Self-transformation for Transcendence and Enjoyment

Photo: Jacek Stankiewicz, Kraków, Poland. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023.

So, here you are. How’d that happen? Did a little bird send you? A Philosophy of Enjoyment? You’re kidding, right? Sounds like an excuse to misbehave (think salacious and audacious), but then, maybe you are depressed or anxious or flummoxed by existence or know someone who is, so you did a Google search looking for answers and stumbled upon a Philosophy of Enjoyment.

What? It happens.

Maybe, if you are receptive to what is presented by a relative far, far removed (meaning, yours truly, there’s no ChatGPT here), you’ll take it to heart, learn from it, laugh a bit and change your philosophy of life completely.

What? It happens.

Think about it: With 1.13 billion websites on the internet in 2023—82% of which are inactive—(source: Forbes Advisor), finding this site is like being hit by lightning.

And we all know how fun that is.

A short film. Do you have time to enjoy?

A Philosophy of Enjoyment addresses one problem: How does a person—like you and yours truly, for example, a person with a particular vantage point, with feelings, abilities, limitations and opinions; a person with an economic standing, living in multiple cultures, framed in a body, identifying with a gender or agender—how does such a person transcend, as in, go beyond or rise above a localized low-to-the-ground subjective perspective that’s possibly defective, addictive, depressive, sad, mad, or morose, so as to enjoy being alive and thinking to experience beauty, tranquility, sublimity and jocularity daily?

Moreover, how can a person transcend habituated thinking and what does transcendence have to do with enjoying a good life in a world rife with bedbugs? How does a person subjected to the unwelcome and unpleasant vicissitudes of life learn to see the world as beautiful and enjoyable with gratitude, without needing alcohol, edibles or anything? Is that even possible?

Of course it is. Transformation happens every day at sunrise. A new day, a new you. You decide who you’ll be and what you’ll do.

Cue music (to set the mood for transcendence and transformation):

Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Epicurus and Epictetus emphasized eudaimonia. That’s an old word without a modern equivalent. Maybe that’s because eudaimonia encourages virtues like prudence and moderation, both of which may be considered old-fashioned bummers.

Eudaimonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare but it literally means the state or condition of good spirit, as in, eu = good and daimonia = spirit.

But the word spirit causes people to think of ghosts and disembodied astral projections when what we’re really talking about is a feeling.

Epicurus (341-270 BCE) set up a school in his garden to study what makes people happy. After years of study he found that happiness requires tranquility, freedom from fear, absence of pain, friendship and connection.

Incidentally, the word paradise comes from a Persian word which means Walled Garden. “The notion of Paradise as a garden predates Islam, Judaism, Christianity and even the Garden of Eden. It stems from the Sumerian period 4000BC in Mesopotamia. Shade and water are two important elements of paradise” (The Beauty and Paradise of Gardens).

The stony eyes of Epicurus.

“Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one’s lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure” (Wikipedia).

It’s unfortunate, however, that pleasure is viewed with suspicion because it’s the excuse used for bad behaviour by the likes of sexual predators, traffickers and rude scoff-laws in loud cars who are all about their personal pleasure at the expense of others.

Epicurus wrote, “It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life” (Classical Wisdom).

When a pleasure takes hold, however, if one isn’t careful, one may want more and more. Those who are addicted to a pleasure may no longer be willing participants. Sometimes we all think it would be nice if things were different. We might wish our self to be different. Those without religious affiliation might even wish there was more to life than a scientific explanation.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) said that God is nature, and, as you may have heard, psychological studies show, “People who are more connected with nature are happier, feel more vital, and have more meaning in their lives” (see: “How Modern Life Became Disconnected From Nature“, The Greater Good Magazine).

Philosopher Jonathan Rée (born 1948) said that Spinoza advised us to, “look with an attitude of love and reverence on the natural world as a whole and perhaps even yourself as a part of it… insofar as we’re irrational we’re divided, insofar as we’re rational we are united… freedom is not a matter of getting what you like. Freedom is learning to like what is rational to like” (Spinoza’s Ethics).

Happiness is in our nature (Springer Link). We just might not see it. We probably did as kids, but maybe not anymore (see also: Breathe in the air (and enjoy)). Happiness is available no matter who you are or what the situation. It takes a way of thinking that’s optimistic and a heart that is open without needing surgery.

Unless you are very young, you’ve probably realized that by living, time passes, and what’s happening now will become a mental movie which may or may not have occurred as remembered. The band OK Go put it this way: “… You know you can’t keep lettin’ it get you down, And you can’t keep draggin’ that dead weight around. If there ain’t all that much to lug around, Better run like hell when you hit the ground… When the morning comes” (“This Too Shall Pass”, 2010).

This is the end. Look at all angles and both ways too! March on. Think rational and love the world you’re in to make it even better (see also: Knowledge, Wisdom, Insight and Enjoyment).

Enjoy it. It’s for you.

Enjoy Being Awesome

“Who can say where the road goes? where the day flows? only time” (Enya).

