Are You Happy Now?

10 Ways to Live a Happy Life

By Barbara Berger

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2006 Barbara Weitzen Berger
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78279-201-7

Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………1The 10 Ways……………………………………………………….2No. 1: Accept what is………………………………………………3No. 2: Want what you have…………………………………………..15No. 3: Be honest with yourself………………………………………27No. 4: Investigate your stories……………………………………..63No. 5: Mind your own business……………………………………….81No. 6: Follow your passion and accept the consequences…………………91No. 7: Do the right thing and accept the consequences………………….105No. 8: Deal with what is in front of you and forget the rest……………125No. 9: Know what is what……………………………………………149No. 10: Learn to see beyond impermanence……………………………..155Conclusion………………………………………………………..181Epilogue: Don’t Believe What You Think……………………………….183Book List…………………………………………………………185About Barbara Berger……………………………………………….186

CHAPTER 1

Accept what is

The number 1 cause of suffering and unhappiness iswanting life to be something it’s not.

This basically is our main problem. We want life to be somethingit’s not. We want the impossible.

Just think about it.

Don’t you want the impossible? Like living forever in thisbody? Don’t you want that? And don’t you want to feel good allthe time, and look great, and be in control too? And don’t youwant to be strong and healthy and never get sick or tired or be inpain? And wouldn’t you like to succeed at everything you do?And have everyone love and respect you no matter what? Andwouldn’t you like to … Well yes, the list is rather long when youthink about it, isn’t it?

But the reality is that life isn’t like that. Do you know anyonewho has lived forever and never died? Or someone who nevergot sick and never grew old? Probably not because the reality isthat there is no one. The reality is that bodies come and go andthat they break down, grow old and die. That’s just the way it is.

And as for love and approval, the reality is people don’t loveand approve of us all the time no matter what we do, and weoften don’t succeed at what we’re doing even if we try reallyhard. That’s just the way it is.

In fact, in the life most of us are living, things just happen.Events and people just pop up, so to speak, in our experience.And that too is the way of it. Most of it is quite beyond ourcontrol. One day raining, the next day sunshine. What do wehave to do with it? One day people come and the next day theygo away. Always changing it seems, people and things. Alwayschanging. There might be a lot of explanations as to why it’s likethis, but whatever the explanation, the reality is that life justseems to move along all by itself and things happen. The realityis that you’re here now, a part of it, a part of this changinglandscape. For whatever reason. In this particular body, whichdoes all kinds of fascinating things, like take you on trips, washdishes, make love, go to work, drive cars, and which also getssick, breaks down, grows old, and finally dies.

It’s a great mystery, but mystery or not, that is the way of it.

What a life!

So what’s to worry?

Why can’t we just let it move along at its own pace and enjoythe ride instead of mucking it up all the time? Which is what a lotof us do, or at least it’s what I often do.

How do we muck it up? Mainly we muck it up by fighting theway of it.

In short, we muck it up by resisting what is.

We muck it up by telling ourselves stories about how thingsshould be when the reality is that things just aren’t the way wethink they should be. Period. Full stop.

Resisting is stressful

So what does this have to do with happiness?

A lot. Because it’s very stressful to resist what is. It’s verystressful and tiring to fight reality all the time. And that’sprecisely what we’re doing when we think that things should bedifferent from what they are. We’re resisting this moment. We’resaying no to what is. We’re basically saying the sun should beshining when it’s raining. And you know how much that helps.What can you do about the rain? The only thing thinking itshould be sunny when it’s raining does is make you feelfrustrated and unhappy. Better to deal with it and buy anumbrella! This is not difficult to see when it comes to theweather. But what about when it comes to all the other areas ofour lives like our relationships, for example, or our bodies? Whathappens when something breaks down and you think itshouldn’t? What happens then? You resist what is. And howdoes that make you feel?

An experiment

Let’s try a little experiment.

Just think how you would feel if you didn’t resist what is, justfor a few minutes. And I’m not joking when I make thissuggestion. In fact it’s a very interesting experiment. So let’s try itand see how would it feel if we didn’t resist what is, if we simplycouldn’t resist the way things are. If we could just for a momentallow things to be exactly the way they are, without fighting them.If you play around with this idea or mind shift, you willdiscover that it can be quite liberating.

So please give it a try.

You can start by putting this book down and letting yourselffeel this thought, this shift in perspective, for the next couple ofminutes. Just say to yourself, “For the next couple of minutes, I’mnot going to fight what is. I’m just going to totally let whatever ishappening, be. Whatever it is, I’m just going to accept it.” If forexample you have a headache or you’re not feeling well, youcould say to yourself, “I’m not going to fight the fact that I havea headache and am feeling lousy. I’m not going to resist myheadache or what my body is doing at the moment. I’m not goingto resist the discomfort I’m feeling and think that there issomething wrong with me because I don’t feel as good as I thinkI should feel. Nor am I going to tell myself a story about what thisfeeling of discomfort might mean. I’m not going to imagine thatI’m coming down with the flu or have a brain tumor. No I’m justgoing to let it be and accept what’s going on right now. Withouthaving any opinion about it at all.” Please give it a try right now.

