There's been a small debate going on over at Julian's  Zaadz  blog on "new age-ism" - typified in Julian's thinking by The Secret and What the !@#$%^ Do We Know, appropriate (critically reasoned, "21st Century") spirituality, intentionality, and general fuzzy-thought misconceptions of creating a beautiful life/world by thinking good. Julian is arguing earnestly for a serious approach to things, and for pursuing intellectual development as a key aspect of the spiritual path.

In his brief post under the Vblog, Julian lists 5 points taken from The Secret he thinks exemplify unfocussed ideas about the creativity of the mind. The last two relate to war protesters feeding the war and how both the wealthy experience the effects of "the law of mind-action" in what manifests in their respective realities, the implication being that the rich know the "secret" of this law and so benefit thereby. This, of course, totally ignores the consideration that being able to create a wonderful dreamlife rarely corresponds with true happiness, which is the absence of so-called negative emotions, the ability to avoid that stickiness of egoic reaction and thinking.

In one of his comments, Julian asks:

"i leave you with one question:

describe to me a spiritual pathology that you feel is appropriate to define as such."

To which I will respond that there is no difference between spiritual pathology and a pathological relation to life itself. As Eckhart Tolle points out in A New Earth, pathology comes from the Greek "Pathos," or suffering. So, the pathology is precisely the lack of ability to let go of the sticky quality of the ego-identified feelings of anger, sadness, self-blame, judgement, apathy, fear, etc.
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Below I quote my own comment to Julian's blog thread 9 days after his post, and then I am going to post this entry unfinished 'cause I gots to go and I don't want to lose it, there being no way to save drafts as yet...:

"Hi Julian, great thread, and I enjoyed your vblog post. I will take this opportunity to put in my 2 cents worth, tho.

First, I am entirely in agreement with you that spirituality must be approached with dilligence and with rigorous intellectual clarity, much of which is gradually learning the limits of our minds. Along with opening our hearts, we enter onto the path of wisdom, paying attention and developing as acurate a map of the territory as is possible. Yet the mind is a very small part of all that is, comes out of it, and ultimately it becomes exceedingly clear that it is utterly incapable of comprehending that from which it arises. At some point, the quest to hone the mind reaches its logical conclusion, and we are forced to go beyond it or stagnate.

I think your focus on a “21st Century Spirituality” obscures what I think is an important consideration, that the situation we face is truly timeless, as the mystery that you state must be inquired into is beyond time. In asking what is true, we inevitably come to the question of what, exactly, is asking. This is the point at which it is finally necessary to allow what that is to awaken fully into our awareness. You quite correctly, IMO, see the futility of asserting that “everyone's opinion is equally valid,” and that there are some fundamental truths. If that's so, and if we are to be able to experience them, then we must somehow be innately able to do so. This truth must be deeply part of who we are.

The non-dual teachers uniformly say, and have said since the early Vedas and the time of the Buddha, etc., that when we make the inquiry you advocate fearlessly and with integrity, particularly into what we are, we will discover that there is absolutely no “me” at the center, and will encounter directly the alive, formless one life that was always there waiting for awareness to invite it in. Then we unequivocally discover what we don't know, that “our” thoughts and opinions pertain to an ENTIRELY IMAGINARY me. I now catch myself thinking something like “well, I believe (fill in the blank),” and I have to stop and say, whoa, just a minute, who is this “I?” The psychologizing has its place in that one comes to intimately understand the structural nature of the imaginary self, its tendencies to protect itself, to justify its necessity in our lives, to identify itself with half-baked opinions, etc. But in the end, this understanding basically serves as a notification that we have to get out of the opinions and the story, and turn our awareness to that which is already awake.

This is not “New Age-ism” or fantasy in least. Not that those things are “wrong” either - I think that nebulous, wishful quasi-spirituality is probably a step up from, say, “that old tyme religion. They have their place on a developmental spiral, but, ironically, the ego doesn't make itself any more real by refining its beliefs about the nature of reality or of the deep self. It can't get better by adding more concepts and experiences to it already voluminous baggage. The struggle of the imaginary self has to be seen through and through, and then what-is-not-imaginary shines forth, and is not subject to question and analysis by the mind. It is entirely self-authenticating. When we surrender to it there is no doubt."

