In the company of ‘X’ I find I feel cheerful/sad? The assumption I create is that I think ‘X’ makes me feel happy/sad. So, over time I think that I need this person in order to experience happiness or that just being in the presence of this other person I will experience sorrow.
Who is experiencing though? How are these feelings generated? Would I be able to experience these positive/negative feelings if they were not already within me? Is it not that I am just associating them with a person, a place, an event or having something and so emerging them on cue?
We think:
– a lovely house will make me feel happy and comfortable;
– that a good job brings feelings of being respected, powerful, secure and so on.
In this way we develop a whole lot of dependencies. In order to experience ‘w’ things have to be just so. Now due to this association I need ‘that just so’ in order to experience happiness etc. If the person’s not there, the job disappears or if things aren’t ‘just so’ I am distraught, worried, etc.
Do you want to live like this, dependent on circumstances, people and possessions or would you prefer to be your own master? The choice is ours, and we are making these choices at every moment either consciously or unconsciously. Mostly we choose to be dependent, as this is our life-long habit. In reality though at any moment we can choose the opposite.
Recall the best experience you have ever had, think on the greatest time of happiness or peace or joy or lightness you have experienced. Now there is a good chance that at that time it was someone/some event/something which made you feel that. What am I doing now though? Am I not re-creating that experience for myself? If I can re-create the feelings of past experiences can I not also re-emerge my original nature and qualities by focusing on them as I did just now on the ‘event’?
To practice this is more essential now than ever before given the state of today’s world. I can become un-dependent on anything or anyone to experience happiness, and this also means that unless I choose, no-one can cause me sorrow either.
Be patient with yourself too, it is a journey and it is not going to happen just like that. There will be times of fast progress and times when you go up and down, but the direction remains of inner freedom and self-mastery.
