feeling.

Trying to force a “good” thought on a “bad” feeling is painful and futile. Instead of using the head, use the body and feel good first. Learn to use the seven powerful questions of Alchemy to 1) shift your attention, which 2) shifts your state, and from that state, 3) revisit those old limiting, painful beliefs and realize your awaiting freedom.

You can read more about Alchemy here.

–

Cindy is the author of The Alchemy of Love and Joy™. The practice came through her own suffering and later discovery of joy, and it emerged and took form in words, to help someone else.  Her life has become happy and often ecstatic with the most simple things. She is excited to continue this adventure and wonders just how good it can become as she practices allowing more and more joy. She encourages the world to—Seek Joy!

Read more about the author here.

Now Cindy helps other people end suffering and awaken joy in their lives.

This month I worked a healing booth fair for charity, giving 20-minute Alchemy sessions, back-to-back.
Here’s a participant’s comment, plus the audio recording of my presentation.

Listen to the Audio

Cosmic Pathways Alchemy Presentation – Click on the arrow to listen.

Study finds strong link between strokes, stress

In “Study finds strong link between strokes, stress” in the Ottawa Citizen today, Dr. Michael Hill, co-chair of the Canadian Stroke Congress and Director of the acute stroke unit at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, says “Not everyone who has stress has stroke. But is it a contributor? Absolutely.”

This begs the obvious and so perhaps overlooked question:

“What is stress?”

While Hill says “There is no doubt that the things that happen in people’s environment — their life, their ability to manage and interact with their life — results in changes in their biology which puts them potentially at risk.” Here we see that Hill believes, like most people in our society, that your inability to “manage” your life, to manage outside circumstances, is what causes stress. The corollary to that implies that your ability to manage your life relieves stress. So in other words, your ability to change the outside. This trap has led our society into a vicious cycle of suffering, because it encourages attachment to things, people, and events outside of you, which are constantly changing and not in your control. This managing, controlling effort is futile for that reason and also because stress is not a thing, a person, or an event. No circumstance on the outside can cause your inside heart rate to soar or your blood pressure to build.

The body’s stress response is a safety feature

It is your inner response to outer circumstances that causes the changes in your biology. What causes your inner response? Such strong belief in a thought that all your attention and a tremendous amount of your powerful energy tells your body that the thought is true, and that it must prepare to respond accordingly. What else but the mind does the body have to rely on? The body takes its orders from the mind, and does not know the difference between a mere thought and real circumstances.Thoughts can be anything, even things that are not happening.

The body’s response is a natural protective functioning, it is the flight or fight response, a biological reflex that is hard-wired into the body. The purpose is to make extra energy available quickly when needed and to make you alert, in order to get you out of potentially life-threatening trouble. But it drains the body and is not intended to be operating every day, multiple times a day. In this country we do not live with daily life-threatening outer circumstances, but you can live with that kind of inner one, regardless.

In this country we do not live with daily life-threatening outer circumstances, but you can live with that kind of inner one, regardless.

Stress is not the immediate result of some outside event, unless you are being shot, chased by a predator, at or have been physically hurt. Stress can results from a thought about an outside event, believed in. Some years ago, driving on a two-lane road in freezing rain, a car flew in from my right and began spinning in from of me. My last thought was “We both can’t lose control, stay in control.” Then eyeballing the nose of the car and its distance from my car with each swing, absolute, complete peace, stillness, and control took over. There was no more mind, no more thoughts, and no anxiety. I began to gently brake and to gear down. The car spun eight times, seemingly an inch away each time, then flung off into the right lane, only to return to spin some more. Finally, miraculously, it regained control and continued down the road, still traveling a little too fast for my taste in freezing rain. There was a stunned moment…then mind came back with a vengeance, “I could have been KILLED!!!”

