The Definition of Happiness

I've been chewing on the idea of happiness on and off for a while now, and I've noticed something. It seems like it's far easier to get a grasp on what happiness is not than what it is. We can see easily that Western society's biggest problems is a misunderstanding of what truly brings happiness and what true happiness is. For nearly 60 years we have been programmed, literally, to believe that happiness is Stuff, that happiness is Self-Sacrifice, that happiness is Falling In Love, that happiness is basically every self-serving illusion we can come up with. I think that half the reason that people get involved in sites like this is due to a dissatisfaction with society's ideas about happiness, so I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here.

But what actually is happiness, and how do we find it? That's a lot tougher, mostly because happiness is a pretty individual thing; that which brings me happiness may bring you boredom, or vice versa. But I think I have a pretty solid idea, so I wanted to post it here and get some feedback on how my ideas resonate with all of you. Happiness, I believe, can be broken down into two broad categories:

1) Happiness through self-definition.

2) Happiness through connection to others.

These two define the outward and return paths that souls take in their evolution, first one of movement outward toward the creation of a individual self, then inward toward connection to others and, ultimately, Unity. I believe that just about everything that can truly make us happy can fit into these two broad categories or into both to some extent. Let's look at a few examples and how they can be warped.

Love: The ultimate in the second category, but can be twisted into possessiveness, which distorts connection through the desire to deny others the "special" connection you have, or self-sacrifice, which denies self-definition.

Success: A form of self-definition, namely the achieving of goals, which can be distorted into greed (lack of self-definition leading to the judging of worth based upon possessions) and power-hunger (connection overridden by a desire for control)

Spirituality: Can fit into both categories. Distorted versions run the gamut from self-righteousness (lack of self-definition compensated for by surety gained by being "right" or "chosen") to herd mentality (massive overemphasis on connection at the expense of self-definition, thus the "church" is always right and never questioned) to escapism (ascetics and mystics divorcing themselves from society, thus throwing everything into self-definition and ignoring connection).

The key to true happiness, IMHO, is finding the balance point between self-definition and connection to others. Once again we see the seeming-contradiction in human nature, the "divine dichotomy" as Neale Donald Walsch calls it. We must define ourselves as individuals before we can become part of a group, we must have groups in order to define ourselves as individuals.

I would love to hear other's take on this.

JCS

Stopping by fields on a snowy morning

If I could choose my favorite thing about living here at the ass end of nowhere it would be the silence. I grew up spitting distance from two major expressways and close enough to one of Ohare International's main approach paths that I could tell the difference between an L1011 and a 757 and could identify every major airline company on sight by the time I was 9, so needless to say, it was never truly quiet there. Even at 2AM, the soft susurrous of the Tri-state and the Kennedy was there. But out here in my little town of 5500 it is very different, especially in the winter. The rest of the year, various animal sounds are everywhere, whether it's crickets or birds or what have you, but in winter there is nothing but the wind and the rare truck crossing the IL-89 bridge.

Now, if my place is quiet, my brother's is bloody silent. I at least have neighbors. He, on the other hand, lives on the edge of a state park and his closest neighbor is 3/4 mile away. I got to experience this yesterday. My bro, bless him, wants to be a farmer, and he found a good deal on a 14' by 52' greenhouse from a local nursery. Guess who got recruited to help dismantle and move it. Nothing like a little outdoor work in January to get the ol' blood going, eh? Even better, he and his teenage son show up with the back of his F250 loaded up with a cord of firewood to drop off at his place beforehand, lucky me.

So after stacking the wood, he and his son go inside to get some tools together, leaving me outside. It was about as nice a day as you can ask for in Illinois in January, about 20, sunny, only a light breeze, and I was plenty warm from all the work unloading the truck, so I took a walk over to the cornfields that border his property on the south. It was a beautiful view, the land gently rolling away, the nooks and hollows of the fallow earth filled with a thin scrim of snow, the sky that perfect, crystalline blue you only get on cold, clear, winter days, and everything utterly silent except for the faint, sandpapery whisper of the wind.

I have had profound, mystical experiences before, some so powerful I thought the top of my head would come off, but the feeling looking out over those fields was different. I could feel the calm and the dreamless sleep of Nature in winter, I could feel the silence and solitude. It was a far calmer, a far more steady and accepting experience than I'd ever had. Instead of being swept along like a leaf on a river, I was floating in a mirrorlike pool.

I had a good 10 minutes of just absorbing this sensation, this feeling of suspension, before I was interrupted. Ah, I do love the silence out here, but I did after all have "promises to keep", so I had to bid those fields goodbye.

CS

The Field, Part 2

Oh boy, I found a good'un!

