THE KEY TO CONSTANT HAPPINESS - Keys to the Ultimate Freedom

星空

I made the statement that I would give you the key to maintaining constant happiness. I was aware that several individuals were dropping in the level of their happiness and not coming up, which is one of the reasons why I didn't get here sooner. You see, when you were down and you were frantic, and you thought things were terrible; I couldn't have communicated with you very easily. Also, if I had come and you had received this lift and gotten out of it, you would have said that I did it. This develops a dependency relationship, which isn't good. You can do anything and everything that you want. You can have, be, or do whatever you will or desire. And when the disturbance lasts long enough, you get fed up with it and you let go of it anyway. Then you do it. It's much, much better when you do it and don't need someone to lean upon.

What the group would like to know is how to maintain this new found happiness. Why don't we have it all the time? We should! And so I thought I would give you the understanding, or the key to the understanding, that will help you develop happiness that remains.

All right, now this is the key: When you understand, when you really know what happiness is, then you're able to establish it. Then you do it more and more until it's all the time. But the key is knowing what is happiness. When you do know what it is, you look for it where it is rather than where it isn't. Looking for it where it isn't is what causes you to drop. Is there any question on what I've said so far?

The key is knowing what happiness is, so that you can go directly for it. Not recognizing what happiness is makes it difficult to establish permanently. So when you get to see what this happiness really is, then when you become miserable you'll move in the right direction and establish that happiness.

All right. what is happiness? Most people call it pleasure but what it actually is, is escape from pain! What most people call happiness is their getting away from their pain through socializing and entertainment. It is really an escape! They cannot stand being by themselves, with their own thoughts. They have to run to a movie, a nightclub, visit someone, just to get some action going so they are not facing their own thoughts. When their mind is taken away from their own thoughts, they feel better, and then call that pleasure and happiness. All entertainment is actually that! A happy man needs no entertainment and no socializing. He is content.

However, when you become free, if you choose, you can enjoy entertainment far more than before because you are free from the hunger-need for it.

The happiness that I'm going to talk about now is not the escape-from-misery kind. It is really the only happiness. It's the joy that results from being your own real Self. The more we are our real Self, the more we feel joyous. Sense-joy of the world is accomplished not because of the thing or the person out there with whom we associate it. It's accomplished by satisfying and stilling the thoughts of wanting to acquire that person or thing. When we quiet those thoughts, we feel our Self more so and are happier. The quieter the mind is, the more we just be, the more we abide as our real Self and the more joyous we feel!

But this is something you've got to see for yourself, that the quieter you get your mind, the happier you are. It's good to play with this. Experiment with it until you see it. Whatever that joy was, it always resulted in quieting of the mind, and then you felt happy. Seeing this, you will begin to let go of attaching happiness to people and things. You will begin to see that the joy is only in you abiding as your very own Self. Then, when you discover this, you're not going to look for joy where it isn't. You will immediately let go and just be. And finally, you reach the place where you need no one and no thing to be happy, you just are happy, all the time!

Is there any question on that? I guess intellectually it's seen by everyone? Whether you see it through your own mind's eye or not, you should have it intellectually at first, then experiment with it, test it out, and you'll discover that this is so, that every time you feel happy, your mind is quiet and at ease, and that what you attributed to the person or thing outside of you is something going on within you. It is a quieting of your mind so that you abide more as your Self. Then, when you see this, you won It bog down anymore, because the moment you become unhappy, you'll know just where to look to re-establish the happiness!

Q: That would be within yourself, wouldn't it?

Lester: Yes, but it's first recognizing that the happiness is not the external person or the thing, but the quieting of the thoughts of desire for the person or thing, which allows you to go within and just be your Self, i.e., just be. When your mind is on things out there, you're not just being, you're being involved with externals. But I say the key is seeing just that point, that your happiness is the quieting of your mind through the satisfying of the desire, which stills the hunger thoughts for the thing and allows you to just be. When you actually see that in your own mind, you can do it directly. (You can let go of those thoughts without achieving the person or the thing and immediately you're happy!)

The prime overall thing is that you move toward happiness in the direction of where it really is, in you, not in the externals. In that way you establish a state of happiness that is continuous. Did I tell you anything new, Frank? I did? Was that new, Lil? See, I've told you this before many times, but it seems new to you!

Q: You told it to us but before it was not received.

Lester: All right, before it was just an intellectual thing or it did not connect and so it's as though it were new now. But, as far as that goes, I always feel as though I'm saying the same thing over and over again, from this side, from that side, from another side,-but it's always the same thing. However, until you see it in your own mind's eye, until you recognize it, until you realize it, it isn't meaningful to you.

Q: It sounds as though you're saying we should not desire automobiles, we should not desire homes, we should not desire wives or sweethearts, we should not desire anything, but become nothing.

