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Inviting a Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind and Discovering Lasting Contentment

Inviting a Monkey to Tea

The Myth of Happiness and Why it Makes Us Un-Happy

We want to be happy. Everyone, everywhere, is trying to find—and hold onto—happiness. We do everything we are supposed to do: diligently follow the instructions, practice the techniques, and still, more often than we should be (given the amount of effort we are putting in) we are not consistently happy. As a psychotherapist and interfaith minister, I have spent the last two decades watching people feed their addiction to happiness; they get their short term fix here and there, but end up back on the street searching for happiness yet again, even more desperate.  The thing we want most and spend the majority of our time trying to accomplish eludes us.

We human beings are remarkable creatures,.  We can do anything we set out to do. So why not lasting happiness? Why is there such a split between our desire for happiness and our ability to hang onto it? After many years of listening to people talk about their failed attempts to hang onto a state of happiness, I began asking myself the following questions: What is this thing we call happiness? Is it achievable? Is it reliable? Is it sustainable?

As I studied the state of happiness, I became intensely aware of its fragility.  When our life circumstances change and we lose the object that’s been making us happy…poof, our happiness is gone. When uncomfortable feelings appear within our state of happiness or the object that was bringing us happiness no longer works, happiness again disappears. We are constantly acquiring and losing happiness.

I began to see that it is not our efforts to create happiness that are flawed, but rather, our choice of happiness as a goal.  Happiness is the wrong goal for this life.  Happiness relies on our ability to control circumstances that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot control. Happiness relies on circumstances staying the same. Life always changes, uncomfortable feelings always arise, and what we want is always in flux. This is the nature of life.  The choice of continual happiness as a pursuit is irreconcilably flawed.

Normal life is not easy for anyone.  Why then do we expect ourselves to be happy all the time? This foolish expectation creates tremendous suffering. Rather than trying to hang onto something whose nature is transitory, we can discover a state of wellbeing that is able to withstand and flourish within the inherent volatility of a human life.  We should be grateful for happiness when it is here, but as a goal for life, it is unwise.

Is there something larger, deeper, more lasting than happiness? Is there a state of well-being that can sustain itself in the midst of the changing circumstances and emotional shifts that life includes? Is there a way to feel grounded and well even when the contents of our life are not?  If so, what shift must we make to discover this state that is deeper and larger than happiness?

For a long time, I used my spiritual practice to try and achieve peace and happiness.  And I did, in stretches. And yet, again and again, when life presented its toughest challenges, inevitably, the peace and happiness that I had achieved slipped away.  Somewhere along the path I got tired—luckily, tired of trying to get to peace and happiness, or rather, of getting there and watching it disintegrate. And with my weariness came an interesting development: I got curious about what was actually true.  I stopped trying to do something with what I was experiencing, to change it in any way, and just let myself see what was there, to experience what I was experiencing.

No longer trying to get to somewhere else, my meditation practice, and consequently my life, could then be what it was, whatever that meant at any particular moment.  It was through this shift that I began to glimpse a state of being that is radically different and amazingly okay, a state that is deeper and more eternal than happiness.  Indeed, it was not until I stopped trying to create happiness—as a way out of now—and started investigating what is here—a way in—that I discovered a doorway to something far more blissful than happiness had ever offered.

We spend our lives trying to get to some imaginary there, where lasting happiness awaits.  What we don’t know how to do is to get to here, where we are.  We discover well-being when we shift our focus toward this moment and what is actually here. The secret to well-being is counter-intuitive: allow whatever is happening inside you to happen; don’t do anything with it.; don’t judge it; don’t try to change it; don’t turn it into an identity—something that says something about who you are.  Allow the feelings, allow the thoughts, allow all experience to happen within you without turning any of it into a story about you and your life.  When we let go of achieving a particular outcome with our experience and meet our experience as it is—wanted or not— we discover a state of deep contentment that relies on nothing and no one, and is inherently and eternally ours.  Indeed, we discover who we really are.   

Excerpted from the upcoming book, Inviting A Monkey to Tea: Befriending Your Mind and Discovering Lasting Contentment.  (October, 2012, Hohm Press)

The Dial-In Conversation: When Auto-Responders Meet

At a certain age, does everyone feel like they have had every conversation they are ever going to have—that every conversation (other than those with intimates) is pre-packaged, as if chosen from a sampler menu on an airplane playlist?  Is it an inevitable part of living longer, that conversations begin to feel like some kind of strange dance in which we follow pre-determined scripts with no real meaning?  Or, possibly, is conversation itself changing?

From what I can remember, in just the last couple days I have successfully (or so I imagine) dialed in the following pre-digested conversations:

- having a dog in the city

- city versus suburb life/car vs. walking/peace vs. energy

- country house vs. new weekend adventures

- change in air travel experience

- pre-school admission process

- real estate (everywhere) in relation to New York

- date night for mom and dad/need for

- the glassification of the urban landscape

- career nanny vs. young vibrant babysitter choice

- youth texting/screen time addiction

- children’s birthday parties/costs/frequency

- overscheduled children/old days when we had to create a game from a stick/organized classes vs. street play

- Costco shopping/bulk toilet paper

And these are just the handful I can remember. 