I was so tired of being upset
Always wanting something I never could get
Life's an illusion love is a dream
But I don't know what it is

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

I was so tired of being upset
Always wanting something I never could get
Life's an illusion love is a dream
But I don't know what it is 'cos

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Life's an illusion love is the dream
But I don't know what it is
Everyone's saying things to me
But I know it's okay okay

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

Life's an illusion love is a dream
Life's an illusion love is the dream
Life's the illusion love is a dream
Life's the illusion love is the dream

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays
Todays are good

Bet you are tired of being upset
Always wanting something you never can get
Life's no illusion love's not a dream
Now I know just what it is

Everybody's happy nowadays
Everybody's happy nowadays

(c)Buzzcocks, 1979

I have been, for a while, a lurker on this discussion group on Yahoo! dedicated to the discussion of the Cassiopaean experiment material channelled by Laura Knight Jadczyk and her companions, initially, I think,using a ouija board to receive messages from these Cassiopaeans, who suggested that they were (are) us "in the future." Lotsa woo-woo stuff, and serious speculation about how the earth will shortly migrate to a higher density reality, plus talk about deviant psychopaths (as opposed to, say, toxic egos...) who have no capacity for compassion or connection to the heart of all-that-is, as if, and speculation about looming natural disasters which may threaten entire populations. Anyway, perhaps with a slight sinking feeling, I recently responded to a suggestion that all said lurkers introduce themselves to the group, and I used the occasion of a post by Laura's husband, Ark, on how all our daily life can become a prayer, to post the following:

Hi Group,

I have been lurking on this list for awhile, and perhaps this is the right time to introduce myself and comment on this thread. I am a 55 year old semi-professional person with a patchwork career, largely due to having some experiences with psychedelics in the late 60's and early 70's through which I knew a direct connection with something both instantly familiar / more real than who I had previously thought I was, and beautiful, deep, loving, peaceful and whole. Following that, I was basically unfit for seriously investing myself in succeeding on society's terms, though I have tried to make a living for myself and to love and serve those around me, and to understand the world from a deep analysis based on the truth as best I could assess it. I have studied with various and sundry spiritual groups and read widely and eclectically, always considered myself "on the path." But I was also somewhat cynically imbued with a sense that though I was going to do the best I could, coming from the habits of my thinking and beliefs, and from the ways I defended myself from what I subconsciously feared, I was still going to experience myself as separate from that which I had seen clearly enough to know transcended my limited "me." Understanding, or more appropriately "groking" what was going on was something that would happen "someday" (or not...), and that there seemed to be nothing "I" could do about it.

However, as time has gone on, through approaching the questions I've identified as important with as much integrity as I could, I have pieced together a skeptically held, understandably limited view of the "big picture," perhaps not unlike Laura. Several, perhaps six, years a go I stumbled across audio tapes of Eckhart Tolle's "Power of Now," which started from as much truth as I had been able to parse, and led on into depths I could feel were promising. This opened a new phase in my spiritual work, which has eventually led to my meeting a non-dual teacher from the Zen tradition named Adyashanti (http://www.adyashanti.org/), who I have been working with for a few months now. Through working with Adya I have finally been able to see that I have never been out of connection with "That," and that the imaginary "me" I have identified with throughout my life has no existence in reality. It was a house of cards built up out of chronic resistance to what WAS real, and which seemed to work to secure my identification with it out of deep fears of extinction if I were to quit resisting and surrender to the calm, alive awareness which was always in the background, waiting for my return.

Living in this new way, gradually letting go of the habit of trying to insert my imaginary self in between life and my direct response to it, is, I think, like living in prayer. "I" am then, when clear, constantly available to life, and living in connection with and support of IT. Whatever I am isn't separate from That in the least, cannot be deficient in any sense - any "mistake" made out of some kind of stumble in reinvesting identity in some kind of shadow idea of separation, out of resistance or fear, only furthers the deconstruction of the dream-identity in a gentle, non-threatening unfolding.

