what if i lose happy

So its times like these when i hope no one really reads this. yes i know people do, but when my thoughts keep me awake, and there is no one in particular to talk to, writing here means the world is there listening to me, instead of just my computer or notebook of paper. and when i say world, i don't even mean all the particular individuals that compose the world. i mean it in the sense of mother earth, or simply the living breathing organism that is the internet, more just the collective rather than some sort of scary 'i hope someone, anyone reads this'...just the world as a whole...a personification.

i'm just wondering about happy. i am and have been for quite some time now. i think, somewhat irrationally perhaps but at 4am nothing is clearly definable by reason, that i've credited happiness with all of the good things that have happened to me in this time. and we all know that you are a better person to those in your life when you are happy. less likely to argue, get irritated, take things personally, let things bottle up, even take things in TO bottle up. so chicken or egg here. i always thought it was very neat that you are less likely to have problems if you are happy. but maybe, like those unhappy people always told me, they would be happier if they had less problems. and these problems are in our head half the time. for me to be happy, i need to feel healthy, fit, intellectually occupied, stimulated, and productive, be living my own schedule, be living a varied, never monotonous schedule, and have enough alone time. its starting to seem, and never did before, or maybe its just tonight and i'm making generalizations that i shouldn't, that this is a lot of work to maintain. a lot of these things could even be stricken from my control. when i thought it was easy, i scoffed at the unhappy people in my life...'don't they get it? if they just turned on what makes them happy, they wouldn't attract all this negativity or have to be so hard on the ones they love which is in turn making them unhappy.'

i clearly need a more 3D medium, a kind of tangible thought web to follow and organize these thoughts, but i'm also thinking here about where lies the real you. when you are happy and so less argumentative, less grouchy, isn't that just some kind of brain chemical prozac. is it really your reaction to the things people do to you and they way the treat you if your happiness makes you more likely to let things roll off your back? certainly when i'm unhappy, i noticed increased irritability that doesn't feel REAL. being very conscious of these things, i identify it as 'not me, just my bad mood.' but then couldn't the same be said for happy...'not me, just my good mood.' where then do you find your justice for what you really think is right and wrong in how people treat you; where is your guide for whether or not that thing is really making you angry, or whether your anger was simply looking for an outlet? i've always simply used the way i emotionally react as my gauge...people have said to me ' oh that SHOULD make you angry' and instead of becoming angry because most people would, i assess whether or not the thing really bothers me. but if its a little thing that changes depending on mood, where is the truth?

and what happens if i stop being as cool, flexible, laid back, low maintenance as a friend, optimistic?
do you stop attracting positivity or does it stop attracting you?
and who will be left of the fair weather friends?

Ah-un

"You approach Shinto shrines...and the entrances are usually guarded by a pair of stone lion-dogs...komu-inu, "Korean dogs"...One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open mouthed lion-dog is named Ah, the other is named Un, or more properly, nn. "Ah" is the first sound you make when you are born, "nn" the last sound you make when you die. "Ah" is the breath inhaled that begins life, "nn" the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. Ah is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, n the last. And so, between these two lion-dogs, you also have the A and the Z, the Alpha and Omega. In the original Sanskrit, ah-un means, "the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed."

In Japan, people who are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in duet, are called ah/un-no-kokyu. Kokyu means "breathing," and the phrase suggests perfect, exquisite harmony: ah/un-no-kokyu, two or more breathing as one. If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, then common breath is the ideal to which Japan-and indeed, much of Asia-aspires. The word harmony in Japanese has the same cachet that the word freedom has in the West...

On a less esoteric level, ah-un also refers to old married couples (or even old friends) who have been together for so long that they no longer have to finish their sentences. One begins with "Ah..." and the other agrees with "Nn..." (which is the Japanese equivalent of "uh-huh") and the entire meaning is understood."

