So we do understand that we have been made to chase a “mirage of lasting happiness” until now. There are brief moments of pleasure in life but they are hugely interspersed with prolonged spells of boredom, anxiety, fear of failure and greed of greater success. In essence it’s an unfair deal, there is too much of investment in the form of actual effort, anxiety about the correctness and quality of effort, fear of failure to attain the requisite goal and occasional “run amok” system overrides in the form of greed for greater success completely capsizing our entire system just to get the return in the form of the aimed for goal and momentary whiff of pleasure. But all of this could be changed very easily if we were to agree upon single statement.
“HAPPINESS LIES WITHIN US AND NOT OUTSIDE OF US”.
“Oh come on, I have been hearing that lame statement all my life its absolutely meaningless”, “even if it had a meaning it does not apply to me, I am a person engaged neck deep in daily activities, I have bills to pay, I have a job to do, a promotion to achieve.......... how does it apply to me anyways?”. The mind (social intelligence) has entered its denial and rejection mode even before getting started. (There is a big reason behind this too, as to why our mind is responding in such a cynical fashion to this simple truth, we shall see that too, a bit later though).
Let us analyze this statement in reference to the “sunset view point”, what happened there?
The mind or the social intelligence drops for a while upon witnessing the magnificence and beauty of the sunset at the viewpoint in that perfectly picturesque setting due to two reasons, because it is an entirely new (first time) experience and there is no previous memory label available for the situation and hence it has to be lived “as it is”, secondly natural beauty and magnificence has a capability to override our social intelligence and directly connect with our innate intelligence (if we remain aware and cooperative).
So upon the first visit the social intelligence (that works exquisitely through the past in the form of experience, memory and labels) is dumbfounded by this entirely new experience, secondly the magnificence and grandeur of the natural beauty is easily able to override an already dumbfounded social intelligence and push us into our innate intelligence easily. In essence we live the experience through our innate intelligence and hence it is felt as such an intense and wonderful experience. But as we come to the view point again and again the intensity and the overall quality of our experience keeps declining. The natural beauty and magnificence has not changed, the natural experience is still the same BUT the “ONE WHO EXPERIENCES” has changed.
Now our social intelligence has already created a label for the place as “good”, it has the full backup of memory of past experience, it comes to the view point every time and updates itself with all the useless details as to “how many minutes it takes for complete sunset to occur”, “how many people generally come to witness the sunset”, “how many food stalls are there in and around the place” etc etc....... the endless list of useless facts and figures. So every time we come back to the view point the mind or the social intelligence becomes stronger and stronger about the place. So now not only does it NOT get dumbfounded immediately upon witnessing the picturesque panorama it also RESISTS the attempts of override by natural beauty to directly connect with our innate intelligence. And hence slowly keeps diluting our experience, until it declares the sunset view point as FAMILIAR. That is the death blow, since as soon as anything is declared FAMILIAR by social intelligence it becomes its “sovereign domain” and no interference of innate intelligence in it would be allowed,this is a part of “LABELED AND LEFT OUT” phenomenon (will be dealt with later in detail). Hence as soon as the social intelligence or the mind becomes familiar with a situation, place or person (or declares a situation or person familiar) there will be no room for innate intelligence there. So the same sunset view point which when lived through (although without our understanding of the phenomenon) the innate intelligence was such a splendidly profound experience at the first visit is now reduced to a boring drag of WAITING for the sun to quickly sink in and disappear within a few subsequent visits.
This is precisely the reason why we all love SURPRISES, since there are no memories for that situation and hence social intelligence gets is dumbfounded for those moments and hence lets us easily slip into innate intelligence for a few moments which seem to be so joyous and so pleasurable!!!!
Because “HAPPINESS LIES WITHIN US AND NOT OUTSIDE OF US”.