My heart rate shot-up and my body began shaking so hard I could no longer drive, and I had to pull over and stop. Thoughts flew, “How could he keep driving?! – How could he just leave?! I could be dying here?!! Is he drunk?! He could kill someone!!” But in between these, was the shocking realization of how deep the peace was in the middle of life-threatening danger, and how anxious I was now, when there is no danger…With nothing outside me “causing” it. The thought was noticed that I didn’t have to pull over, I was okay, but it was dropped in favour of something like, “Anyone would be scared, this is normal, I have to tell someone…” as I reached for the phone.

Tell them what? I’m okay? That nothing happened?
The absurdity of this did not hit me until later. (I did call a friend and got them all anxious with thought.)

“Common” has been mistaken for “normal,” and even “healthy” in our society. Just because (practically) the whole of society thinks we must suffer does not make it true. It means suffering is common.

“Common” has been mistaken for “normal,” and even “healthy” in our society. Just because (practically) the whole of society thinks we must suffer does not make it true. It means suffering is common.

The body does not know past or future. It is very direct, very now. All it responded to was the present threat – the threat from my mind. Before mind arose, there was no anxiety or stress. There was no time for that response. Had I valued thinking more than action in that moment, I might not be here to write this today. Being, which is always there before and after thought, predominated. I think the complete cessation of mind, that absolute peace, is what people who engage in extreme sports like rock climbing are seeking: stillness of mind. (There are easier, safer ways to get it : – ).

Stress, suffering is optional

The danger the average person’s body responds to is usually not real, not an actual life-or-death threat. It goes something like “My boss wants to see me. Must be that mistake I made. I am going to be fired. I’ll lose my job, my wife’s going to freak-out. God, we could lose the house and be on the streets!” While none of this (except the first line) has actually happened, the body hears, experiences, and responds to the rest of it all now. With each escalating bad thought-feeling, the body feels worse, which you may take as proof of danger, which increases your belief, and worse thoughts become available, and you can see how it cycles and escalates. How strong the biological response will be depends on how much belief, time, and energy you give bad thought-feeling. So what we are stressed about is generally not circumstances, it is thoughts about circumstances. Your poor body, held trapped in the belief that you are your thoughts, can suffer needlessly.

(This is how “pain is mandatory, suffering is optional,” is true. However if you have had multiple extreme anxiety episodes, or a long time period of stress, anxiety can become generalized in your physiology and become a stronger biological issue. Since the body-mind is one and the body does respond to mind and vice-versa, this can be reversed. Just as there is a stress response, there is a relaxation response and you can learn to trigger it. In addition to practicing Alchemy, I highly recommend Dr. Edward Leyton’s audio hypnotherapy CDs as a fine complement for this purpose.)

While the body’s protective response has a purpose in real danger, suffering is not beneficial. The protective response arises and then subsides when the danger is passed, but mental emotional suffering can go on indefinitely, keeping the body in an unnatural and damaging state of stress. In the Citizen article, Dr. Hill said, “Psychological distress manifests in things such as a suppressed immune system, hypertension and other biological changes that either expose an underlying illness or disease, or speeds up its progression.”

“Psychological distress manifests in things such as a suppressed immune system, hypertension and other biological changes that either expose an underlying illness or disease, or speeds up its progression.”

The purpose of stress

Yet my position is that stress and suffering do have a purpose – to wake you up out of painful thinking; to point you toward a better feeling, to something more beneficial where there is access to wisdom, not fear; to point you toward joy. You can learn to use feeling and the body to shift your state; you can learn to feel good no matter what.

What that means is giving up the belief that due to circumstances you must feel bad, that you must suffer, and giving up worshiping mere thought as truth, as reality. But you don’t have to do this cold turkey, you can do it feeling good. In fact, feeling good can help free you from it! It altered my life, but don’t take my word for it; try it on for yourself, and use the seven powerful questions of Alchemy.

You have nothing to lose, but the pain and illness.

–

Cindy is the author of The Alchemy of Love and Joy™. The practice came through her own suffering and later discovery of joy, and it emerged and took form in words, to help someone else. Her life has become happy and often ecstatic with the most simple things. She is excited to continue this adventure and wonders just how good it can become as she practices allowing more and more joy. She encourages the world to—Seek Joy!