-Hitching Rides with Buddha, Will Ferguson

'neath the stars

"I saw then that my sense of me being me was exactly the same thing as my sensation of being one with the whole cosmos. I did not need to have some sort of different, odd kind of experience to feel in total connection with everything. Once you get the clue you see that the sense of unity is inseparable from the sense of difference. You would not know yourself, or what you meant by self, unless at the same time you had the feeling of other.
Now the secret is that the other eventually turns out to be you. The element of surprise in life is when suddenly you find the thing most alien turns out to be yourself. Go out at night and look at the stars and realize that they are millions and billions of miles away, vast conflagrations far out in space. You can lie back and look at that and say "Well, surely I hardly matter. I am just a tiny little speck aboard this weird spotted bit of dust called earth....

this guy knows what we're talking about

..and all that was going on out there billions of years before I was born and will still be going on billions of years after I die." Nothing seems stranger to you than that, or more different from you, yet there comes a point, if you watch long enough, when you will say "Why that's me!" It is the other that is the condition of your being yourself, as the back is the condition of being the front, and when you know that, you will never die."
-Alan Watts, Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life

why not change our names? some things we won't recognize . .
some will remain the same
some people roll a stone . .
find out they were never really even in their home

underneath the stars there are a million ways to be the way you are . .
all of them dying
underneath the rays there'll be a million ways to live the days ahead . .
why are we crying?

there were words . . on my skin . .
you touched them & they woke again . . now they're on the wind . .
-railroad earth, 'neath the stars

and yet...sometimes? ...you can still find yourself completely disconnected and completely, completely alone, in the most beautiful sense.

balance

"When feeling balanced, one is free.
In that very balance is freedom, in that very balance is equilibrium, tranquility, silence.

When the head is too much...it does not allow anything that is not profitable to exist. And all joy is profitless, all joy is just playfulness; it has no purpose. Love is play, it has no purpose; so is dance, so is beauty. All that is significant to the heart is meaningless to reason.

So in the beginning one has to put much investment into the heart so the balance is achieved. One has almost to lean too much toward the heart. One has to go to the other extreme to create the balance. By and by one comes into the middle, but first one has to go to the other extreme, because reason has dominated too much."
-Osho, Everyday Osho

the way...

people spend their lives consumed by the "next step," the future, their blueprint for how their life is supposed to go or was supposed to be...I only ask, for what?

..."I felt numb as I said farewell to my team in Arizona and boarded a jet, heading back to Berkeley, and Socrates...I looked aimlessly at the clouds below, drained of ambition. All these years I had been sustained by an illusion - happiness through victory - and now that illusion was burned to ashes. I was no happier, no more fulfilled, for all my achievements.
Finally I saw through the clouds. I saw that I had never learned how to enjoy life, only how to achieve. All my life I had been busy seeking happiness, not finding it...
'Wake up! If you knew for certain that you had a terminal illness - if you had little time left to live - you would waste precious little of it! Well, I'm telling you, Dan - you DO have a terminal illness: It's called birth. You don't have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason - or you will never be at all...'
...be content with this knowledge: There is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all One, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor, and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life; just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too!...Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, you are already free!"

Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

hibernation...

"There is no need to remain warm for twenty-four hours. That would be tiring. One needs a little rest. When you are cold, the energy is moving inward; when you are warm, the energy is moving outward. Of course, other people would like you always to be warm, because then your energy moves toward them. When you are cold, your energy is not moving toward them, so they feel offended. They will tell you that you are cold. But it is for you to decide.
In those cold moments you hibernate, you go within your being. Those are meditative moments. So this is my suggestion -- when you feel cold, close the doors from relationships and moving with people. Feeling that you are cold, go home and meditate. That is the right moment to meditate. With energy itself moving in, you can ride on it and go to the very innermost core of your being. There will be no fight. You can simply move with the current. And when you are feeling warm, move out. Forget all about meditation. Be loving. Use both states, and don't worry about it."

