FUNDAMENTAL HAPPINESS Series 14 - ACCEPT NOTHINGNESS

Hi Friends,

I am back. I am incorrigible! I keep coming back. It is my life's mission to take this message on the possibility of tasting FUNDAMENTAL HAPPINESS to as many people as possible. From the responses I get and the viewership across the globe, I get a sense that many of you are connecting with my proposition. 

It is also my keen desire to help all those who may be suffering from un-caused depression, anxiety, emptiness, meaninglessness or despair, that is often diagnosed as 'clinical depression'. I wish to hold out my own example as someone who has been through all that and today does not need medication or mood altering drugs to stay happy. So, read on.

Some of you would have tried the initial exercise that I described about feeling different parts of your body, and then feeling your entire body internally. You will discover an energy flow within yourself. Witness that energy quietly. Apart from doing this exercise when you are free from distraction and noise, I also suggested that you gradually cultivate the habit of doing this also during brief intervals that you get amid a busy life. You can do this while waiting in a queue, waiting at the boarding gate at the airport, or while stuck in a traffic jam.

Have you noticed how we feel satisfied when we keep our schedules fully packed? We might complain that we are too busy, that there is no free time. But, secretly, we are comfortable that way. Imagine yourself suddenly confronted with a situation that you have nothing to do for a full day! Let's say all your planned programs for a Saturday get canceled. Also, imagine that the friends you could possibly connect with are also busy elsewhere. So you have nothing to do! Now, that could be a terrible situation to be in, at least for most of us.

Now here is what you can do. ACCEPT the situation that you have nothing to do. Your mind will be fidgety, looking for a way out of this loneliness. Do not fight your mind. Just observe it. Take a decision that today you will do NOTHING. Be with the nothingness. 

There are a few things you can do when you are doing nothing. Wherever you are, look around. You will notice many things. Can you notice the empty spaces around everything? Or, more specifically, do you notice the space, the emptiness, that has allowed all things to be? Do not try to objectively reason out this "nothingness". Your mind will love doing it, and once again you will get trapped. Whereas if you have the courage to just peacefully face the nothingness, and also witness your uncomfortable mind, without fighting it, in a while you might discover a peace you have not felt before. This is where sensitivity is important. Sensitive persons, who are able to hold this position for some length of time, may be able to feel that peace and joy spring from within. 

Those who have been too engrossed in the external, material world, with their possessions, positions, position-power, or essentially all ego driven attachments, may miss these subtle messages from within.

Which is why I have suggested right at the beginning that you question your attachment to all these 'things'. Fathom yourself bereft of all these things. You need not give them up completely. Just question and notice how you are clinging to them. Having moved up the spiritual journey, now enjoy them from a new vantage point, from a higher vision.

Once you develop this ability to notice the emptiness around you, and see things in the backdrop of this nothingness, the beauty of the same things will increase manifold. The same mountains or trees that you were seeing earlier, will now appear alive and rich!

Here is a picture that I took in 2012 of Lake Michigan, USA from my room in the Kellogg School of management at the Northwestern University, where I had been for a course.  

I was spellbound by the sheer beauty of the scene outside. Notice the beauty of the trees with all leaves shed, against the vast openness and the expanse of the sea! You actually develop a new vision. Not only that, you can listen to music too from a different level. You start seeing things and listening to music and other sounds, like birds chirping or water flowing, from the level of being. 

Keep reading. Cheers!

Deepak Chatterjee

Readers looking to buy the book, "ARE YOU REALLY HAPPY?" in the US and other geographies outside India, please bear with me for a while. I will give you the Amazon.com link soon.

chatterjee.deepak33@gmail.com
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http://fundamentalhappiness.blogspot.com

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