Happiness

Your happiness is greater than or equal to the difference between the perception of the events of your life and your hopes and expectations of how life should behave. – Mo Gawdat.

Psychological suffering in humans is simple. And so is happiness.

We suffer because our brain analyzes. We are happy when it doesn't.

Our mighty protector, the brain, wrangles our senses into a format we (consciousness) can observe.

Sensory information turns into thought.

Thought is then compared against another. And in that comparison is our deepest suffering—a dark hell.

We don't live in reality. We live in a perception of reality. A distorted, filtered, and generalized view of what our brain "thinks" is happening.

This is HUGE.

What are the implications of this?

The main implication is that there is no outside world.

Nothing truly outside of ourselves. How could there be? We're all having an incredibly detailed internal experience. It is so detailed that it seems the outside is actually outside. But is it?

This is critical. This change in perspective helps us escape the silly game our conditioning has us play.

Our minds are conditioned to expect life to work in specific ways. We expect the toaster to turn on when we push on the lever. We expect our car to start in the morning. We expect other drivers to know how to drive and control their vehicles. In return, other drivers expect the same of you.

We're all just conditioning each other. That is what society is, a melting pot of co-dependant conditioning.

And children eagerly pick up on it. We learn to expect the world to conform to how we and others expect it to be. To put a box around the chaos to control what we think we can control, but there's just one problem.

We are in control of absolutely nothing.

And that is what I call "hell on earth.":

• Conditioned expectations that we did not consent to
• Sensory input that our brain interprets.

Put the two together, and you've got a recipe for disaster. A false expectation compared to sensory data that has been generalized, deleted, and distorted is not even close to reality. It's a dream. We're living a dream. And in this dream, we sometimes let ourselves become deeply unhappy.

We can't stop perception, but we can reduce expectations.

My solution to this calamity is this:

If it's the case that we cannot control how our brain senses our world, we should solely focus on cleaning, inspecting & removing all expectations that arise in thought form.

This way, we can attempt to guarantee positive states by expecting nothing from reality.

We remove our unhappiness by changing the way we relate to expectations. We don't need to add happiness to our lives. We need to remove unhappiness.

How?

Whenever a thought arises in you, and it's asking for your consideration, ask yourself:

"Is this true?"

That's it. Be honest with yourself and see if what it's saying is true. 10/10, it's not. The brain is a pathological liar—an absolute maniac. It can NEVER touch truth since it doesn't have access to an instrument that can sense the world with 100% accuracy. The brain is guessing all the time.

And so, how can an expectation get triggered if we don't believe the thought to be true? It can't. And the analysis never happens. The comparison never gets made.

Happiness remains.

Joy. Bliss. Love. An avalanche of peace and all that is holy in this world. It's already here. We've just got to become more vigilant about our thoughts, inspect them, and train our brains to stop comparing.

All that's left is to BE happy. There is nothing more to do.