Osho, excerpt from Everyday Osho

...wishing I had seen this right after the holidays, though glad to know i've been true to it lately, before reading it...

tilted

sit inside
the distance
(between the sun and the earth)
where snowflakes are born
beautiful
lone
crystalline droplets
each unique
from the next
none like another
the ground seemed cold
but will warm when lined
with the pages of books
and the sparks of the mandolin
the beauty and magic
of the season
has left you saturated
soaked through to the skin
unbutton it from yourself
peel off the layers
and leave only your nakedness
hang it out to dry
and trust
the distance
(between the sun and the earth)
the gravity
that will keep you on the ground
and upright once again

you came like thunder, stayed like christmas, and you feel better than the sun
-chris robinson

a reply: insistence on the proof

love is not a fantasy. love exists.

When it exists in reality, it is a world of beautiful truth, a world that admits it knows no 'forever' and cannot and does not fathom 'always.' It is the world of two becoming, never one, but TWO happier individuals, a world of real love, of falling in love, and of appreciating love and its potentially fleeting composition which lends to its beauty. Its not to be worshipped, but respected, admired, and cultivated, only to the extent that it is never a chore or an obligation. It is patient with pains that don’t need or want to heal,and there to help in whatever way it can or is asked to. It can captivate, but is never the pinnacle of all things, only the rungs on the ladder to freedom and happiness. It most certainly can inspire, but should not be a sole source of inspiration.

What the wise see as love is the sometimes synchronistic tendency of two individuals’ thoughts, smiles, emotions, hormones, and intellect. It should never attempt to join these individuals as one, because what should have brought the two together in the first place was the admiration for the other’s wholeness, not the admiration for the other’s admiration. Real love understands that its okay to never completely know, understand, think, or feel as one, and this ensures an attainable reality with lack of expectations that will inevitably be incredibly satisfying for both individuals. There will always be wonder and novelty in rediscovering the other, and watching from the sidelines as the other makes their own discoveries to share if they wish. Real love knows that this love should not become everything in the other's life, and understands that it is not possible find or be all the things that one needs in another person. Completeness should come from within one’s self, not from being with or possessing the parts of another.

Love should never become a tangled web of obligation and expectation where consolation is found by the pacification of long term fears with short term joys. Desires and demands must be dropped, and attachment will not have the roots to grow. Only then will the truth shine through allowing moments of beauty that overshadow any fantasy that could have been imagined (but fantasizing should be dropped as its simply expectation’s easy cousin).

If there is ANY greediness revealed, it should only be a hankering for the other’s happiness to be found wherever it occurs naturally, without claiming credit. Love should never be pursued, only found in the flow of one’s own life, allowing the other to share where they fit. Time has no bearing, as there is only now, and the present IS the present, the best gift to receive. Shared interests and activities should only enhance and should diverge when the flow of energy diverts those things to other people and places, like the two people themselves. When the beauty is overshadowed by efforts, struggles, bargains, and fights, the two should admit their purpose in each other’s lives has been served and move on with their individual lives once again. If others observe the love, that is fine, but its not something to be shown off or worn like a medal of conquest. Real love should be impossible to pin down, and undesirable once fenced in, a product of the appreciation of its free spirit, intangibility, and inability to be defined or put in any sort of box, impossible to be collected in any sort of way, and an expression of an honest overflowing of happiness.

Only then is love right, and only for as long as these qualities can be felt...

Love is "...not its meaning, but its feeling; not its permanence, but its moment; not its fulfillment of our expectation, but its truth; not its “fantasy”, but its reality.”

...only then will love become so much more...

19, maybe 20, braingasms

So I had an IM chat today of epic philosophical proportion that was quite the mirror facing a mirror. The discussion's topic itself was of that very idea of the cyclical nature of EVERYTHING, and then how that reflects my own life experience is mind blowing.
Here is how it went:
Yang, "what does humanity's progress curve look like...as far as advancement and evolving...like people like you and I think about all the ways productive thought it being stifled these days...the ways people distract themselves from really thinking...back in the old days when there was no tv/entertainment...when mathematicians and philosophers made all their advances because that was all there was to DO...SIT AROUND AND THINK...so they developed all these crazy theories and plus back then most of it was original thought....now when we make advances they are built on that foundation so NOT AS MUCH HAS TO BE CREATED FROM SCRATCH, btu advances are still profound bc we're so far along so the material theories and ideas we are starting with are already so evolved...so when we do make steps forward, they are still huge...."