"I" can *never* understand the mystery of the vast, unconditioned awakeness that lives at the very center of my being, as the Me is an infinitesimally small fragment of that whole. Everything that I "know" is only conditional, relative, useful in negotiating the course the body-mind in spacetime, but of absolutely no use in figuring out what's true in an absolute sense. Only by accepting fully what IS absolute, in each moment, can I release the chronic fear that "I" have to "do" anything to overcome some apparent unsatisfactoriness in the condition of life. This doesn't mean that I won't respond to life situations, or the obvious suffering around me in the world, but that response won't come out of illusory ideas of blame for others being "wrong." There is only That. All retrograde flows within it will collapse in time. It wins.

In Truth,
Bruce

Right now I seem to have sunken into what Byron Katie calls a temper-tantrum of sadness seemingly referencing that I have seen no response to this post on the group, though I don't know what else exactly I could have expected. I decided to leave the group, doesn't seem to be a forum for developing thinking on outside-the-box ways to be the change we want to see...

I've been thinking about inclination A LOT recently. Adyashanti talks about it often at satsangs lately, and really hammered on it at the retreat I went to at Mount Madonna Center in January.

At the retreat I was thinking not-quite-obsessively about a certain person who had dramatically captured my attention (through no fault of her own...), and all this talk about inclination caused me to reflect on what my inclinations were regarding this person. There didn't seem to be much question about it, so without much thought, I went into action. Not characteristic of my recollections of the "me..."

So, as all the familiar territory of "relationship stuff" reared its ugly head(s) the question of inclination went onto the front burner bigtime, and I nearly asked Adya about it at the last satsang I went to. When I had a chance to see Byron Katie, on her book tour for her brand new book "A Thousand Names for Joy," she was also quite specific that when we aren't holding a thought action just happens, and she would question whether "we" are involved in the least.

Yesterday I was entertaining thoughts for much of the day (I just saw the major tag-line on Byron Katie's website - "When you argue with reality you lose - but only 100% of the time ;-)") and was once again feeling my connection with inner awareness dim out some. But then this morning, things started flowing again. I was listening to Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth for the Nth time (recommended, recommended, recommended, check it out on audio read by him, listen over and over...), and as I generally do, hearing greater depths to it when the following grabbed me by the throat:

"When you find that truth,
all your actions will be in alignment with it" (somewhere in chap.3)

That's it! It's not about "your" inclination at all. Simply let go of thought (and I did and will), and enter into the pristine beauty of the moment. This isn't a skill, it's our natural state, meaning it requires no effort or movement. The requisite skill, optional perhaps but highly recommended for anyone having tendencies for falling back into obsession (hello people of the West...) is to be able to observe when thought begins to cloud the experience. That's what understanding the structural nature of the Imaginary Self (see A New Earth) really helps with, although as one gets clearer this is left behind as the experience of suffering that arises when we go into resistance becomes so "in your face" that there's no question of ignoring it or hesitation in letting go of that thought.

Move into the center. Observe what's there. Perhaps nothing but Peace, Beauty, Bliss.

Turn off your mind, relax
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying

Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining

That you may see
The meaning of within
It is being
It is being

That love is all
And love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing

That ignorance and hate
May mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing

But listen to the
color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living

Or play the game
existence to the end
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning
Of the beginning

Lennon-McCartney (written by John, too bad he lost IT...)
(c) whatever

Replying to Julian's most recent post on "The Secret" phenomenon:

http://tinyurl.com/3y7f3b

Julian - Interesting post, continuing down the line of critical thinking visavis The (not) Secret. I agree entirely that the popularity of this movie is, at least on the surface, a pathological manifestation of a culture in decline and crisis. As far as “The American Dream,” the walls are closing in on us as the era when the American people benefit from the largesse of the world economic system and from those who “think they” control it is drawing to its end and we gravitate toward the Third World. The middle class is being gutted, we are cut off from connection to the natural world, we are experiencing ratcheting powerlessness and in general don't even have good information about the situation we face, even if we had the stomach for it.

So, different sectors of society, different personality types, are presented with psychological release valves to “help us cope” with the dismal picture and our sense of helplessness and inadequacy. The unmotivated and fearful get “pie in the sky when U die,” coming right up in the wake of Armageddon…, the more clever, cynical and resourceful get the idea that they are in control, and can create a beautiful dream in the world of illusion (That's alright, we told you what to dream).

I was involved for a few years with a “New Thought” Christian Church in Silicon Valley, and was chronically disturbed that so much attention was constantly given to “manifestation” without recognition that accepting the power of our body/minds to affect the dream begs the questions of just what we actually hope to reify, of what IS real in the first place before we go at it with hammer and tongs.