On January 8th, 2010 a video was posted on YouTube of a man in Yosemite National Park witnessing a complete double rainbow.

As of today it has 33,396,614 views!

(click the picture above to view it)

Many of you have probably seen a double rainbow, and may wonder, what’s the big deal? Other than the fact that at one point the rainbow was complete, going all the way from one side to the other, it was the man’s reaction to the experience that resulted in the video’s wild popularity. He exclaims “Oh my god” over and over, crying and laughing in ecstasy, asking “what does it mean?!”

The responses to the video range from rude, crude and ridicule, with accusations of him being sexuality stimulated or being high on drugs, with commands to “take a pill” or to come down, to awe and appreciation. Mostly, they are the former group.

There are confused comments from people who wonder how he could be so ecstatic, and who just cannot understand his response. That is no wonder to me, in a world where we have been raised to believe that things or people make us happy. We have been conditioned to think that we can only feel good when we get some candy, a new toy, a new lover, a new baby, a new house, and that the degree of joy is dictated by the object, and that most objects are mundane.

For instance, you can only feel so good while eating candy, which is a different level of pleasure from being with a lover. So not only do we need something or someone outside of ourselves in the first place, but even when we get them, we limit our degree of happiness based on the object or person. Everything else in life is “normal” and unremarkable. People have been lulled into a dull, boring, mundane, needy, attached existence in the very midst of awe-inspiring mystery and freedom.

There is nothing “normal” about every day life. Existence, of anything, is in itself a miracle. People do not know how we came here, what we are doing here, or what happens after here. Neither scientists***, nor religious leaders can explain consciousness and experiencing. At least not to the mind. No one even knows how a tiny bud comes into existence.

There are no ordinary moments – Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

I discovered that everyone is capable of such joy, and that it has nothing to do with drugs or sex, although it can seem quite orgasmic. In a sense, you could call it a spiritual orgasm. And mind cannot comprehend it, thus perhaps the questioning “what does it mean?” That is about all mind can do with it because “direct seeing,” Being, cannot be grasped by mind. Mind is blown away, and bliss remains. One experience of mine was quite similar; causeless, infinite joy was awakened, and I can attest that the intensity can include crying and laughing at the same time. It’s rapture can be sudden and explosive; all consuming.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle or you can live as if everything is a miracle. – Albert Einstein

What does it mean?

It means this man quit limiting how good he can feel based on a thought that came from someone else. It means he quit seeing the world with mundane, dull eyes, but saw directly and clearly the miracle of experience. It means he stopped controlling, he let go, and he got out of the way of himself. As this man discovered, he is capable of much more love and joy than he lived–or imagined. Joy for the sheer joy of joy, and no other reason. You see, the double rainbow itself was not it. That was not the “cause” of his joy, which ordinary mind seems to need and seek in order to justify feeling good (thereby usually justifying feeling mundane, or even bad).

The inquiring mind wants to know, and with this question, it makes itself restless, creating suffering, until it either believes it knows or stops needing to know. What is the meaning of happiness? If you cannot find a meaning, should we dump happiness? If you cannot find a meaning, does it mean that you are not having the experience? Mind is so powerful it can actually discount, deny, degrade, distort, or even “delete” an experience, and it can do that to anything which it cannot understand but thinks it must. Mind’s loss. The people who gain a miniscule pleasure from devaluing such an experience do not know what they are trading it for.

Most people limit their potential, and their experience in and of this life, due to what? Fear of embarrassment, mostly. Who’s loss? When you start acknowledging the miracle, mystery and beauty around you, you will begin to know and experience the miracle, mystery and beauty within you.

The text posted below the rainbow video says “Look into the mirror, look into your soul!” In the video’s comments, there are (few) people who accept that the “double rainbow man” is having an experience of God, and there are people who deny God has anything to do with rainbows, that is it just natural science (and nature has nothing to do with God, right?). People can speak as if they have the authority of absolute knowledge, when they do not even know what the world, experience, themselves, God, or consciousness actually are. They speak merely from belief or conceptual parroting of learned words; learned knowledge mistaken for the wisdom of Knowing.