Yin, "it's probably exponential...like everything else"
Yang, "precisely what I was thinking"

Yin, "but, then again, an actualized humanity would be very powerful...i don't think it could happen without first casting off the shackles of institutionalized control, however."

Yang, "would evolution become static?"
Yin, "i don't think so...as Bill Hicks states, if we weren't so busy watching 'American Gladiators' and blowing each other up, we could actually move towards exploring inner and outer space as a team, as a species"

Yang, "hmm...but would be, or is actualization saying we wouldn't feel the need to, because 'its all good, and it is just what it is.'"

Yin, "actualization for me is the state of bliss induced by creativity"
Yang, "hmm, actualization for me RESULTS in creativity"

Yin, "haha...in order to be creative you need to be actualized?"
Yang, "no no...it can happen before or after but certainly when i feel the bliss of actualization, i'm it makes me feel productive in a creative sense"
Yin, "i feel as though if i'm not being creative, i'm not reaching my potential, and therefore not actualized"
Yang, "see when i feel i'm reaching that potential, i'm inspired to see what i can create from it...we are saying the same thing, we just differ on chicken or the egg...REALLY ITS ALL A CYCLE, like everything else"
Yin, "indeed...similar to music and mood, one affects the other, symbiotically, as does creativity/actualization"
Yang, "freedom/love"

Yin, "symbiosis, and i definitely appreciate when biological terms can be applied to philosophy"
Yang, "or the one i came up with "symbiOASIS...when two things are so symbiotic that its bliss"

Yin, "or maybe mutualism?"


Yang, "ooh i forgot that symbiosis has to do with DEPENDENCY...i don't like it anymore...in my personal adaptation of the term, it doesn't fit..."
Yin, "so perhaps mutualism is a better term? i don't think dependency in these circumstances is necessarily a negative...as all biological systems are interdependent, so are philosophical ones..."

Yang, "but i used it in such a way to describe two INDEPENDENT people being symbiotic...how can independence be dependent?"
Yin, "but think back to Alan Watts, 'The Book'"

and the ideas I had trouble allowing to agree in my brain...as they seem like contradictions...that you are alone in this world and your experience is completely your own and no one else could ever really know you or have your experience...but at the same time, we are all connected, which i've also seen and known to be true...

so my idea of symbiOASIS created by two INDEPENDENT things joins those two theories and perfectly depicts what i believe and shows how freedom can be a trap, independence can yield positive dependence, etc etc!!!

and then!
Yin says, "did you scroll down on the mutualism wiki page?? "The question how and why species might cooperate has also been addressed philosophically. Gilles Deleuze, for example, was interested in the way this questioned the conception of evolutionism and the notion of linear historical progress."

SCROLL BACK UP...WHERE DID THIS CONVERSATION BETWEEN YIN AND YANG BEGIN??

and then yin says "isn't it funny, too, that we're so concerned in creativity, but might consider ourselves to be 'evolutionists'...where the great "debate" of creation-evolution has existed all this time?"


and there again...why does it have to be one or the other when both so clearly need each other to exist but can't exist without being their own independent separate entities to begin with????

creativity <> evolution <> actualization <> potential <> independence <> interdependence <> [how the heck to i make an infinity symbol on the keyboard...i need it to reflect 1. the discussion's topic 2. the discussion itself 3. how i feel about my life and its endless possibility for exploration 4. life itself]
karma, energy in, energy out

why being alone, apart is essential

"When you have moved into a deep relationship with somebody, a great need arises to be alone. You start feeling spent, exhausted, tired -- joyously tired, happily tired, but each excitement is exhausting. It was tremendously beautiful to relate, but now you would like to move into aloneness, so that you can again gather yourself together, so that you can again become overflowing, so that again you become rooted in your own being.
...Love arises out of aloneness. Aloneness makes you overfull. Love receives your gifts. Love empties you so that you can become full again. Whenever you are emptied by love, aloneness is there to nourish you, to integrate you. And this is a rhythm...
Love is a spontaneous phenomenon. Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn't happen it doesn't happen...
When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone...so that he can again gather together his being, so that again he has energy to share. And this rhythm is like day and night, summer and winter; it goes on changing..."
Osho, "Intelligence"

more than ever imagined..