There is no question that at the moment there is palpable desperation abroad in the land. Of course, people want the quick fix. Of course, in grasping for something that will cover the gnawing fears people will go for a tawdry, threadbare vision of “the good life,” just around the corner if we only think lovely thoughts.

However, this doesn't obviate the truth that thought is creative, and that we are, in fact, in the process of manifestation constantly. And when someone, perhaps set afire by seeing The Secret hyped on Oprah, starts to try to “control” their thinking with a view to manifesting some paint-by-numbers dream, they are inevitably on a collision course with what IS real. It's going to get them, perhaps not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of their (many) lives. They will try this and that, experience frustration and heartbreak, and then, perhaps enter disillusionment, becoming teachable, at least for moments.

Julian said:
“The grounded spiritual journey is one of becoming more conscious of the social, familial, historical forces that have shaped you and finding your way into some kind of bittersweet authentic relationship to the grace and grit of reality as it is. Our difficulties are the doorway into insight, wisdom, compassion and freedom - but all of that has to be earned, like anything else worthwhile.”

The above seems to imply that there is one general correct approach to the truth of what we are. I think this is erroneous, in that we are all in the school, consciously or un, and, ultimately, doomed to success. All judgements we hold about others exist only within our mental interpretations of the One Life. When we surrender to That we enter into seeing with the eyes of Love, knowing that life will provide heartbreaks, opportunities, and direction as appropriate to all. Our difficulties, truly, are the openings to deeper experience of what we are, but nothing is “earned.” As the Prajna Paramita says “There is no wisdom, there is no attainment whatsoever.” When ANYONE, regardless of merit, struggle, dues-paying, seriousness or hard work stops arguing with what is, the truth of their inner nature emerges, immaculate, unblemished, whole, shining. For many, this will come after hard work on the spiritual path and years of struggle, but that's no requirement. That for which all thirst is always already here, waiting for us to attend.

Julian said:
“it comes down to something very simple: part of being an adult is learning to tolerate the difficult facts of the unfair and often painful world in which we live. Effective spiritual practice and philosophy is not a kind of wishful-thinking subversion of this important process - that would be spirituality as defense, which is a whole different game than spirituality as transformative healing/inquiry process.” (emphasis added)

The “difficult facts” of our experience of life are always only thoughts, held in mind as somehow separate from the unmanifested background on which they appear. Pain can be one thing, particularly as it relates to injury of the body or the invasion of our lives physically by others, but suffering only occurs when delusion about our story enters in. Fairness is an entirely useless concept, which obviously rises from holding some thought about how reality should somehow be different than it is. When one is in the resistance implied by seeing the world this way, the way out IS in perhaps not “tolerating,” but in fully accepting the situation as it is. Following that, perhaps I can allow the innate joyfullness that is within me at all times to flow into my already accepted experience. Then, as the pattern of life emerges as I get out of my own way, I can enter into it with enthusiasm as the mystery that I am is revealed to me moment to moment. If we assume that our opinions about the difficulty of spiritual development are truth, then anyone who refuses to punch the tar-baby may seem to be in wishful-thinking subversion of our rules, but the truth is that self-realization is far simpler, and at the same time more rigorously demanding of our complete earnestness to allow what's undying and whole to emerge exactly as it is without regard to our demands or expectations. In the end, no one is transformed, no one is enlightened, nothing is attained, beauty emerges undiminished. We may be living in a mansion with the Bentley Azure, we may be in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, but the stark beauty and perfect unfolding of life will be omnipresent. We will discover that, while we can always make any movement that seems appropriate from our only place of power, the present moment,  there was never any self there to try to tweak reality.

Remember These?

In Evelyn's Zaadzblog for yesterday  (Feb. 22nd) she quotes Lama Surya Das also quoting Trungpa Rinpoche as saying;

”Renunciation means  to let go of holding back.” Can we let go of holding back? Can we relinquish our fears and defenses?”

Holding back is all the hypnotically enmeshed activity of the Imaginary Self, the entirely mental conflation we have throughout the memory of this, and possibly many, lifetimes assumed to be what we are. Although That which we truly are is infact entirely surrounding and penetrating everything that appears as the content of the mind and senses, we none-the-less feel hemmed in by "reality," what Eckhart Tolle calls our life situation. We are actually in a chronic posture of clenching onto what is actually and totally a dream.

