DELIGHT Archives - Mindful Happiness

December 6, 2017 By Admin

Profile on Characteristics of Happiness – Post 2

Happiness Characteristics – Post #2

Below I will note a few key characteristics of experiences and attitudes associated with happiness. Do your best to experience some of these each day – as much as is possible. Here is the first list.

Being Fully Alive to Experiences – Do your best to be fully involved in mind-body ways in any and all positive experiences you encounter. No matter how small or short-lasting, be the experience. This means we should savor each moment as a precious moment, a precious moment that may never come again (Omar Khayyam). Emily Dickinson suggests that is what makes human life so sweet. Arnold Toynbee noted that when possible we should make work into play. Ellen Degeneres suggests that we should pretend to be butterflies, with a lifespan of about two weeks. If you had only two week to live would you be able to find joy in the moments? Use all your senses when you encounter any form of joy.
Bliss Consciousness is Part of it – Joseph Campbell advised us to follow our personal bliss. This type of experience may awaken us to higher consciousness. Be the bliss, and experience it in your true self. Deepak Chopra tells us that nothing is more important than connecting with your inner bliss Guru Nanak recommended that we meditate in our solitude as a means to attain pure bliss, and Swami Sivananda notes that blissful meditation brings us to intense inner joy. William Wordsworth suggested that bliss of solitude brings deep pleasure to the heart.
Contentment is the Recognition of Pleasant Joy – To Osho, perhaps the core of contentment is experiencing the serenity of satisfaction about what is right now. Henry Ward Beecher suggested that happy contentment is an ability to find happiness in very common things and experiences. Oprah Winfrey noted that having gratitude for what you have now opens up the way to have even more. The way we live each day ends up to be the way we spend our life (Annie Dillard).
Delight is a Part of Happiness – We feel delight when our hearts and souls are are light and gladdened. Kahlil Gibran noted that the joy of delight can be found when we look deeply into our own hearts. Take delight in the wonders of nature and life – it always changes (The Buddha and Marcus Aurelius). Go with the flow of the changing.
Enlightenment may be End-Stage Happiness – Huston Smith informed us that intense, lasting suffering led The Buddha to enlightenment, which was an understanding of how the mind works and how to discipline it. Such awareness may lead to compassion and inner peace. Denis Waitley noted that happiness is purely spiritual and related to love, gratitude, grace and wisdom. Japanese Zen Master Dogen suggested that sincere practice leads to enlightenment. Like The Buddha, Albert Einstein advised that happiness and enlightenment require liberation from the self.

Here you have the first five characteristics of happiness as presented by Louise Baxter Harmon (2015). Happiness a-z: The Gleeful Guide to Finding and Following Your Bliss. New York: MJF Books, pp. 1-37.

Human Needs and Spiritual Experience and the Need for Supportive Rituals From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont Recently the Human Givens Blog in the United Kingdom presented a post about human needs. I will paraphrase their information as well as information from other sources for Mindful Happiness. Having such […]

Basic Self-Compassion Process Practice: To practice self-compassion as needed, follow these specific self-compassion steps. Sensitize your mindfulness skills to become aware of your immediate experience of suffering. Hold a strong intention to respond with self-kindness. Use self-talk to be kind to yourself. Begin by softening your body. Relax your muscles, tendons, joints. Hold a natural […]

Happiness Path – The 14th Dalai Lama His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama has suggested, among many other important things, that humans may experience true inner happiness by regular practice on the path to enlightenment. In his 2012 book, From Here to Enlightenment, he noted that personal happiness may be attained via specific behaviors and ways of […]

Meditation on Ecodharma and Buddhist Ecology Sit calmly and begin to breathe in and out deeply and slowly. Open your eyes to see and appreciate the natural environment you are in. Close your eyes now if you wish to do so. Know that this nature – the sky, clouds, stars, father sun, mother moon, […]

Gurdjieff’s The Fourth Way to Consciousness: Background A core teachings is that there are three ways of being: the fakir (master of the physical body); the monk (master of faith and feeling); and, the yogi (master of mind development). A key goal is to KNOW yourself at the deepest levels. To KNOW is to be, […]

