Outline
- Beliefs are predictions about the consequences of actions.
- The only judgment, beliefs, or thoughts that affect happiness are judgments, beliefs, and thoughts about your happiness.
- When you know your happy, you can act unhappy, or fool around with being unhappy, secure in your knowledge of happiness.
- To define happiness as someplace you don’t want to go is to call unhappiness “happiness”.
- In happiness there is no reason to do anything, and no reason to not do anything.
- If you don’t know what to do, you can watch, wait, and see.Introduction
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico answers a variety of questions about what stands in the way of happiness.
He shows the way beyond such myths such as: “I need to stop having beliefs in order to be happy”, “words and thinking are the cause of unhappiness”, “happiness would cause me to not be motivated to do what I’m motivated to do.”
Beliefs Are Not a Problem
Questioner: It seems like believing is the problem, that we should not hold any beliefs if we want to be happy.
In believing there are questions. In knowing, there are no questions. Believing is a predictive guessing fantasy.
Now the only judgment and beliefs that are really going to affect your happiness are judgments and beliefs that have to do with your happiness. It might not make much of a difference to your happiness for you to make a prediction about where the stock market is going to go, as long as your money, or your lack of it, is not going to be something that you’re going to make a judgment that you’ll be happy about or not. A person who is really being happy might not make judgments or beliefs about their happiness, but they might make them about anything else, knowing that they are only just judgments, they are only just guesses, they’re only just beliefs, which they’re doing in order to get something or to conduct some business or to negotiate or to relate to someone.
There isn’t anything certain about any belief, and the reality of who you really are or what things really are, I needn’t know for sure if I know that my happiness is not implicated.. So since I needn’t know with certainty, I can guess, I can predict, I can believe. Why don’t I need to know? Because the only thing I need to be is happy. Only if my happiness is contingent upon my knowing would I need to know, only if my happiness is contingent upon those beliefs about whether the sun will rise, whether the stock market will fall, would I want to get out of beliefs. The only future I’m really concerned to know is my future happiness.
If we were happier, we wouldn’t be afraid to predict or foresee the future, and then whatever was in our power to make clear would be clear. What is truly unforeseeable by us is truly unforeseeable by us. But most of us suffer from screwing ourselves by unclear thinking, predicting something that somebody with clear thinking would never predict: getting into a situation, pretty much being able to know what the outcome would be, but fearing to see that — not wanting to see that until it was “too late”, so to speak, and then regretting it. And the feeling of stressful thinking that some complain about is maybe a lot of irrelevant things that we search for because we don’t feel happier.
There are two ways of looking at happiness: we can consider happiness in itself, or happiness in things, so that if we were seeking happiness in itself, I think we could all agree. If we are seeking happiness in things, some of us believe that what prevents happiness is one thing, and other believes it is another. Some of us believe that what prevents happiness is unclear thinking. Some of us believe it’s in fear. Some of us believe it’s in unhappiness.
Questioner: Do you think it is ever possible to let go of all the fears at once?
I’d like to answer you in two ways, one directly, and one indirectly. Directly: yes, I think it happens. I myself have experienced it. Now the question that follows for me from that is, if it happens, why doesn’t it happen once and for all? Why does it only just happen at times? I definitely know for myself, and you probably all know for yourselves that there have been times when that really has happened — when you’ve let go of everything and you’ve really been okay. The second way I’d like to answer is this: even if I thought it were impossible for us to do let go of all fears, even if all of us thought it were impossible to do that, who are we? Has our past history given us the competence to make that kind of a judgment, whether it is possible or not? Even if the wisest man in the world, or an angel, were to come to me and say it wasn’t possible, I think my feeling would be “I don’t care whether it’s possible or not, I’m going to try to do it, I’m not going to let something so little as thinking it is impossible stop me.” So that whether we will ever really do it once and for all or whether we will do it more and more and more, we’re going to try. We want to. That would be the way I’d really like to answer you. Don’t let a little thing like impossibility stop you. In fact, how many of us do believe it is impossible, yet we’re still wanting to with all our hearts? We walk around really believing that true happiness, real happiness, perfect happiness is impossible, and yet everything we do is geared to that end.
My own experience about the “once and for all” is this: I’m so sure that the freedom and peace is always there, I can kind of walk away and ignore it, because I know it’s there, and if ever I wanted it, it’d be there for me. At those time’s, I’m even aware of that. At those times, of being really at peace, I also know, I don’t have to be at peace. I really don’t have to. And maybe it’s something like this: you could have a million dollars, but you don’t have to sit and look at it; because you know you’ve got it, you can throw it in the bank, and walk around and act as it you were poor. People can get into giving up everything, and going away somewhere to be a missionary or something. Very frequently, the people who allow themselves to do that have made themselves very secure first and they have that to fall back on. And so they’ve got a lot of money, and then they’ll go off, and they’ll live poorly. And somehow, they could live that way for the rest of their life, as long as they just know that their money is in the bank. And you will find people who have sought out money all their whole lives, and put it in a shoe box, or in the closet, or some such thing just so that they could live poorly — just in case. Well I think, that I do that with my own peace, because I know I have it, because I know it’s mine, I can kind of act crazy. What’s the difference? I could sort of be messed up.