If you're of a certain age, perhaps you remember the fairs or carnivals at your school or church, where for a dime or so you could take part in contests requiring questionable skill, for success in which you were gifted with cheezy treasures, prominent among which were the ever-daunting Chinese Finger-cuffs (Dun-Dun-Dun). The thing with these classy little products of some sweatshop in the Far East was that you'd stick a finger from each hand in one end of the little woven tube, and when you'd pull on it hard enough it'd grip the fingers with enough force to dislocate yer dang knuckles. And you could do what you wanted, twist the fingers, shake 'em, whatever, but as long as you kept pulling, you were trapped.

That's how it is with this clenching that keeps the small self firmly ensconced front and center in our experience. So someone comes along and tells you that you don't have to stay in states shot through and through with the quality of unsatisfactoriness, which is seemingly ever-recurrent suffering. Or, perhaps they come from a perspective a few notches down and say that the suffering will go away when you meet all your desires (say, through the Law of Attraction(R)...). But whatever catches your attention, the Who-You-Think-You-Are starts out making efforts to get out of your traps in life. There follow the inevitable seminars, workshops, retreats, visualizations, affirmations, yoga intensives, trips to the Spiritual Bookstore, cleansings, rolfings, dietary regimens, and of course lashings of meditations. Still, no matter what you try, the unsatisfactoriness persists relentlessly, in fact seems to increase the harder you try, the more you mind your P's and Q's.

With the Finger-Cuffs, the trick was to relax, even push in a little, and then to gently ease out of the suckers. Basically the same thing applies to easing out of the Ego, you just have to let go. I have found this greatly aided by something that Adyashanti's teacher, Arvis Justi, told him - (hopefully not paraphrasing too much) "Every ego has it's dance, and it's just going to dance it out to the end." Gradually it begins to dawn that there really are no mistakes, every move that presents itself can be followed in the trust that either it's the right one, or is a brilliant "mistake" that will lead to the perfect, required learning. Things seem to lighten up. People are less threatening, and you're less inclined to lock horns or hold energy with them. They even kinda seem lovable, not necessarily because you have any liking for them at all.

You may notice that you stop taking yourself so seriously, or not. But one day, the idea that the Imaginary Self is exactly that, an illusion through and through, may become more than theoretical. That which you truly are may, as it is innately suited to do, sees clearly and directly that there was never anybody home.  We find only ease and peacefulness at the center, our heart breaks open with the realization, and we no longer have to hold anything back.

You finessed your way out of the finger-cuffs.

Shanti

I'm the Urban Spaceman, Baby

1971. Lost in (not space, but) samsara, baby.  Tripping out in the redwoods at UC Santa Cruz, drenched in world-weary posing, nihilistic attitude, ironic utterance, biting criticism, artistic pretension, sexual apprehension, anxiety and disdain. And on the turntable? The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, loopy rock anti-heroes, equal-opportunity disrespecters with Dada-ist sensibility and affable good humor. A favorite? "I'm the Urban Spaceman,"  chronicle of a young man living the good life on the frontier of the Great Society, free from everything that WE were enmeshed in.

I'm the urban spaceman baby, I've got speed
I've got everything I need
I'm the urban spaceman baby, I can fly
I'm a supersonic guy

I don't need pleasure
I don't feel pain
If you were to knock me down
I'd just get up again
I'm the urban spaceman babe and
I'm making out
I'm all about

I wake up every morning
with a smile upon my face
My natural exuberance
spills out all over the place
I'm the urban spaceman
I'm intelligent and clean
Know what I mean?

I'm the urban spaceman, as a lover second to none
It's a lot of fun

I never let my friends down
I've never made a boob
I'm a glossy magazine
an advert in the tube
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist
I don't exist

Bonzo Dog Band, 1968
(c)whatever

So, we thot the whole well-adjusted techno-dude being non-existent thing was way-cool. That went very well with the maximum disdain pose. And totally great to have something over an entire class of social vermin (that we secretly, never to be mentioned, envied as they weren't losers like us).