The 100-calorie conversation—all subjects available for purchase in snack-size pouches. 

Within these pre-packaged interactions can be found an infinite array of standardized danglers, the little niceties we toss at one another that mean less than nothing. Perhaps we do all this because we believe that this is what we are supposed to do as members of society? “Safe travel,”  “Everything good?”  “Where did the summer go?” “Take good care of you,”   “Better to end vacation when it’s raining than sunny!” “Enjoy it now, it goes so fast.” “Three kids, two hands.”  And on it goes…

While I don’t recall agreeing to play a part in this grand performance, nonetheless, every day I watch as I too cheerfully embark into the land of canned dialogue, as if I were reading words off an internal teleprompter.  Like puppets, we lip synch our pre-scripted parts with the proper enthusiasm and feigned newness, dutifully behaving as good members of society.  Despite the ease with which it all unfolds, in the midst of it, I often hear myself silently asking, “Really… are we going to do this… this dance that we are trained to do, this exchange of language that means nothing, and that we have done a thousand times before?”  So too, I wonder who wrote this script that we all recite from cellular memory for reasons that we don’t even know?  Nonetheless, as the thoughts stream through, I continue dancing the touch-less dance.  With furrowed brow, the seal still balances the bowling pin on her nose. 

Recently, while pondering these questions, my attention was drawn to my cat and dog, who were playing on the floor below me.  The two are best friends, as if brother and sister… the boy being so active and the girl so relational right from the start (oops…I accidentally pressed the son vs. daughter switch on my conversation playlist).  In any case, the two animals spend a lot of time (and seem to deeply enjoy) just bumping and nudging each other.  But the scene got me thinking. Maybe conversation is not really about the content of the words but rather a way of simply establishing contact that is friendly and acknowledging.  It might be that all these pre-scripted conversations and time-consuming niceties are akin to my Shiba Inu smushing her nose into her big orange companion; a way to acknowledge those with whom we share the same floor/planet at the same time in history.

I am an optimist and thus I enjoy a warm-hearted interpretation of our pre-scripted conversations as some form of human bumping and smushing.  And yet, deep down, I worry that this societal play that we are performing has more pessimistic implications. I can’t help but wonder if the rise of technology, as the primary form of communication in our culture, is not related to our conversations sounding more and more like computer-generated recordings.

I am fairly certain that we used to use conversation as a way to connect, get closer, bridge the separation we feel.  Conversation is now becoming a means to just the opposite end—something that we use to disconnect and avoid contact; a dance in which nobody touches.  The pre-packaged interaction that we are dialing in with increasing ease and regularity acts as a foam pad through which we humans are less and less able to pass. 

Is it possible that conversation itself is being kidnapped by the technological milieu of our time?  Is conversation becoming a franchised product, like a mahogany side table at Restoration Hardware—and thereby disappearing into a corporate-sponsored vacuum?   As conversation morphs into pre-digested, bite-sized portions, I wonder how, where and if we will go about forming bridges with those we don’t know.  Perhaps new means will be found—computer programs that bypass the need for conversation or sharing experience.  Or perhaps, like our tail, the need for conversation and connection will simply be bred out of the species—no longer necessary for optimum productivity.  For now, I suppose we are left to watch and wait, and most importantly, refrain from turning this dialogue into another pre-packaged and disposable version of itself.  Stay tuned…

Dreams to Dollars... Says Who?

Live your passion and the money will follow... or so the story goes. If we ignore the thought that says, "I can't afford it," and replace it with the thought that says, "Trust the universe," then all of our material desires will be fulfilled. Like a Burger King, we simply put our order in with the universe and the universe delivers. If we design the right vision board, repeat the right affirmations, "believe in" the universe, inheritances will show up just when they are needed (without losing anyone we know), bank errors will appear in our favor, and competitions that we didn't know we entered will be won. The list of fortunes awaiting us is endless and endlessly delicious.

The idea is that the universe is a good parent who rewards its good children (with things) and punishes its bad ones with deprivation. We are good when we think only good thoughts and follow our dreams and successfully block out anything that hints of doubt, fear or "negativity." In practice, this myth causes enormous suffering and is in fact false. Many people are doing exactly what they want to be doing with their life and yet never financially gain from it, not even a penny. The absence of capital gain is not a contradiction to the correctness of the path, as the myth-makers claim. However, those who are doing everything "right" and still not receiving cash windfalls or job offers by the dozen are left feeling inadequate and to blame for their inability to manifest material abundance. "I am supposed to get what I want from the universe! Everyone else does! What am I doing wrong that makes the universe not reward me?"

The dreams to dollars myth sets up an expectation that we should be rewarded financially for what we like to do. Says who? Why does the universe owe us this? What's more, why is financial reward the gauge for whether or not what we are doing is the right path? Isn't the fact that we enjoy what we are doing, that it interests, awakens or challenges us, enough of a reason to do it?

