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How To Create A Happy Life

By Saleem Rana
Sep 12, 2009
Is it possible to consciously choose to create a happy life?

Most people are operating on automatic, on subconscious programs that run quietly in the background, dictating their every move, pulling on their emotional strings, selecting their perceptions, and organizing their experiences around past hurts, fears, and insecurities.

Ironically, they think that they are conscious. Acting out in a crazy, self- and other-destructive way is not conscious. And it is only because of acting out on our drives that we are unconscious. Someone who is conscious does not let their drives dictate their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Instead, they choose the best possible options available to them based on what they currently know. A casual survey of people around you will quickly reveal that impulsive actions are the norm. Rationality is quickly defeated by impulsive urges.

The reason why most people do not have a happy life is because they are almost completely unconscious.

The way to become conscious is to become aware.

Awareness is stepping back and looking at everything for the first time.

Awareness is not simple. And this is why spiritual disciplines like yoga, focusing on your breath, meditation, mindfulness, have the power to change your life for the better. The natural state for human beings is to be hypnotized by the onslaught of conditioning that began since birth. Sadly, few people have a clue how to have a happy life.

Thus, the natural state for human beings is to be unnatural. It is to perceive through the lens of bias. It is to hear selectively. It is to act impulsively, regardless of consequences. It is to defend the ego from all possible threats while pretending to make a show of being open-minded, rational, and even objective.

Another way of describing this phenomenon is to say that the neocortex is used much less often than the mammalian or reptilian portions of the human brain. Yet it is only the highly-developed and functional neocortex which will empower us to choose the best possible experiences. The emotional brain and the instinctive brain take over the show.

Thus, if we desire to have a happy life, we have to be present to the moment. This means that we have to be aware. We have to be cognizant of the environment. And we have to recognize our own subconscious programs trying to bubble up to the surface to take over our experience.

If you are aware enough, the past does not have to equal the future. You can, in fact, choose your ideal future and find ways to reach it. However, because most people are not aware enough that the future happens to be a constant repetition of past patterns. They are not even aware that it is possible to create a happy life.

The weight of past experiences, because it is unexamined and therefore unconscious, has a stronger pull on them.

The way to create awareness is to take on the practice of some psychological or spiritual discipline which will train you to think in an original and creative way. Those who choose not to examine the past are condemned to repeat it.

Cultivating awareness is not easy, but there is nothing more worthwhile. The culmination of supreme awareness is enlightenment, the uncanny ability to be in a stream of peace.

Ultimately, it is a spiritual experience to be in charge of your own mind and direct it away from unconscious acting out to conscious deliberation. The culmination of this discipline is awareness. And the gift of awareness is connection with your own divine nature.
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