Even if you get what you want, you won’t be happy.
If it was a car, a job, a spouse, or whatever…you will fear and worry about losing what you got and so you will never truly be happy even when you get it. There will always be the anxiety of “what if I lose it?” Happiness does not come from getting the things you want.
Anything gained will be lost. All these things are temporary and changing, so you and what you got will part ways…inevitably. So when the car is worn out or crashed, you are laid off or retire from your job, your spouse leaves through divorce or death, etc…you will suffer when what you got does indeed leave your life.
Furthermore, desires create more desires…wants create more wants. You finally get a new house…it becomes filled up with stuff…and now you want a bigger house – or a better location or whatever. You get a decent paying job, but now you want a promotion or a better paying job or a job with less travel or a job that can be worked from home or whatever. There is no end to wanting and desiring, if you are trying to fulfill your wants and desires. There really never is a feeling of being completely satisfied.
We mistake getting what we want as the cause of the temporary happiness we feel (after getting it), but that is not true. We are happy because – for a little while – we are without want (briefly satisfied). But then we push happiness away because we find some new lack, and then we then need something else to make us happy again.
The truth is that happiness is our very nature and is inherent in all of us. Happiness is something you are, when you are not making yourself miserable. In truth, there is nothing that we need to be happy. We can be happy this very moment. It is only the delusion that you lack or need something in order to be happy that is pushing happiness away. True happiness is not found in something outside of yourself…true happiness is never found in the future, but only here and now (as it is).
Instead of seeking something outside of yourself to find happiness, inquire into who/what you are. Who/what you are has no lack…and does not need anything to complete itself. For the one who knows who/what they are, what is…right now…is not resisted, denied, or fought against. And so, what-is is automatically accepted and surrendered to due to non-resistance and non-denial. When there is no fighting, there is peace automatically. Inner peace makes our inherent happiness easier to recognize.
It is only this fictitious “me” that has a problem with what-is, thinks “it should not be this way,” and then suffers. See through the illusory “me” and suffering ceases. In the absence of creating your own misery (i.e. pushing happiness away), you will see there is joy, contentment, peace, and happiness in this very moment. Just like, as soon as you quit talking and making noise, you will notice there is only silence. It was only when we are talking and making noise that there is no silence.
Ramana Maharshi was happy throughout his life and this included right up to the death of the body…and yet he died with a very painful cancer. He lived with a painful cancerous lump during the last two years of his life. How could he still be happy? Because his happiness did not depend upon continued living, nor a perfectly healthy body, nor not feeling pain, nor getting to do something else in life, nor getting something else in life, etc. He was simply happy in himself as himself…as the Self.
True happiness does not depend on anything.
Eric Putkonen is a modern-day house-holder yogi and lover of what-is...living in peace, contentment, and joy. He also writes a blog at EngagedNonduality.com. He also enjoys speaking with people...privately or at public talks...about nonduality and awakening.