Calming Your Self-Critical Self with Mindfulness A core problem for many people is their incessant self (or other) criticism. This is a major part of our psychological mind suffering today. In the past life for most people was more difficult, so human basic needs were the energized priorities; today so many of us have been […]

Loving Kindness Meditation – More Thoughts Some less experienced meditators complain about how easily the mind’s wandering thoughts distract them from paying attention and deepening concentration. This is a very common problem in meditation practice, and not always just for novices. Here is a solution for you to try. In Loving Kindness Meditation, you focus […]

Understanding Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, hereafter CBT) has been noted as the most common evidence-based therapy approach used in the United States. That said, the most common “therapy” approach used here remains generic talk therapy with more or less psychodynamic characteristics. Given the absolute limited level of outcome-based evidence for effectiveness of […]

In-Depth Means to Discover and Be Your True Self Henry David Thoreau reminded us that it is not what you look at, but it is what you see that matters. How do you SEE yourself? John Muir reminded us that the sun shines in us as well as in our souls. Do you find “the […]

Are You Happier Yet? Use Practical Mindfulness Skills Two recent books offer sound advice about YOU becoming a happier person. L. Cypers Kamen (2017) Are You Happy Yet: Eight Keys to Unlocking a Joyful Life. New York: MFJ Books and D. Altman (2016) Cleansing Emotional Clutter… New York: MFJ Books offer practical ways to improve your personal level of happiness. […]

Henry David Thoreau & Walking Meditation Henry David Thoreau is, perhaps, the most individualistic of the American Transcendentalists. He asked us to consider what we have learned that is useful as we travel our own “stream of life.” He cautions us not to regret when we die that we “had not lived.” He advised us to […]

Pursuit of Happiness – Mindful Happiness Gilbert, a professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of Stumbling on Happiness, implies that we make mind-errors in our search for happiness. Happiness is a core human emotion, most often activated into consciousness via the midbrain reward centers and dopamine activation. Perhaps our hardwired brains are made to […]

More on Self-Compassion Practices Suffering and happiness represent opposites in human emotional experience. In our culture we often equate happiness with what we HAVE and suffering with the GAP between what we have versus what we want. Material possessions tend not to lead to intrinsic happiness; joy based on materials gains is often short-lived – […]

Mindfulness: A More Technical View of A more technical understanding of mindfulness, an understanding necessary for effective educational and clinical applications of such skills and practices, has been presented by S. A. Alper (2016). This view uses a pyramid as a symbolic metaphor for mindfulness applications. The details of this pyramid (the foundation, four sides, […]

Using Mindful Movement as a Form of Meditation Practice with the Body In Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction practices Hatha Yoga has been used as part of the recovery process from both psychological and physical suffering. In my own clinical use of mindful movement with children, youth and adults, I found that basic Qi Gong/Che Kung, Walking […]

My third posting on self-medication- Comes from the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont. Now we will turn our attention to how people become habituated to self-medication to obtain brief moments of joy and/or to avoid emotional suffering. Recall that self-medication becomes a habit (dopamine released in reward centers of the […]

How We Make Habits – An Understanding Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha reportedly taught how humans make habits. The insights of this earliest Buddhist Psychology sheds shame on the West, with its almost-the-same version of this view in the 20th century. One must wonder if B. F. Skinner or N. Chomsky knew about Buddhist […]

Liberate Yourself with Spiritual Energy Cultivating authentic inner and outer peace is the only way to a happy and good future. Learn to use your spiritual higher self to let go of self-centerednesss, greed, and entitlement. Work to free yourself from the endless grasping for material “things.” Does it really matter what kind of car […]

Zen Buddhist Practices – Egolessness In our practice we often inquire, and sometimes experience, the no-self and/or egolessness. What is egolessness? Who and what do we think we are? Some say that when we die the essence but not the ego lives on into new experiences. Karma and re-birth are givens in this spiritual view. […]

Showing Deep Love & Respect Loved Ones Lost This is a very brief post about love and respect for “lost loved ones” – those special people who have left their human body and mind behind. Two Rituals 1) Loving Kindness Meditation for Lost Loved Ones After breathing slowly and deeply for a few minutes in silence, […]