"If two persons are really respectful - and love is always respectful, it reveres the other...then slowly, slowly you will understand each other more and more and you will become aware of the other's rhythm and your rhythm. And soon you will find that out of love, out of respect, your rhythms are coming closer and closer. When you feel loving, she feels loving; this settles. This settles on its own, it is a synchronicity.
...Stupid people do just the opposite. They never leave each other alone - they are constantly with each other, tiring and boring each other, never leaving any space for the other to be (and to grow!!).
Love gives freedom and love helps the other to be himself or herself.

You love, but your love gives freedom - and, when you give freedom to the other, you are free. Only in freedom does your soul grow. You will feel very, very happy

Love is a very paradoxical phenomenon. ...In another way it gives you individuality; uniqueness. It helps you to drop your small selves but it also helps you to attain to the supreme self. Then there is no problem: Love and meditation are two wings, and they balance each other. And between the two (love and meditation) you grow; between the two you become whole.

Osho: Love, Freedom, Aloneness

Rooted

"And when a person meditates he starts flowering...When you are silent, rooted in your being, centered, your talents automatically start functioning. You start functioning the way existence always wanted you to function...You become spontaneous. You start doing your thing -- and now you don't bother whether it pays or not, whether it makes you more respectable or not. It makes you happy, and that's enough. It makes you tremendously joyful, and that is more than enough."

-Osho, "Joy"

all around you

"I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within
the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a
situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance.
Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I
believe."
-Wayne Coyne

"the first thing to be understood about happiness is that it cannot be practiced. It has only to be allowed, because it is not something you create...what you create cannot be bigger than you...it has to be received as a gift in tremendous trust, in total surrender. In a state of let-go true happiness happens. "

"Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy...If you love the work you are doing, if you love the way you are living...A celebrating attitude comes first. A life-affirming philosophy comes first. Enjoy! If you cannot enjoy your work, change. Don't wait! Because all the time that you are waiting you are waiting for Godot and Godot is never going to come. One simply waits and wastes one's life. For whom, for what are you waiting?...You have to decide for yourself, you have to take your life in your own hands."

osho, "joy"

"Why do so many people look so dull, bored, just passing the days somehow? Passing tremendously valuable time which they will not be able to recover-and passing with such dullness, as if only waiting for death. What has happened to so many people? Why don't they have the same freshness as the trees? Why doesn't man have the same song as the birds?"

osho, "intelligence"

Be self, be free

"To be totally free one needs to be totally aware, because our bondage is rooted in our unconsciousness; it does not come from the outside. Nobody can make you unfree. You can be destroyed but your freedom cannot be taken away unless you give it away. In the ultimate analysis it is always your desire to be unfree that makes you unfree. It is your desire to be dependent, your desire to drop the responsibility of being yourself, that makes you unfree.

The moment one takes responsibility for oneself...And remember it is not all roses, there are thorns in it; it is not all sweet, there are many bitter moments in it. The sweet is always balanced by the bitter, they always come in the same proportion...Life keeps a balance between the polar opposites. So one who is ready to accept responsibility of being oneself with all its beauties, bitterness, its joys and agonies, can be free...

And always remember: ecstasy cannot live without agony, life cannot exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sadness...

Accept the responsibility of being yourself as you are, with all that is good and with all that is bad, with all that is beautiful and that which is not beautiful. In that acceptance a transcendence happens and one becomes free."

Osho, "Freedom"