During this last month of the Summer of Yoga for Happiness, I want us to consider unreasonable happiness. This is when you feel happy for no reason at all. You just ARE happy. You may think it takes a lot of work to get there. Yet, all we really need to do is let go.
Unreasonable happiness describes our primordial, intrinsic state of well-being.
It’s what exists behind the veil of mind chatter that sometimes is more insidious than just chatter. The mind can get stuck in a vicious cycle of self-doubt, sadness, anger, anxiety, or any of the other highly charged emotional states. These emotionally charged states are difficult to navigate. This pattern is normal. As the chatter intensifies, gets louder, and takes up more space in our mind, it clouds our natural happy state. We conceal happiness from ourselves.
Something I’ve observed recently is that one specific way we veil our own happiness is by trying to resolve what’s unresolvable. Being a recovering perfectionist, it’s difficult for me to let something remain unresolved or unfinished. I really don’t like starting a new project until the one I’m working on is completed. One of my personal quirks is that before I cook a meal, I need the kitchen to be clean and put away from the previous meal. It clears my mind and helps me start fresh.
But it’s a different story when it comes to the mind, relationships, or life goals. These things are not as easily “put away” or controlled. If you are attached to getting things finished or resolved, then you might be limiting your happiness.
The Tantra teaches us that we’ll never be able to know everything there is to know or get everything done because we live in a perfectly unfinished universe of becoming.
The universe is becoming more of itself every day. It’s not done, nor will it ever be done. It’s eternally expanding and accelerating. Since we come from the universe and we ARE the universe embodied, we are perfectly unfinished too!
There’s a subtle art to the practice of yoga and meditation that requires us to be okay with all that’s unresolved in our lives while continuing on our journey. We recognize and accept that some things will never be resolved. And if they finally do get resolved, it will have nothing to do with us.
Trying to control the uncontrollable is a complete buzzkill for happiness.
Those of you, who, like me, receive great joy from completion and who are a little bit on the “perfection spectrum,” may have a little struggle with letting go of resolution. I try to come to resolution from a different angle now. I choose to be resolved with all that’s unresolved in my life. It’s a choice to be okay even when things are out of control.
What has really helped me in the past is to breathe. Whenever I feel like resolving something, I note to myself that here I go again trying to resolve the unresolvable, and then I take a deep breath. Just one deep breath is all it takes to interrupt the pattern.
Trying to solve the unsolvable steals our joy away. We get stuck perseverating about how to resolve something that may be entirely unresolvable. For instance, I recently bought a new computer. The one I had been using was from 2014 and was falling apart. What I didn’t know is that when you upgrade your computer and if you want all of your files to migrate from the old computer to the new one, you have to use the same version of operating system.
Naively, when prompted by the new computer to update the operating system before the migration happened, I clicked yes. This made it very challenging to migrate certain files, like my music files. Several other types of files also did not migrate, and I spent hours with Apple technicians to try to fix the problem. Still to this date, my music files are not resolved.
I’ve had to let this issue be unresolved until a later date when I have the time and the mental bandwidth to tackle the situation again.
In the meantime, I can’t tell you how many times I let my frustration fly. Usually to myself in private, but sometimes it would leak out with my co-workers. I’m so grateful to the team for their understanding and empathy. We all understand the frustration of learning new technology. Sometimes it’s easy, but most times it’s a pain in the butt until things get worked out.
The inner resolve to allow and make space for the unresolved is an important part of any meditation practice.
Otherwise, how would the endless mind chatter ever quiet down? I’ve discovered that the most important heart virtue for allowing the unresolved simply to be, is patience. Such a straightforward virtue yet so very difficult to practice.
Patience creates the holding space for whatever is unresolved or incomplete in your world to reside. Patience says, “It’s okay that you don’t have the answer right now.” “I’m comfortable waiting as long as it takes to figure this out.” “I’m okay just being here.”
Taking a closer look at patience reveals that it’s composed of threads of acceptance of what is, surrender without collapsing or giving up, forbearance, inner strength, and the capacity to hold a calm space no matter how urgent a situation appears. Patience takes the rush out of things. It takes the panic, the urgency, and the “I’m going to die if this doesn’t happen” out of the moment. During meditation practice, this is very important because it takes time and patience for the mental chatter to calm down.
In fact, without patience, meditation will most likely be a struggle.
In the Ashaya approach to meditation, we repeat the thought of the mantra HAM SA (I am that) in a slow, repetitive, and steady way. When you can do this as though you had all the time in the world, without trying to make something happen, you release expectation and cultivate the heart virtue of patience. Within that, you allow all that is unanswered, all that is unresolved, and all that is incomplete to be okay just as it is.
When you’re able to do that, what happens next (which is outside of your control) is that your awareness goes deeper inside yourself, and you begin to access a very subtle space of absolute stillness, calm, and inner peace. You touch the deepest source of life within you that vibrates with ultimate joy and happiness, unreasonable happiness, happiness for no reason.
