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The
Doorway to Happiness
by
Patrick
Plaskett
|
There is a passage through which you
can pass to attain total peace, happiness, and empowerment. It’s
a very narrow passage, not difficult to find, yet quite difficult
for most people to recognize. That passage is the present moment.
Why should the present moment be difficult to recognize? It seems
almost nonsensical to suggest such a thing. It’s difficult because
we have all been trained to put our attention almost anywhere but
the present moment.
In our original state as children, we are totally involved in the
present. Children are totally aware of everything that’s going
on around them, yet they’re not doing a lot of thinking. But
then the enculturation begins. The influences of childhood, from parents,
education, and personal experiences, are used in the construction
of a cognitive map to make sense of life. And where does this map
of reality lie? In memory of what has gone before, not in the present.
We refer to this map more often as we mature and life gets more complex,
which is normal and useful. We develop time consciousness. Since we
live in a universe of cause and effect, the development of time consciousness
also helps us plan for the future. But our thoughts of the past and
future may progressively and insidiously erode the amount of attention
we have to apply to the present.
As our cognitive maps are developed, we have ourselves represented
in it along with everything else. This is the ego. It’s totally
dependent on time consciousness, of our place in the past and future.
The ego of a young child is undeveloped, since he or she is too busy
being attentive to the present. As ego develops, the child develops
a sense of being good or bad, weak or strong, smart or stupid, and
so on, according to the influences of upbringing. As the child makes
the passage into adulthood, the childlike innocence of the experience
is replaced by the sense of ego.
We usually think of an ego as being self-important, if not overly
so. Yet all time-bound representation of us to ourselves is ego. Therefore,
one’s sense of ego may even be weak and impoverished. Some people
seek to correct a poor ego or self-image through cognitive therapy,
while some seek to be free from the restrictions of ego altogether,
by such means as meditation. Society not only tolerates ego, but also
praises effective ones, so that we as a society are not collectively
interested in freedom from egocentricity or the constraints of the
cognitive model of reality.
The more we put our attention on the cognitive map, pulling it away
from the present, the less we experience life directly. We experience
a dim reflection of the world in our minds, and can hardly agree on
reality with others who are looking at the dim reflection in their
own minds. The people who suffer most from having attention in the
mental world rather than the reality of the present are those who
are consumed with painful memories or regrets of the past, and those
who fear a perilous future. Of course life involves suffering as surely
as it involves pleasure, but only a sense of time-bound ego consciousness
can make suffering cling. This is why small children, lacking this
ego, can be crying one moment and laughing the next. Having more attention
in the present, it’s easier to give up the suffering of the
past and resist worrying about the future.
Along with the development of a mental reality that takes our attention
from the real world of the present is the tendency for most people
to be taught that peace and happiness is something to be reached in
the future, never to be had now. Primary school students are told
to wait until they are older to be happy, high school students told
to wait until they are in college, college students told to wait until
they graduate and get a job, and those on the job are told to wait
until they get a promotion or retire. Couples are told to wait until
they are married, or wait until they have children, or wait until
the children are old enough to leave home, etc. Most plans for achievement
carry the subtle implication that you won’t be happy until some
time in the future.
But the future never comes. There will never be a day in your life
that you wake up and say, “Today is the future!” It’s
always today. All of our training for success and achievement may
be effective to a point, but an unintended effect is that it may continually
put happiness just out of reach. And what of the past? Where is it?
It’s in your mind, in memory, not in the reality of the present.
We are happiest when we are not thinking and more conscious of the
present. This is not to say that we should not think, but instead
we should use our thoughts rather than having them use us. We can
lie in bed with sunlight filtering in through the curtains and enjoy
the scene with no mental effort whatsoever. The phrase, “Stop
and smell the roses,” is not so much about halting activity
as it is about returning to a kind of perception that involves no
thought. You don’t enjoy the scent of a rose through rational
analysis, but instead, through the childlike, direct perception only
accessible in the present moment.
An astonishing amount of people in our society are taking anti-anxiety
medication and mood elevators, ostensibly because these bad psychological
states are caused by a chemical imbalance. But the state of mind and
the chemical imbalance appear in tandem, as two facets of the same
phenomenon. We should all make corrections however we can, but to
say that one causes the other is quite arbitrary. Certainly you would
feel a chemical imbalance in your body if someone told you that your
car was on fire. Our society has not been infected with a virus that
causes this chemical imbalance that robs us of our innate capability
to be happy. More likely, we’re upset because we either live
in a perilous mental model or we find that the real world will not
conform to our model of how it should be.
True peace is only to be found in the present. A fond memory may remind
you of a good relationship that continues in the present, whether
it’s a relationship with a loved one or a benevolent universe.
A promise of the future may make you aware of the inexorable movement
of reality in the present, as it takes you to your goals and desires.
Such thoughts are always referenced to the present. Or, you may drop
out of thinking altogether and immerse yourself in pure perception
of the present, such as when watching a sunset, or stopping to smell
the roses.
Patrick Plaskett is a hypnotist with a psychology degree from USF
and author of The Body Intelligent Diet. He is available through mindadvantage.com
or by calling 727 551 9340.
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