Lester: Everything was right but the last part of your sentence. You become everything instead of nothing. Become everything and you need nothing. Desire is lack and the consciousness of separation, the source of all trouble. If you are everything, the All, you need nothing. See, everything was right down to that last part of your sentence, just reverse that and you've got it. O.K.?

Q: If we become everything, then we become the wife, then we become the world, we become everything. Instead of separating ourselves, we become the other one.

Lester: And that is the greatest of all feelings! That's the highest love, -when you become the other one. That identity is love in its highest form. In other words, you think that she didn't break the dish, we broke the dish; she didn't spend money on a dress, we spent the money. This is the highest love.

Q: I become the automobile, therefore I don't desire the automobile. Or, you become everything, you become

Lester: Now, you're going to have to work this out for yourself. You are going to have to realize that when you become everything and feel that you need nothing, then the slightest thought for something will bring it to you immediately.

Q: The desire is, I haven't got.

Lester: Yes! You create an artificial lack, you create a lie when you say, I haven't got. Desire, causing you to feel I have not, will cause you to have not! Let go of desire and you feel I have. This causes things to come to you.

Q: If I look at the world as though I'm writing a novel and say I am the characters, I'm all these creatures that I create in my story. And yet this is what I'm living today, aren't I? I create my difficulties; I'm writing this story. Instead of doing that, I should say I am the power, and why bother creating limitations? I don't need to. So, I stop it. But what do I have when I don't create?

Lester: What do you have when you don't create? Everything that you really want, our pure Beingness.

Q: I have peace.

Lester: Yes. You are the All, everything is in you. Feeling that way puts you completely at peace.

Q: Until the phone rings; then I'm right back in my habits.

Lester: Don't allow a little bell to push you around that way. Again, I say each one has to realize this for himself or herself, but when he or she does, then happiness can be made permanent, because then you look for happiness where it is and you stop looking for it where it isn't. There's no happiness in people or things. Happiness is our basic nature. Happiness is our very own beingness. And when we are only being, we are infinitely happy. Yes, when we are only being, and nothing else, we are infinitely happy!

Q: In other words. when you have these various things, like you have an automobile, you utilize that automobile but you have no attachment to it, in order to attain the feeling of joy. Because if you become attached to that automobile, then that attachment has some sort of hold on you wherein you have a responsibility to it.

Lester: Yes. The greater the attachment the greater the unhappiness. (Likewise, the greater the aversion, the greater the unhappiness.) It's unfree to be attached to anything. You cant have things and not be attached to them. Be attached to them and you are necessarily putting yourself through unhappiness.

Q: Now, when you're in a state of beingness, that does not mean that you 're an ethereal being who floats from spot to spot. That means that you are in that state where you know the Truth and thereby dont have to go through all the habits that have been piled upon you by your ego.

Lester: Yes. It's knowing your infinite Beingness that is eternal and never changes. Then this world cannot touch you. You see it as a fiction, a dream. You witness it. You move through life with no attachments and no aversions. Then no one and no thing can disturb you, and you have the infinite peace and joy that is constant.

Q: When I try to explain this to people they think that I become a shadow or substance which vanishes from the sight of everybody, or something like that.

Lester: The only difference between a fully realized individual living in the world and one who is not is his point of view of everything. An unrealized person identifies with a single limited body-mind. A realized person identifies with everything, every being, every atom and sees them as his Self. He sees the beingness in everything as his beingness.

Q: Therefore getting joy out of everything that happens.

Lester:; No, your very nature is joy. You don't get it out of everything that happens, your basic nature is unlimited joy. That is your natural state! No need to get it!

Q: Therefore being in a state of joy perpetually.

Lester: Yes. As long as you don't lock it onto a person or thing, it's there all the time. But if you say you can't have joy unless you do or have something, you limit your joy. The natural state is unlimited joy. This is the real natural state. The natural state is being infinite, but we superimpose over that all these ideas of limitation, of needs, attachments and aversions that block out this infinite joy that is natural. If a being would do absolutely nothing, he would be this infinite Being. He would then be only a witness.

Q: But you can still put in a hard day's work.

Lester: Oh, yes. You go through life like everyone else.

Q: But it's your attitude.

Lester: Right, you see things differently. You see yourself as a witness rather than a doer.

Q: It's there but you're detached somewhat from it. It's an eerie feeling sometimes.

Lester: It's a nice feeling, isn't it? It's eerie because you're not used to it. When you get used to it, it's dearie rather than eerie!

Q: Lester: is this thing really easy, and we're making it hard?

Lester: Yes. You are right! All your difficulty is keeping yourself limited. You have compounded limitations on top of limitations and are holding onto them in your thoughts. Therein lies your difficulty. You must let go of all your thoughts. Every thought has limitation in it. Drop all your thoughts and what is left over is you in your infinite happiness, your Beingness. Then you will realize that it is as easy for you to discover that you are an infinite Being with infinite happiness as it is for you to discover that you are a male or a female!

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This Session was recorded in Los Angeles, February 7, 1965.