28-Day Programme for Real Happiness with Mollie: Day 28

By Mollie McClelland 23/09/2011

Day 28 -

I will close this blog with some observations over the last week.  Through going through the process in the last 6 weeks, I have felt my commitment to my practice increase.  I feel steady in it, I feel supported in it.  And that has been a great gift.  I have felt in many ways my relationship to my own states of being changing.  The way I react to difficult moments, troubling emotions, my own energy and exhaustion and even more so to my own thoughts. 

In the process of observation, deepening into my emotions and watching them more closely a new sense of expansiveness has come.

I would not necessarily say this book has “given me” “real happiness”.  However, I feel that as I use the tools and information in the book, I am detaching from the content of my emotions and thoughts more and more.

A good example of this process is happening with energy.  I have a great deal of physical energy, inquisitiveness, and ability to engage and create in the world.  But with that comes a kind of volatility.  That it tips over into mania or depletion quite quickly.  It can tip back quickly as well.  As I practice more, I feel more precisely and notice that the emotions and energies are deep and multifaceted.  And as I dive into them, so I also realise that they are veils that cover up deeper and deeper activities in the body/mind.  They become circular, layers upon layers over layers so that it is difficult to know what is the bottom.  Fear creates a need for activity, the activity creates thoughts and plans that tick away, the mind ticking away creates a kind of nervous energy, that nervous energy starts to activate the fear patterns in my mind.  The fear patterns in my mind create more need for activity.  In this feedback look, I never get down beyond the action/reaction.

So this is where the “real happiness’ comes in.  I see it.  That is already a major accomplishment.  And as I see it, I am not swept up in it.  I can see that perhaps there might also be another way.

This has uses in so many ways. I had nights with insomnia, in which stopping the feedback loop of “Get to sleep.  You need to sleep, why aren’t you sleeping?!?  Oh my god, I am going to be so tired…la la la.”  So at 4 am, instead of simmering in those thoughts, which only create more anxiety, I decided to sit.  And I didn’t go back to sleep.  And I was tired.  But it was ok.  And it was even more ok because I didn’t keep feeding the negativity, the worry and the anxiety inside.

It is not real happiness in the sense that you never have sleepless nights, or dark thoughts.  It is not real happiness in the sense that difficult emotions cease, or you are in a state of permanent glee.  It is happiness in a sense that I feel more able to navigate and ride the changing states of emotion and thought.  I feel skilful in my reactions to the content of my thoughts and fears.  And I feel a freedom in my ability to manoeuvre through the changes, experiencing them with full(er) awareness and a sense of peace.

Meditative practice is something that never ends.  “Real happiness” is not a destination but a process.  I know I will use this book again, as I fall off the path, and as I get back on.  It doesn’t end here, but begins again.  That is one of the major motifs of the book, and will be part of what I keep remembering as the practice goes on.

Om Tat Sat.

Om Shanti
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