Want Happiness? Try these 3 Practices.

Happiness: We all seek it. But it becomes elusive when we perceive happiness as a thing to be possessed rather than a state of being.

When we’re operating with the former mindset, we turn to external sources to bring us happiness, like the accumulation of material possessions or exclusively pleasurable relationships. But all these things are fickle. You can be on top of the world one day and on the bottom another. The only real constant in life is change. That’s why  only true and lasting happiness comes from within and through cultivating a deep relationship with your own complexity. 

That is the lesson that Corey Muscara learned while spending six months in silence meditating at a monastery. I got to speak with him recently on my podcast. Through his practice of self-reflection and deep listening, he learned how to cultivate what in the Buddhist tradition is called metta or loving awareness toward himself and others. 

The word happiness is derived from the Middle English noun ‘hap’ which is the root word of happening and ‘y’ which is a suffix, meaning “full of.” “Hap” means chance occurrence, so technically, to be happy really means to experience all occurrences fully. In this sense, happiness does not require the constant feeling of pleasure but an ability to be present across all occurrences, whether you are experiencing pleasure or not. 

This is really hard but it’s something that meditation and contemplation practices can help us with.  

Through meditation, we learn how to be with all aspects of ourselves. Over time, this can allow us to replace our automatic lens of self- judgment with one of observation; and the practice of observing without judgment can help us understand our own patterns, triggers, and complexities and, eventually, help us better understand and be with the complexities of others.

This is an ongoing process. We must continuously practice deep listening, self-reflection, and loving awareness in order to truly understand ourselves and our place in the world. This is a difficult journey, because we’re not used to living in this way. 

Still, we all have the capacity to experience this deeper meaning of happiness and we can begin by following these three practices. 

Practice 1:  Mirror your Ego.

You may have heard people say that you should destroy your ego, but this is actually not quite true. The psychologist Carl Jung wrote that,

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego. The second half is going inward and letting go of it.” 

But for many reasons, so many of us never went through the first stage. 

A mature ego is what enables a person to show up in relationship as a free individual. An immature ego causes a person to respond to feelings of fear, insecurity, or exile by falling into codependency or a power-principle in which the desire to possess or control the other takes over. 

According to cognitive scientist John Vervaeke, we develop our ego around 3 years old as we begin to internalize other people’s perceptions – or mirroring –  of us. Through this we develop a unique, separate sense of self. But if other peoples’ perceptions of us are filled with their own projections, the mirroring that we needed to get in childhood never happens and, as a result, we never experience ourselves as a unique separate self. 

Alice Miller, renowned child psychologist of the 20th century observed how this process breaks down in her book, Drama of the Gifted Child. On the vicissitudes of a child’s needs, she writes, 

“…The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein…provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother’s face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.” 

In Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, author James Bridle notes a similar process of relationship is necessary for the development of all beings. He notes the findings of primatologist Barbara Smuts who

“explored the behavior of baboons living free across Kenya and Tanzania” and who gained unique insights into their behavior, in part by mirroring their sounds and gestures. Smuts went on to note that “Until recent times, all humans possessed profound familiarity with other creatures. Palaeolithic hunters learned about the giant bear the same way the bear learned about them: through the intense concentration and fully aroused senses of a wild animal whose life hangs in the balance.” 

Absence of mirroring leads to a weak, immature, fearful ego. Since many of us did not receive the necessary mirroring that we needed in childhood, the only step we can take today is to learn how to mirror ourselves. Conscious reflection on what the ego is trying to tell us actually helps quiet its fears down. 

If this feels daunting, know that you can do this by practice. Practice noticing when you feel afraid or insecure and instead of automatically lashing out, or trying to repress that feeling, learn to direct compassion to those parts of you that feel unworthy and unloved. Try to observe what these feelings actually physically feel like in your body. And consider starting a journaling practice. I like to do this at night before bed, where I jot down some of the moments, feelings, and sensations I experienced when I noticed my ego becoming inflated throughout the day.  

Practice 2: Unconditional love 

Over time, mirroring gives way to unconditional love and this helps us bring our egos to maturity. Again, remember, we developed our egos in part to protect ourselves from the pain of rejection in early childhood. But in the absence of mirroring, this protection can become a barrier that stops us from having deep relationships both with ourselves and others in adulthood. 

To practice unconditional love, you must first practice it towards yourself, which is one of the hardest things for humans to do. This means owning up to  the parts of yourself that are weak, insecure, fearful, and vulnerable, and loving those parts  just as much as you love other attributes. Living in a society where we  are constantly told to destroy those parts of ourselves can make this practice very difficult. But over time, this practice can help quiet the egoic space – which is often noisy, more fearful, constricted, and anxious – and help us live from a space that feels more still.This process replaces the repression of the ego with the practice of learning to relate to it. Nothing can be transcended unless it is first included.  

Practice #3: Pay attention

Attention is a powerful tool to cultivate this unconditional love. Attention is related to the word “tend” and “attend,” which means to be present. (And here, we see how the words attention and happiness are actually related.) Tending to your thoughts, emotions, and reactions to the world, the same way you might tend to plants in a garden, will help you enter into a deeper relationship with the complexity of the present moment. 

 I recently had a moment on the subway in New York City that reminded me of the importance of paying attention.. I was listening to music on my headphones when suddenly I noticed a woman who was yelling and threatening another woman with physical violence. At that moment, I immediately took off my headphones and simply watched; I paid attention to the situation. 

I was struck by the feeling of helplessness, knowing that I couldn’t do anything to stop the situation. However, I was also able to take a step back and observe the situation from a place of understanding and compassion. I realized that the woman’s anger probably had very little to do with the other woman and was likely the product of a number of other things that had happened in her day, in her weeks, and in her life that led up to this moment. 

At that moment, I was able to take a deep breath and practice Tonglen, a meditation practice from Tibetan Buddhism. This practice is a breathing practice where on the inhale you breathe  in the suffering of others and on the exhale you send out well wishes for the person experiencing the suffering. Falling into this practice on the subway enabled me to calm down my nervous system, especially the fight-flight-freeze response from my limbic system, and allowed me to move into directing loving awareness towards the situation. 

The element of air is important here. (Any Avatar Aang fans out there, hehe?) What we are trying to do is to create a sense of spaciousness whenever we feel physically constricted. And usually when our egos inflate, we feel it physically. We feel tighter, more anxious, more restricted. But by adopting these meditation and contemplation practices we actually expand our sense of awareness mentally and physically through the deep breathing exercises.   

Wanna learn more? Check out my full  conversation with Corey Muscara here. And check out my program, Theory of Enchantment, an ecology of practices, games, and activity to help build a more compassionate, integrated world. 

Hi Friends, I’d be so grateful if you’d consider becoming a patron of this substack. The more it grows, the more high - production (and higher, hehe) musings I can create on topics like Life and Death, Religion vs Spirituality, The Wisdom in Pop Culture, and more. My ultimate goal is to help seed communities of practitioners committed to living the examined life. I really believe this is what we need at this time, especially considering the levels of depression, stress, polarization and mental health epidemics we as a society find ourselves in. I aim for this substack and all content production to be an investment in that goal and, eventually, a library that communities of practice can leaf through. If this project moves you, please consider becoming a monthly supporter!