Let Your Feelings Alone

What is happiness? Is it a feeling?

If I feel happy, that must be good, right? I should strive to feel happy all the time. Because feeling happy makes me feel happy.

But sometimes I don’t feel happy. I can’t help it. It’s out of my control that sometimes, I don’t feel happy. I feel sad, or cranky, or worried about something, or a general uneasiness about nothing in particular comes over me. That makes me feel bad – feeling bad makes me feel bad – and so I have to wait for it to pass, distract myself, or read up on how there is “no person” here to feel bad. Or, I try to fix the circumstances, in the hopes that better circumstances make better feelings.

But something abut this whole plan seems flawed. Sometimes I’m happy and I call that good. Sometimes I’m unhappy and I call that bad. It goes back and forth like that all the time, beyond my control. Sometimes happy lasts for a day, sometimes an hour, sometimes a few seconds. Same with unhappy. The feelings and moods of my body and mind shift and change all the time – like the tides, but less predictable. Knocked about by events, the weather, brain chemicals, and a million other factors, our feelings are simply not indicators of anything important at all. They vary – that’s it. Why would I attach my “happiness” to something so erratic, so undependable?

Happiness must be something deeper than a feeling. I’m not interested in the kind of happiness that is defined this way:  “As I reflect on what’s gone on in my life recently, I feel that things are going the way I want them to. My body feels good right now, my caffeine has kicked in, I have money in the bank, and my boyfriend is being a sweetheart. Life is good.”

Why am I not interested in that kind of happiness? Because all of that is going to change. As soon as my caffeine wears off, I’m going to be a misanthrope who can’t believe what a jerk that guy crossing the street is, and things are going to seem pretty bleak in my future. Back and forth, all day long.

Welcome to the world of feelings! This is what they are! They’re insane! Why would I be interested in them?

So what is it then? What’s the answer to this dilemma? Is there a happiness that is not insane, not changeable, not susceptible to every shifting breeze? Yes, and it’s a happiness – a natural joy – that is based on freedom from feelings.

This freedom is here always. The freedom is the freedom from thinking any feeling I have has to change. Let’s say I wake up with some feeling of dread or unease. Fine! That is okay. It has never taken any of my freedom away for any feeling to happen or not happen – it’s only making up a story that I need to change the way I’m feeling that has ever obscured my freedom.

So what is true now? Do I have a feeling? Yes, and it is free to be there, whatever it is. The feeling does not have any power to hurt me. Trying to change or eliminate the feeling simply makes me have another feeling that is uncomfortable, and none of them amount to anything.

So the point is, what you are feeling is not the indicator of your freedom. And so you can quit trying to have a certain feeling. You can quit trying to control the feelings, or the circumstances that appear to create the feelings. The feelings are insane, powerless, and worthless, and the freedom from them is in recognizing that fact. 

It’s deeper than a feeling, it’s bigger than you. It’s impersonal, and not about your needs. There is an acceptance or an appreciation that things are just as they are, and there is a peace and joy in that which is quite different from a happy feeling. It is different because it is not personal. It is not about what you need. This appreciation does not arise from a personal feeling, or from a personal need being met.

Feelings are not the source of your uncaused joy – uncaused joy is always yours. Your very being is uncaused joy. The freedom, the joy, is always here. Trying to fix your feelings is what obscures it. Let your feelings alone.