What is Consciousness?

***There is one man who I just discovered, who comes close to ratifying science with the inexplicable, with consciousness. Watch Peter Russell’s presentation on “The Primacy of Consciousness” below. (A must watch; just over an hour, and worth every minute.) But do not stop at intellectual understanding, because even Peter admits that knowing it as thought is not Knowing It. Knowing It, you know the joy of all experiences from the sublime to the ecstatic, the joy of all creatures great and small – and the joy of all things from a blade of grass to a double rainbow.

When car and scooter meet, scooter loses.

The explosion rattled my ears, and the last thought was “Not again!?”

There was a sense of humour in that thought, in the midst of the world once again moving faster than mind. A little over a year ago I was a passenger in a car that was hit from behind while waiting at a red light.  We all had the same experience, that there was an explosion, and a “long time” after it, during which we wondered what the explosion was – until we realized it was us. By then we had crossed the intersection to the other side; and very fortunately we were not hit by cross-traffic.

Pulling over, we put together in thought and words what had happened, in our apparent absence, yet not. “Ah, yes, we must have been hit from behind.” It’s not that mind is just slow, mind is also after the fact. We do things, and long after we are done, there is mind piping-up, noting the past, and in some instances even claiming that it “decided” to do it.

Back then I still thought I was mind, so there I was, still catching up in thought with what had already happened, feeling shocked by the “time” that “I” had “lost.” The pain in the back of my neck prompted the medics to strap me to a board and haul me to the hospital. Fortunately nothing was broken, and yet after more than a year the resulting bulging disk had still not healed.

But that was all less than a split-second memory because this impact reefed my shoulders, head, and neck backwards as the body immediately contracted and recoiled in a futile attempt to keep it all together. Then the hood of the car hit my back and flung me in the opposite direction, which meant, I knew, wordlessly, that the car was still coming at me. Completely disoriented, I rolled instinctively until I could get my bearings to ensure that I was rolling in the right direction–out of harm.

The scooter shot across two lanes, and once again I was thankful there was no cross traffic. The driver of the car was shocked but unhurt. My legs shook uncontrollably and a short while later, the emergency vehicles began to arrive. Most of the pain seemed the same as the old injury, only aggravated, and the x-rays showed nothing broken. But when the doctor cautiously opened the neck brace and checked my neck, pressing along it, one spot drew a squeal from me, and I said “That was new!” He quickly closed the neck brace, strapping me back in, and ordered a CAT scan.

For the first time there was the thought something could be seriously wrong. Waiting for the test results, I stared in the only direction I could, straight up. Looking at the honeycomb shape of the ceiling light, the beauty of the shape and light grew more and more apparent. Then questions began to arise, “What if I need a cast for a year?” Followed by “What if I never walk again?” The light seemed to grow in intensity and beauty, along with an inner peace. The reply came, “I am okay. And in either case, I can still write and speak.” Mind settled, giving way to knowing. Knowing that nothing matters, and so I’m okay, no matter what.

The CAT scan showed something not quite right, but it was good enough to let me leave, with the advice to get an MRI test done. I walked of the hospital very thankful, and grateful, very happy and blissful.

That night the tingles started in my arm, moving all the way down to my hand, and into my fingers. That was followed by a throbbing and pounding sensation as if circulation was being cut off. The MRI revealed what the symptoms knew: the disk had herniated. And so began again the therapy and healing, and yet there was one thing notably absent, suffering over any of it. It is as always, just this moment, just this therapy, just this pain, just this rest, just this ice, just this heat, just this stretch, just this now. None of it stays the same, it is ever changing, I, notice. And all of this happens within a bigger context. With attention on the infinite context, all is well.

Once again, half a year later, I am back to yoga, and gentle walk-running, and seeing ever more clearly, how life can turn on a dime, in an instant, how every just now is fleeting, precious, and beautiful, how mind is only a tool to be used–not to be used by–and that there is something far greater, always there, for the noticing.

Transcription coming.