But perhaps most toxic about this myth is that it turns our attention away from the real reward that it is to live our passion, namely, to live our passion. What gets missed is the reward that is right here -- already. The reward is the passion, the wanting, the intention, the experience itself. The destination is the process. We need not look any farther than right here for our passion's value and legitimacy. The myth that we should be financially compensated for doing what we love vacuums the love from the process itself. So too, it burdens the experience with an expectation that it deliver something that the experience is not responsible for delivering. As a result, the expectation transforms something joyful into something disappointing and resent-able. Really, is it not a thing of wonder that we wake up in the morning at all, much less wake up, want to do something, and actually get to do it? Is that not remarkable enough?

We are constantly wishing for some larger entity that will reward us when we are good and punish us when we are bad. We so want to believe that some one, some thing, is in charge of us, and if we play by the rules it will all work out and we will get everything we want. We construct myriad larger than us, solid structures to feel safe and in control. Oh how we try to create a knowable order in all this mystery we call life. In the process of trying, however, we infantilize ourselves and reject life as it is happening.

The universe begins and ends within us. The structure we impose is a construction. Our rewards and punishments all exist right here in our own consciousness. In truth, we don't need a larger anything to be fulfilled. In expecting a sign from the universe to assure us that we are on the right path, a cash reward for listening to our own wisdom, we are abandoning the very wisdom that we seek to validate. After all, what is the universe if not our wisdom -- the wisdom we have mysteriously been gifted with?

Paradoxically, we reject and ignore the universe when we expect and demand that the universe appear to and for us. The gold stars that are supposed to appear are in fact already here -- if we dare follow the glitter into ourselves and this very moment's experience!

Technology: Your Mind on Crack

If generating "to do" lists were an Olympic event, the human mind would surely take home the gold.  While undoubtedly useful for many tasks, the mind is also an unsettled and frantic creature whose basic state is agitation. The mind is in a state of constant craving; desperately seeking something to do, fix or figure out.  The mind is not wired to land here, but instead, always beckoning our attention into the past or future.  The mind does not want us to live this moment directly, but rather seeks to turn this moment into a project about which something can be done, or alternatively, a statement about our identity. What do we need to do about this moment, what does this moment mean about our past or future, what does this moment say about what kind of person we are?  These are the things the mind wants to know about now, but certainly not what now actually is.  The mind acts as a moderator between our life and us.  To the mind, being equals death--doing equals life.  

Enter technology.  Injecting technology into the human mind is like shooting a wild, agitated, drunken monkey with a thousand CC's of adrenaline.  The mind is thrilled, but what about we who have to house that wild monkey? 

If you ask a crack addict what will make him well, he will tell you more crack, and he will be sure of it.  The crack addict is the wrong one to ask what he needs. More crack will not make him feel well, but will only calm his shakes... for a short time.  And then his suffering will return--with more ferocity. Similarly, the mind is the wrong part of ourselves to ask what will make us well.  The mind tells us that more will satisfy us--more information, more entertainment, more choices, more everything.  More will make us whole--and ironically--give us a place where we can rest and finally enjoy less. In truth, the mind is painfully mistaken.  We do not need more frequent communication; we need deeper connections.  We do not need more sound bites of forgettable information; we need more meaningful dialogue.  We do not need more entertainment; we need to get interested in our own imagination and creativity.  We do not need more ways to get away from ourselves and now; we need to meet ourselves and discover the wonder of this moment. Well-being can only live in this now and if we are not in it, we will never experience it.

When I ask people what makes them feel truly well, I generally hear one of three things: connection with other people, creativity, and spirit-oriented activities.  In all my years asking this question, never have I heard the answer: technology. People that spend all day checking and re-checking their devices--checking for what they do not even know--do not feel well at day's end. They are addicts seeking relief--relief ultimately from the belief that there is somewhere better, more important, more fun, or simply more bearable than here.  At the end of all their frantic information and entertainment-gorging, they feel despairing and anxious--bloated yet ravenous and mal-nourished. Their addiction has grown stronger, along with their belief that something somewhere will complete them and offer them a place to—at last—be, if they could only find it.

Technology is breeding the addiction to distraction into the human species, just as you would breed long ears into a dog breed.  It is breeding out the capacity to be with ourselves or anyone else, and worst of all, to be here, the stuff that true well-being is made of.  

Our heart and spirit need something very different than what our mind craves.  As a society, we are living entirely out of sync with what really nourishes and makes us well.  The drunken, feverish monkey mind within us has taken over the controls and we are sailing into despair.  An entertaining, lightning-paced, bespangled despair for sure, but despair nonetheless.  It is up to us and well within our power to wrestle this life back from the misinformed (and suffering) monkey.  As human beings who, unlike other species, have the incredible gift of awareness, it is our responsibility to stop bingeing on what is ultimately starving us, to dismount from the frantic wheel of distraction.  If we tune into our deeper wisdom, we can see what the monkey is up to, the path the addicted mind is leading us down.  We can then choose to change our course and turn our attention instead to those experiences that truly nourish us, that lead us back to our natural well-being—reacquai