Interestingly (from my perspective) it was just around this time, and at a Pink Floyd concert where I synchronously met the caustic chaps who had introduced me to the Bonzo's while waiting in line, that I first, with a small jet-assist from a tab of orange sunshine (link to mp3 of Nick Sand, maker of this legendary psychedelic, talking at Burning Man <-#54>) slipped on a banana peel into deep voidness. As I looked within to find out what the band were doing to my head, my perceptual world became a swirling mandala of light, scent and sound, and I entered another realm. As Roger McGuinn wrote in the Byrds hit 5D, " I saw that world crumble and thought I was dead, but I found my senses still working." It was a timeless loca that I recognized instantly, more real than my experience as who I'd formerly assumed myself to be, and my first overwhelming thought was "How could I ever have forgotten about This?" Sadly (or not) however, "I" was definitively not dead, and to my great chagrin and confusion, sometime later (as viewed within the perspective of time) I found myself lying on the floor at Winterland, reabsorbing my life, karma, vasana's, opinions, likes, dislikes, fears, attachments, etc., etc., with my brother and another friend, like, freaking out.

The "me" I returned to after this reality break was all about reveling in how the idea of "the successful personality" in the Bonzo's Urban Spaceman crumbled under the revelation that "I don't exist." And that Me amazingly managed to struggle on for success, for recognition, for respect, for love, for more than another 3 decades, decades of growing psychological sophistication, intellectual articulation, and above all, well-reasoned judgements of "The Other" in all of its myriad manifestations. And now, 36 years later, the phrase "I don't exist" comes back around as a much deeper revelation, every bit as mind-shattering as vanishing from the world to the strains of Pink Floyd. For me, the bottom-line has been that only with the deepening realization that, literally  and unequivocally, the separate persona I conceived myself to be throughout this life (with the occasional reality break quickly taken possession of by the ego) was entirely incapable of solving the problems of "my life." Those problems were part and parcel of the Me, and could only lose their sticky reality through the Me's dissolution.

As Einstein said, "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. The real twist here is that the level in which “we” created our situations was whipped up out of thin air in the same deft movement of inversion that created what has been (also by Einstein) called “an optical illusion of consciousness” - the imaginary me. Once we drink the Kool-Aid (and I'm not talking here about the electric kind) and invest "our" identification into separation from That which we always, couldn't be anything else, are, you can put a fork in us. I could be clever and sophistrickated, adopt miles of designer attitude and write an award-winning essay on the Void, but nothing could ever solve the problem, compensate for the underlying dissatisfaction, or begin to recapture the innate quality of effortlessness and ease that resting in my true inner nature opens up. Instantly.

Meher Baba said it:

"Don't Worry, Be Happy"

Now I get it!

please find my blog at dubdubdubdot brucetanner dot info

This is a comment to Siona's  recent blog posting  on Thomas Carlyle on the anniversary of his death. Quoting from her post:

"But this I love more: Carlyle had an unblinkered awareness of the suffering inherent to the world. He believed the point of life is to make man blessed, not happy, and that the pursuit of happiness is one of the things that prevents people from achieving blessedness."

To which I comment:

"Yes, yes, yes. Carlyle seems amazingly close to the core! - But I wonder if the blessed / happiness distinction doesn't suffer from issues of definitions of terms. I really like Eckhart Tolle's idea that unhappiness is any state of identifying who we are with emotions we're having an aversive reaction to, such as feelings we should have something or shouldn't be experiencing something else.

When viewed with detachment, the same feelings are clearly seen as an ineffable, invaluable part of the unblemished suchness of each moment. Without the story attached to the feelings, the background of joy emerges, as the content, no longer resisted, merges with the whole mass-of-what-is, penetrated through and through by the vast, spacious awareness. Then we fall into being, consciousness and bliss. How can this not be happiness?

So, the pursuit of happiness is exactly its opposite when we are grasping at any “thing” that we dream will somehow finally complete the image of “Me,” completely impossible within the temporal framework of the world of form. And is utterly transformed when we release attachment to outcomes and to the chronic reaction to the sense of unsatisfactoriness that drives the imaginary self. The pursuit becomes effective and practical when directed by a seeing of what is along with complete acceptance of what's seen. Then we are truly blessed, but not by anything outside of ourselves. We are blessed by surrender to that to which we are directly connected at the center of our being."

And as Siona ended, Yes.