A lot of people say that perfect happiness means dying. They believe that if they were to achieve that state that they would have to die, that somehow it would just mean the end of them. That it’s a kind of suicide, a kind of explosion to the whole universe, and something inside them rebels against that.
We’re trying to imagine and see if there’s anything that’s preventing us from being perfectly happy. Could it be that the reason we’re not already happy is because there is something that we think is there that is frightening? The question began as “why are we not already happy: We see it as somehow not such a good place to be, in some way. Some people see it as a deadly place. I’d like to say, “why don’t you get there, and tell me what it’s like?” And then you say “but I don’t really know if I want to go there.” And that’s the inherent contradiction. Where you don’t want to go is not what are talking about! That would be unhappiness!
We have that fantastic ability of making real happiness equal unhappiness, to imagine that there’d be something about real happiness to be afraid of. Now happiness itself becomes an object of fear, and it’s even a contradiction in language, I think by the very fact that we’re reasonable, rational, have to have reasons and causes, we can’t accept a place where there is no reason to be there. And there really is no reason to be happy. We have all kinds of reasons to be unhappy, but we have no reasons to be happy. When I’m really at peace and really happy, I understand those who talk about non-functioning: I see very clearly, there is no reason for me to eat, there is no reason for me to sleep, there is no reason for me to work, and there is no reason for me to do anything anymore, there is no reason whatsoever, and so then I say to myself what am I going to do if I have no reasons for doing anything? What I usually answer myself is watch, wait and see.
It makes no difference, why should I go to work? Why not? Why should I stay home? Why not? Why go to work, why stay home? No reason. Okay, what am I going to do? Watch and find out. And I watch myself do these things. And that’s a way of living without reasoning and really being in peace.
Questioner: If beliefs and fears can go on to anything, why deal in words?
Because words are where your fears are going onto right now. See, that’s what we do, whether it be words or other forms of behavior. Why deal with behavior even? When you really do see that you don’t need to have any beliefs, what are you going to do with your ability to believe? Why should you throw away your ability to believe?
Sometimes we get a gift, and we feel so fantastic, but sometimes there is a tinge of insecurity that goes along with it, because there is also the recognition that somehow happiness is happening to me, I’m not really in control, I just found myself being happy. It was because of something. If we’ve invested a thing with the magic of making us happy, we get the “magic pebble” and feel happy, but we also know we’re playing our game, so there’s an insecurity there. What more can you do for the world, to make one more happy person?
We talk about happiness, because happiness is what we say is better, and better is what we call happiness. Happiness and better are kind of equivalent terms. Better is a judgment that we make: “I will benefit from that”. I could say “I better be happy” or “it’s better to be happy” but that’s what happier means.
Questioner: What if people have inherent imperfections?
I know that you’re happy, whether you admit it or not. By my definition, I can know that you’re happy. Because you’re really happy, you can do everything your doing. You could also act unhappy, and you could make believe you’re unhappy, and you can make believe you have all kinds of reasons to be unhappy, and you can act as if you are unhappy, because you really are happy. Who or what could possibly disprove that?
Questioner: How do you know I’m happy?
Why do you even need to know why I know, if I know, how I know? It’s not for your benefit I know; see my telling you that I know is not keeping you from your benefit.
Just what if you were really innocent? And there wasn’t an evil bone in your body, but yet, you believed somehow that you weren’t. I responded to so many people who think that something is wrong with them, that there is something bad about them, believing that. How will they act, then? As if there was something wrong with them and that there was something bad about them. I’ve never met a bastard who didn’t believe more than I did that he was a bastard.
We want to know that we’re not bad. We somehow must be believing that we are, otherwise why would we want to know that we’re not? We want to believe we’re justified in things. Somehow we’re believing we’re not justified. So what if you were perfectly happy? Essentially happy, really happy, and the kingdom of God was within you, what if that were really so — but you just didn’t believe it? And you believe that it was something you had to strive for or work toward or achieve or accomplish, something that you would get someday. That would be enough to make it as if it weren’t true, and it’s being true would be almost be irrelevant. Almost irrelevant. And you would then be afraid, which might have nothing to do with the reality of the fact that you are essentially happy, and that the kingdom of God is within you.
Questions for Reflection
What beliefs do you have that, if you found out they were factually incorrect, would have no consequence for your happiness?
What judgments do you make that you could change your mind about, and it would have no consequence for your happiness?
What would you still do even if you had no reason to do it beyond a movement toward doing it?
Meditation for the Week
If you don’t know what to do, you can watch, wait, and see.