“Joy is an inherent inner aliveness”
Richard Rohr
A Review Of Happiness And Aliveness:
I want to revisit and gently build on this topic that we started here.
Happiness is an emotional state that comes and goes and is often associated with “when things go right.” This is a wonderfully complex topic that Dan Gilbert discusses brilliantly in his book “Stumbling on Happiness” and I am sure I will revisit it in more depth in other posts.
The main point I want to make today is simply that happiness comes and goes, it is (as far as we know) not possible to be happy all the time. Some people “win the cortical lottery” (a quote from Hareesh Wallis) and generally tend to be happier than average but still happiness comes and goes. No matter close we get to having everything the way we want it we still cannot experience never ending happiness.
Aliveness on the other hand (a natural part of a healthy Mind) is something that can continue to increase until it becomes a default state. If you ever watch a young child go about their day there is a certain vibrancy towards experience, an openness towards natural expression, and a trust in life that is so often lost as we become adults.
This state of aliveness is also wonderfully complex and will be revisited in more depth later but today I want to share just a few key points.
Key Points on Aliveness/Openness:
A state of openness is actually a natural state for a human being. Natural in the sense that it takes no effort to maintain and is available for everyone who is willing to put in the effort to let go of that which prevents them from staying open. It actually takes effort to resist the natural movement of energy that results from a state of openness which is one of the reasons that the vast majority of people who take some time to “heal the Mind” or “digest” their emotions find that they have much more energy available over time.
While happiness comes and goes it is actually common for increased happiness to be a side affect of openness. This is in part because you cannot actually selectively block emotional energy. For example if you block all the feelings of grief and loss you are able to you will find that you also tend to block a lot of the feelings of love.
Review Of This Post:
The term emotional bandwidth can be used to describe “how much I am realistically capable of emotionally digesting without becoming overwhelmed”.
Many people start the process of “emotional digestion” with a very small emotional bandwidth
Emotional bandwidth naturally increases the more you digest your experiences so the best practices to help in this process are simply giving yourself the time, space, and security you need to be able to do this on a daily basis.
A state of aliveness or openness is actually a natural state for a human being and while happiness comes and goes it is actually common for increased happiness to be a side affect of increased openness.
Where To Next?