How do you find happiness?

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 thought) to be unhappy. Wanting is an example of a bad thought-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.