When you do this for a couple of minutes, you will probablyexperience a huge sense of relief almost immediately. No matterhow lousy you may be feeling, the moment you accept what is,you will feel everything in you relaxing and falling into place.You will feel peaceful. It’s quite amazing what happens when youshift your focus.

Why? Because the way it is, is the way it is. And this is whatis at this very moment. And when you accept what is, you findstrangely enough, that all there is left is a feeling of peace, andthen you feel happy despite your troubles!

Only a thought in your mind

So we discover that all our experiences are just thoughts in ourminds. When we resist what is by telling ourselves that thingsshouldn’t be the way they are, we make ourselves feel bad. That’sreally all there is to it. Events both inner and outer are just that – theyare events. But it is our interpretations of these inner andouter events that make us feel good or bad, happy or sad.

Most of us are unaware that we are doing this when thingshappen. We don’t realize that something happens and then weimmediately click into our interpretations of events or ourstories, which are often dire predictions based on past conditioningand beliefs about life that we’ve never questioned. Andthat’s where the fight with reality begins – and all the anguishthat goes with it.

Either we scare ourselves to death or we drive ourselves crazywith all our ‘shoulds’. ‘I should be feeling better.’ ‘I should havemore energy.’ ‘I should be able to do this.’ We’re very good atbeating ourselves up with all our ‘shoulds’. But reality is what itis and the rest is all just thoughts in our minds. And our thoughtsare nothing more than our interpretation of what is happening.They are not the direct experience itself, but only our interpretation.And it’s our interpretation that we are living. How oftenare we living an experience directly, without the filter of ourthoughts and opinions?

When I understood this, I suddenly saw life and everythingthat is going on in a new light.

I saw how much my own resistance to what is was causing mepain and anguish. I saw how my own interpretation and storieswere preventing me from experiencing life directly and fromseeing events for what they are. This new awareness has helpedme to begin to see things more directly, without my old stories.

Nothing external …

That was when I understood that external events and thingscannot disturb us. This may be a very difficult concept to understandand accept when we first hear it, but it is true nevertheless.Nothing external can disturb us because the truth is we are onlyexperiencing our own thoughts and stories – and almost neverthe reality that is before us. We think and tell ourselves storiesabout what events, people, and things mean and then we get tolive our stories. This is our only experience.

We tell ourselves that this event means this or that and thatthis is something bad, dangerous, or life threatening and then weexperience it. But the event is just the event – with no opinion orintrinsic value one way or the other. And this holds true for allevents, including death.

If this is the first time you’ve met this concept, you willprobably find it shocking and extremely challenging. I knowbecause I still find it shocking and extremely challenging eventhough I’ve been contemplating this for quite a while now. It’sdifficult to understand and accept because it’s such a radical shiftin perspective from everything we’ve learned and were taught tobelieve about life. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

And if it is true, the consequences are very far-reaching and,fortunately for us, very liberating.

If it is true, and my experience demonstrates for me that it is,it means for example that if you or I have a serious illness likecancer or multiple sclerosis or any other so-called ‘serious’problem or handicap we can be just as happy as someone whodoesn’t have these so-called problems. Because it is only ourinterpretation of what is happening that can make us unhappy.Only the story we are telling ourselves about what our situationsmean can make us unhappy. Because the truth is that at this verymoment, no matter what our problem, we are still breathing,we’re still here, and life still is. Our unhappiness arises theminute we compare ourselves to other people or to what we thinkwe should be doing and feeling at this particular moment. But ifwe stop comparing, what’s left?

If we drop our thoughts about the meaning of what’s goingon, what do we have? And I’m not talking about right or wronghere, but just about what is actually going on.

The first thing I always notice – when I let go of my thoughtsabout the meaning of what’s going on – is that suddenly it getsvery peaceful. The second thing I notice is there’s only me herenow. And that’s about it. This moment with whatever is. The sunon my face for example. Or this moment, doing the dishes. Thismoment, gazing at the flowers in the vase next to me. Or thismoment, sitting in front of my computer.

That’s about it.

Plain and simple.

Life.

Peace.

Happiness.

The truth is you and I can lead happy lives regardless of oursituation. Because when we drop our interpretation of events, wefind that happiness is our nature. Our natural state. It’s what weare. We may have been brought up to think otherwise, to thinkthat our happiness depends on our health, on outside circumstances,on our good looks, or on the amount of money we havein the bank, but it’s just not true.

