Discovering Inner Happiness
Posted on Apr 18, 2020 by Swami Vijay (Lawrence Vijay Girard) (Senior Trainer (Life Skills))
When I was a boy of about 13 years old I lived in a city. A big and prosperous city. I had always lived in the city so I didn't know anything different. Oh, I had read books and seen movies about other ways of life, but since I had never experienced any of them myself I didn't really know what they were like. I was happy the way most people are happy, sometimes smiling and sometimes frowning. Happy when life was the way I wanted it to be and sad when it wasn't the way I wanted it to be.
It wasn't until my parents sent me to a summer camp up in the mountains of southwestern Colorado in the United States that I took my first conscious step on a life journey to discover that happiness isn't about what you are doing or how you feel about what you are doing, but about your inner state of awareness no matter what you are doing.
Summer camp was swimming and fishing in the stream just in front of the main lodge. It was exploring old gold and silver mining ghost towns and riding on a train from the days of the wild west. At night there was a fire in the main lodge and we would have songs, skits and stories. Most importantly, camp was becoming a cowboy, learning to ride horses and taking long trips up into the high country where endless meadows of tall green grass alternated with pine, spruce and aspen forests. Where at night the sky was filled with countless stars and the nearby stream sang a song that was ever new and never ending.
It was while riding a horse named Sparky at the back of a line of 30 other campers that I first observed that happiness was separate from just liking what I was doing. Our group was on a three day, two night pack trip. We had sleeping bags and saddle bags filled with food tied to our saddles. We had been on the trail for a couple of hours and some of the boys were starting to complain that their rear ends were getting sore. Hearing the others talking about it caused me to notice that my rear end was a little sore too. But the strange thing was that I didn't care. And that caused me to ask myself, “Why am I not bothered by a sore rear end?” While riding I had at first been keenly aware of the horses, the riders and nature all around me. All of these things were interesting to me so it was natural that I would be what is generally called happy. I couldn't have explained it to you at the time, but I began to experience a kind of inner contentment that I had never noticed before. It just sort of bubbled up from inside of me. It wasn't outwardly active like most laughter. It was a calm yet dynamically joyful well-being that flowed from an inner universal source. Sometimes we don't realize we have had an inner experience until someone else describes it. Then we might think, “I have had an experience like that.” Maybe you have had an experience like this one that I had as a boy, when you realized that your deepest happiness comes from inside. Yes, it can be stimulated by outward life experiences, but its actual source is within us.
About five years after this experience I discovered the yoga teachings and found a description and explanation of inner happiness. Since that time I have understood that life is like a tug-of-war between our inner and outer experiences. Most people live only according to their outer ego based (physical, mental/emotional) perceptions. Yogis focus on developing their inner intuitive (spiritual, universally rooted) perceptions. Thus bringing their lives into a harmonious balance. This isn't something we have to do. We can let outward life, with its endless ups and downs, control our happiness. Or, we can train ourselves through proven techniques to live always in touch with the inner universal peace, love and joy that is at the core of all life. The choice is ours.