"Happiness" Floats...

The other day I unexpectedly felt "happiness" 
flow through, amidst other darker emotions too...
It wasn't really "happiness", but more a calm
contentment, out of the blue...

And not even contentment,
more just a
still inner Quietness that grew...

A smile of the Heart

And just as easily as it came,
it went...
It just floated up -
and away...

Strange...

I did not create it...
It was causeless "happiness"
just visiting...

I met it with gratitude...

Mystic Meandering
April 2, 2025

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

It was never my "goal" to be "happy."
Never pursued it, never felt "entitled" to it.
Occasionally it does come to visit :)

You can stop worrying now - Czeslaw Milosz

In advanced age, my health worsening,
I woke up in the middle of the night,
and experienced a feeling of happiness
so intense and perfect that in all my life
I had only felt its premonition.
It didn't obliterate consciousness:
the past which I carried was there,
together with my grief.
And it was suddenly included,
was a necessary part of the whole.

As if a voice were repeating:

"You can stop worrying now;
everything happened just as it had to.

You did what was assigned to you,
and you are not required anymore
to think of what happened long ago."

The peace I felt was a closing of accounts
and was connected with the thought of death.
The happiness on this side was
like an announcement of the other side.
I realized that this was an undeserved gift
and I could not grasp by what grace
it was bestowed on me.

Czeslaw Milosz

original title "Awakened"

with thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Photo from the internet

 

The Amusement Park - Jed McKenna

Awakening to your True Nature is like dying; it's a certainty,
inevitable.  You're going to get there no matter what you do,
so why rush?  Enjoy your life, it's free.  Cosmic Consciousness
and Altered States and Universal Mind are the names of the
rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park.
So are Poverty and Disease and Despair.  Enlightenment,
though, is not another ride.  Enlightenment means leaving the
park altogether, but why leave the park?  In the park you can
be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a
warlord.  Happiness, misery, bliss, agony, victory, defeat, it's
all here.  When the time comes to leave the park, you'll know
and you'll go...

Jed McKenna

with thanks to No Mind's Land

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Doo, doo, doo, lookin' out my back door" ;)

(a line from Credence Clearwater Revival's song
"Lookin' Out My Back Door" - 1970)

https://youtu.be/Aae_RHRptRg

Take a ride :)

Simple Life - J.Krishnamurti

 Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few
things but in the freedom from possession and non-possession,
in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding.
Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness,
greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits it
and prevents it from flowering...

To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater
result, is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful.  Simplicity
of life comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from
craving, with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction,
from distraction.  From this simple life there comes that
necessary one-pointedness which is not the outcome of
self-enclosing concentration, but of extensional awareness
and meditative understanding.

Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances;
contentment with little comes with the riches of inward
understanding.  If you depend on circumstances to make
you satisfied with life then you will create misery and
chaos [for yourself and for others], for then you are a
plaything of environment, and it is only when
circumstances  are transcended through understanding
 that there is order and clarity. To be constantly aware of
the process of acquisitiveness, of addiction,
of distraction, brings freedom from them

and so there is a true and simple life.

J. Krishnamurti
from The Collected Works Volume III Ojai
8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944

With thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

The "Work" of Happiness - May Sarton

 I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work.
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone;
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
AS the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed walls --
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work.....can be done,

For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
Has stood a life's span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless...

May Sarton
from: Collected Poems: 1930-1993

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Causeless Joy - Naomi Shihab Nye

 It's difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness, there's something to rub against.
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you,
you have pieces to pick up, something to hold
in your hands like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn't need you to hold it down.
Doesn't need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house singing
and disappears when it wants to. 

[.....]

Everything has a life of its own.

It, too, could wake up filled with possibilities of coffee cake
and ripe peaches and love even the floor which needs to be
swept, the soiled linens, and scratched records... 

Since there's no place large enough to contain so much happiness,
 you shrug, your raise your hands, and it flows out of you into
 everything you touch.

You're not responsible.

You take no credit.

As the night sky takes no credit for the moon,
but continues to hold it and to share it
and in that way, be known.

Naomi Shihab Nye

with thanks to The Beauty We Love

Photo - Mystic Meandering

~

I know it may seem strange to be posting about
Joy and Happiness etc. during such chaotic, disruptive,
apocalyptic times. I'm surprised as well that this has happened,
so just offering a bit of inspiration...  

This doesn't mean that I am
untouched by the struggles and difficulties of others.
I also continue to have my "moments" as well...

There's a lot going on for all of us...

The world, even with its turmoil, becomes, or is seen as,
a "divine play" or Cosmic Dance.  We find we can be
in the world, as it is, and not struggle with what is happening,
or try to "fix" it; but allow life to unfold as it does in its own rhythm;
 not seeking "liberation" or freedom from the world, but living
from the Deep Quiet space within, and let that show us 
where we can contribute with mindful engagement,

not emotional, reactive chaos...

MM