Understanding Happiness

"Most activities are governed by the desire for Happiness. Happiness is a non-objective experience. It is simply the presence of Consciousness. As Consciousness is by nature conscious, it could be said that Happiness is the experience of Consciousness knowing itself knowingly. It is the experience that is revealed every time a desire comes to an end. Desire is agitation and Happiness is the ever-present background of all states that is revealed when this agitation ceases. Of course, it is also present during the agitation itself as it is the background of all states, but it is not experienced as such. This desire for Happiness does not come from memory. Happiness cannot be remembered for it has no objective qualities. It is inherent in Consciousness, which in its unmanifest condition, is objectless, such as in the experience of deep sleep…... The current object is continually changing but the desire for Happiness always remains the same. Therefore, Happiness cannot be caused by the object that is present. Likewise the experience of Happiness is always the same, irrespective of the object that seems to deliver it, so the object itself cannot be the aim of the search for Happiness.

The fact that Happiness is sought in such a wide variety of objects and activities indicates the intuition that Happiness resides in the knowing and experiencing aspects of an experience or an object, in the Consciousness aspect, not in the objective aspect, because the knowing or experiencing aspect of all experiences is always the same. However, the knowing and experiencing aspect of experience is veiled by the name and the form of the experience, and therefore we keep looking for Happiness in new and different objects. In fact our engagement with objects is, in most cases, precisely for the purpose of unveiling the Peace and Happiness that is inherent in every experience. However, we wrongly assign Peace and Happiness to the objective aspect of the experience. Our exclusive focus on the objective aspect of experience veils this Happiness. However, failing to notice that Happiness is in fact already present, we search elsewhere for it. We search for it in a new situation, in a new object. In fact even the desire for Happiness comes from Happiness itself. Desire is the form of Happiness. It is the shape that Happiness itself takes when it overlooks its own presence and begins to search for itself elsewhere. It is Happiness itself that seeks itself. We are already what we seek. What governs the type of object in which we search for Happiness will depend on the objects that, in the past, immediately preceded the non-objective experience of Happiness. Unlike Happiness itself, these objects can be remembered and so we try to reproduce them in the hopes that they will deliver the same Happiness. Once this is clearly seen, the nature of desire changes radically. An object is no longer desired in order to produce Happiness but rather to express it. Once desire is liberated from the requirement to produce Happiness, it does not disappear. It is simply liberated from the confines of serving a non-existent entity."