We can live happy lives regardless because happiness is ourinnermost nature. It has nothing to do with health, money orsuccess. In fact, it has nothing to do with anything outside of usbecause we can only experience our own thoughts, which meansnothing external can influence our happiness one way or theother unless we allow it to. Only our interpretations of what’sgoing on can influence our experience. That in fact is what yourlife is. Your life is your interpretation of what’s going on. My life(or we could say my experience) is my interpretation of what’sgoing on. And that means we have nothing to deal with but ourown thoughts – and that nothing but our own thoughts canprevent us from living a happy life right this very moment.

It’s a mind-boggling discovery isn’t it? That we have nothingto deal with but our own thoughts? And even though I have beensaying this for years in all my books, the ramifications of thisdiscovery just keep expanding for me as my understanding ofthis simple statement – we have nothing to deal with but our ownthoughts – continues to grow.

Unhappiness is only a thought in your mind.

Once I got over the shock of discovering that unhappiness wasjust a thought in my mind, I realized that without the thought,without my interpretation of events, where was the unhappiness?

What about pain?

So I tried to take this discovery one step further. To the worst wecan imagine, like pain. And I asked myself what is pain? And Irealized that pain too must be a thought because without thethought of pain, where’s the pain? For example, if we’re in painand we fall asleep, what happens to the pain? Think about it. Ifyou have a headache and you fall asleep, where’s the pain?Where does it go while you are sleeping and not thinking aboutthe headache? And then you wake up and the headache is back.Or what about when you’re at work and have a headache andthen you get so involved in what you’re doing that you forget theheadache for a while, but as soon as you think about it, it’s back.So the question is what happens to the pain when we don’t thinkabout it? Which again made me see that without thought, what isthere? Where’s the pain without the thought?

So I tried to experiment with pain too to see what happens.Instead of just going to sleep, I tried consciously changing myfocus when I was in pain. And I found that the pain didn’tdisappear when I consciously changed my focus but that thequality of the pain did change. And I discovered something else:I found that when I think about a pain, I am mostly resisting thepain and that when I resist pain it definitely gets worse. Nowwhat do I mean by resisting pain? By resisting pain I mean tellingmyself a story about the pain and what it might mean. Forexample, if I’m in pain and I get in a panic and think things like,”Oh this is awful. What’s wrong with me? Is my conditiondangerous? Will it last a long time? What if it gets worse! Whatwill happen if it gets worse? Could it be something serious likecancer? If it’s something serious I might die!” Or one of the manyother scary thoughts we think when we are in pain. I found whenI do this the pain definitely seems to intensify and get worse.

This discovery made me wonder how much of the suffering weassociate with pain has to do with the physical pain itself and howmuch it has to do with the stories we are telling ourselves whenwe are in pain. So now when I experience pain, I try to be withmyself without telling myself a story about what the pain couldmean for my life and my future. I try to be with the sensation inthe present moment and allow it, without going into a panic.When I am able to do this, I find the nature of the discomfortchanges. The pain doesn’t go away, but the intensity lessens.

If this rings a bell for you, I suggest you give it a try the nexttime you experience pain. See if you can just be with yourdiscomfort in the present moment. Take your medicine and takewhatever other practical steps are necessary to deal with thesituation, but see if you can drop the story you are tellingyourself about the consequences of the pain you are experiencing.Just forget all about it. Don’t project anything into thefuture, but stay in the present moment. Because the truth is thatyou are in the present and you cannot know for sure what thepain means or what is going to happen. All you can know forsure is that you are here now and that there is discomfort. Andthen see what happens.

What a sage says

In my studies, I found this interesting analysis of the differencebetween pain and suffering in a talk by the famous Indian sageSri Nisargadatta Maharaj,

“Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind thereis no suffering. Pain is merely a signal that the body is indanger and requires attention … Pain is essential for thesurvival of the body, but none compels you to suffer.Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting; it is a sign ofour unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.”

From the book, I Am That – Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.

Concepts don’t help

Since this is a book about happiness, we’re not looking at ourconcepts of right or wrong but simply at what makes us happyor unhappy. So it’s not a question of whether or not you shouldbe in pain, nor is it a question of whether it’s fair that you are inpain. We’re not talking about fair; we’re talking about reality.We’re talking about what is. And if you are feeling pain, wellthen that’s your reality – whether or not it’s fair. And if being inpain is your present reality, what is the best way to deal with thissituation? It’s definitely not by scaring yourself to death or bytelling yourself it’s not fair and that you don’t deserve to feel thisway. What good is a story like that going to do for you? How is astory like that going to improve the quality of your life when youare in pain? What is your day going to be like when you tellyourself things like this?

The truth of the matter is that if we want to be happy with theway our lives really are at this moment, we will probably have toquestion and go beyond some of our most cherished beliefs andconcepts. Because what good are these beliefs and concepts doingif they are making us unhappy? What can we use them for?
(Continues…)Excerpted from Are You Happy Now? by Barbara Berger. Copyright © 2006 Barbara Weitzen Berger. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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