I'm about 2/3 of the way through "The Field" (tis a little thing, only about 225 pages), and I'm loving it. I haven't gotten to the "now I'll tie all these ideas together into one coherent whole" chapter yet, but I can see where McTaggert is going with it. Basically, the whole thing comes down to what is called the Zero Point Field (yes, same Zero Point mentioned by the character Syndrome in Pixar's "The Incredibles"), a background energy state in quantum physics calculations which classical physicists are aware of but simply ignore. A great many scientists, going all the way back to the 1960s, have postulated that the ZPF can be used to explain a whole host of phenomena that give classical science fits, everything from how memories are stored in the brain to why momentum and inertia exists to how bodies grow from a single cell to an entire complicated being.

The problem for classical scientists is that these postulations, if taken to their logical end, lead to ideas that smack of either science fiction or mysticism: juvenile plants giving off energy fields that mimic the size and shape of adults, homeopathic remedies that contain no medicine but only the "memory" of it, imprinted somehow upon the water, memories that do not exist in cells but instead reside in an energy field which runs throughout and around the body, energy transfers that happen at faster-than-light speeds and aren't affected by distance, and so on.

But the biggest problem of all for the empiricists is that the entire concept of the ZPF flies in the face of the Newtonian/Cartesian worldview. No longer is the world a mechanical device, separate parts clicking away in predictable patterns. Instead the entire physical universe is nothing more than a matrix of interconnected contractions within an all-pervasive energy field, one that, if disturbed at any one point, affects all of it, not like ripples in a pond but like sliding blocks in a giant puzzle, a single shift instantly affecting all others. Worst of all for them, it seems like thought and intention have replaced cause and effect as the prime movers in this ZPF universe. If these postulations are true, the physical universe does not exist as an entity in and of itself, but as a projection of Mind and of expectation.

The vast majority of the experiments and hypotheses in "The Field" are not new. Most go back a generation or more, and the book itself came out almost a decade ago, so it should be interesting to do some research and discover how things have progressed since 2001. These ideas give me a great deal of hope. I have observed first-hand that there is a slow but steady movement in religious thought away from entrenched ideas and toward experience. Now I see a similar movement in science. If these two groups can get together, I believe that holds far more hope for our future as a species and as an ecosystem than anything else.

More to follow once I finish the book.

jcs

The Field

Got a book recommendation from someone on my SF site (which is still defunct, much sadness). Little thing called "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart. Basically it's about the spiritual side of quantum physics, something I've been meaning to look into for years. Interesting factoid: one of the later Apollo mission astronauts did an experiment with psychic phenomena during the return trip. He tried to "project" images to people back on Earth (the whole star/circle/square/wavy lines thing from the opening scene of Ghostbusters, actually), and found out that the success rate was no different 250,000 miles away than it was if he was in the same building, about a 1:3000 possibility of being pure chance.

I'll post more later on how the book progresses.

My New Year's Resolutions

I have never really believed in New Year's resolutions, probably because I'm a lazy ass and don't like change, but this year I think I will make some, and I think this year I might just keep them.

1) Start using this blog more.

2) Start working on getting Snowflake published.

3) Work out. Boring, but I need it, I weigh 220 now.

4) Pay more attention to my kids and my wife.

Reasonable. Good for me and those I love. Let's see how I do.

So.... what to do?

I think the universe is trying to tell me something......

I have a pattern I follow every morning; get up, make coffee, get the boys off to school, go to the computer, and jump on SpiritualForums.com, my favorite site, to post and comment and debate while my little girl plays and my wife sleeps in, 'til it's time for work Unfortunately, this morning I go to log into SF and get a "this site doesn't exist" message from my browser. WTF? I'm not too bummed about the writing I've done there (I back the good stuff up onto a text file... and just did it yesterday too, hmmm....), but I love that site and have enjoyed the back-and-forth I've gotten into with some of the other regulars. I'm seriously bummed about this.

But then I get to thinking. All things in our lives are there for a reason, especially anything which evokes a strong emotional response. While I have enjoyed SF, I do waste a lot of time there, time I could be using for other things: play with the kids, edit my book, work on query letters, do chores. I used that site and used it well to hone my ideas and clarify my writing, and yes, it did connect me with others of a like mind, but has it served it's purpose? Do I find another outlet for my thoughts, my ideas, my spirituality?

Thus I am here, posting for the first time in almost half a year on this blog I had such high hopes for but then became so frustrated with. Here I am with, not a loss, but with an opportunity. An opportunity to use my time better, to accomplish what I really want and need to accomplish, rather than just doing what feels good. What was I really doing with my time on SF? Debating the fine points of Unity Theory with a half a dozen other almost-but-not-quite like-minded people, verbally fencing with Vegans, hashing over whether negative spiritual entities are self-created or drawn in by belief. Basically, spiritual masturbation; pleasant in it's own way but accomplishing nothing. I feel the desire, the need to share my ideas, not with just a few people who basically agree, but with a wide audience, some of whom will hate it, some who will love it, and some special few who will resonate with the ideas and use that resonance to improve their lives, alter their spiritual trajectory.

Why did SF go away? Don't know. Why is this experience now in my life? To get me off my lazy floppy ass.

Use this.