It’s Okay to Feel Good and Enjoy the World!

Suggestions and pointers can be very useful, but we may eventually outgrow them. Teachings are helpful up to a certain point, but we must eventually let them go or else they will become limitations. It’s almost like sitting in a big slingshot. The slingshot will sling you forward, but if you continue holding on for too long, what once propelled you forward will eventually hold you back.

Enjoying the World

For example, one such teaching that I’m finding that it’s time to let go of is, “It is the ego which seeks to be constantly entertained. It does so as a substitute for the truth of your being, as a distraction. The world and its appearances are a distraction from going within. All the happiness you find in the world does nothing but strengthen your ego, furthering the illusion that your joy comes from the world. It’s more important to turn within than to focus on the world outside of you. You’ll never find that which you seek by looking to the world. Straight and narrow is the path. Waste no time.”

We could say that, especially in the beginning, the ego functions as a sort of emotional gatekeeper, as if it literally “lets happiness in” when certain external conditions are met and certain things “make me happy.” This is not true. The happiness comes from within and there is an infinite supply of it.

This teaching when misunderstood, ahem…, can be used to conclude that happiness from the world = bad. Imagine that… you get into something hoping to end your suffering, only to adopt a new (apparently “more spiritual”) belief system that has you avoiding everything you find joyful in the world! That’s messed up…

If you also have the belief system, “Life is scary and I’m terrified of it so I’m gonna run into my cave and transcend fear altogether by getting enlightened,” well than this way of avoiding the world actually becomes useful.

Causeless Happiness

Learning that our happiness isn’t literally derived from external conditions (which is true), we begin disassociating the cause of our happiness from external conditions, finding that we can be happy no matter what is happening outside of us. We find a wellspring of happiness that bubbles up from the I AM without cause. We only need to let go of resisting it to experience it. This is a great discovery. We find we’re no longer dependent upon external situations being a certain way in order to find joy like some sort of druggie. We’re no longer addicted to our sources of entertainment as if our joy depended upon it and thus those attachments progressively fall away.

Once we free our joy from the world, we’re free to experience it in the world as much as we want.

We begin finding the always available joy within and, interestingly enough, noticing that it has a natural tendency of wanting to express itself in life. Joy naturally wants to be expressed. Once we discover this, we’re free to reengage with our previous activities which we had previously been detaching from. We no longer need to do certain things and in this there is freedom.

Now we find ourselves inspired and guided from within to move in a particular direction. Instead of trying to derive joy from activities, we find that our inner joy harmonizes with certain activities quite naturally and thus we do those activities as an expression of inner joy. We bring the joy to the world. We live as a source of joy, as joy itself in human form.

This energy needs to flow out into the world. It’s part of “bringing heaven down to earth” you could say, of grounding the higher chakra energy down into your lower chakras. Simply pooling the love and light up within yourself and blissing out in meditation is sort of the spiritual equivalent of masturbation. Stripped of societal judgment, masturbation is basically a way to give yourself pleasure and that’s a wonderful thing and I’m all for it, but maybe it’s possible that there’s something more to life than that…

It’s okay to play. It’s great to have fun. It is good to feel good. There’s a reason the Buddha is often depicted with a smile on his face.