Today we ask ourselves, “Who am I?” It’s a straight forward question with obvious answers: I am a human, I have a name, a family history, I think and do such-and-such and want this-and-that.

With further examination, however, from a scientific, psychological and philosophical perspective, you might arrive at something unexpected. It could be that who you think you are is distorted by your way of thinking. You might be more than you think, and less than you know.

If you press the question beyond superficial, you might feel a light-hearted feeling. This is natural. When you experience the switch from thinking in terms of “little old me and what I want” to the feeling of being one with all things, you remain calm in any situation. You are free of mass confusion when you understand cause and effect and the big picture.

According to science, as a human being, you are a Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is Latin for “wise man” or “wise creature.” It comes from homo, meaning, “creature, man, human,” from humus, “earth, ground, soil”—literally, “earthly one”—and sapiens, meaning, “one who knows” (source).

A Homo sapiens is described as a bipedal primate with large brain, vertical forehead and dependence on language and tools.

Homo sapiens call themselves the “wise creature” despite historical evidence and current affairs. No doubt other animals would argue that Homo sapiens are pretty stupid. According to experts “animals can have cognitive faculties that are superior to human beings” (see: Humans not smarter than animals, just different).

The Far Side by Gary Larson.

Despite intelligence, and to their own detriment, Homo sapiens are the most destructive Earth creature.

With their comparatively weak bodies and inferior senses, Homo sapiens would not have been able to dominate the planet if it wasn’t for their ability to cooperate, make tools and pass knowledge from generation to generation (source).

As In a Nutshell put it, “to survive, all living things seek to secure resources and multiply. Competition between species favours those with advantageous traits” and because humans are inventive, cooperative and expansionist, they’re able to put all other species at their mercy (see: Why We Should NOT Look for Aliens).

According to science, humans are complex machines composed of about 99% six elements and about 0.85% five other elements (source). All eleven are essential elements, meaning, they come from the air, water and soil (the Earth) and are “required by living organisms for growth, metabolism and development” (source).

This is you:

See: What Are the Elements In the Human Body.

As a subjective experience, however, you probably don’t feel like eleven essential elements. You probably feel like a single thing—like a walking, talking, hot-water balloon with interior armature—but your body isn’t one thing.

Source

Your body is composed of around 30 trillion human cells of about 200 different types and around 38 trillion non-human cells, which are smaller, each with its own structure and lifespan and all working together “in harmony to carry out all the basic functions necessary for humans to survive” (source).

Your body has more non-human cells than human and if you go even smaller, “the average cell contains 100 trillion atoms” (source).

Source: ABC Science “The big and the small“

Humans are, for the most part, except on occasion, oblivious to the highly complex operation performed by nature on its own without intervention.

Every human is a world unto itself. Each one is having private thoughts about economics, politics, pleasure, etc.. Each one is localized in a single point of awareness. Each one is living in a waking dream whereby reality is perceived by sensory inputs that are interpreted by the brain’s imagination.

Some of the smartest humans spend their time inside virtual reality or working on things like artificial intelligence, high-tech weapons and robots to replace human beings.

Psychologists are divided as to how to define the human species. Evolutionary psychologists say humans do what they do⁠—including invade countries, murder and rape⁠—because of genes and more than two million years of natural selection as hunter-gatherers; whereas, cultural determinists say humans are not defined by their genes but by what is learned as members of a community (source).

According to cultural evolutionary theory, however, it isn’t one or the other, as in, “nature vs nurture,” it’s both together.

source

If you ask yourself “Who am I?” and in answer make a list of achievements, failures, likes, dislikes and life events from birth until present, that is an excellent exercise for understanding yourself so as to make rational decisions and live a happy life based on reason, but that isn’t quite what we’re after.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) said that we can acquire important knowledge of reality simply by thinking (source). As Bryan Magee observed, “Spinoza saw total reality as being one thing or substance of which all apparently different objects and indeed people like ourselves are merely facets, merely modes, merely aspects” (source). This matches with the phenomenon of entanglement (source) and with the First Nations, Inuit and Metis perspective of seeing everything in the universe as interconnected (source).

So far so good. Now it’s time to take off your thinking cap and glasses. As Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani observed, “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are” (source).

Go outside. Take a break. Enjoy the peace of looking at the world as yourself. Stop seeing things through your desires and your sense of self locally defined and separate from nature.

As Michael James writing of Sri Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950) advised, “we do not need literally to ‘seek’ ourself but just to be ourself… Self-attention is thus a state of just being, and not doing anything… a state of perfect repose, serenity, stillness, calm and peace, and as such one of supreme and unqualified happiness” (Happiness and the Art of Being, p. 347-48).

The stand-up comedian Bill Hicks (1961-1994) joked about seeing a positive drug story on the news:

It’s Just a Ride

“Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather” (source).

What Bill didn’t realize, however, is that drugs aren’t necessary. By investigating your own consciousness beyond self-driven thinking, you can be enlightened. We’re all part of something bigger, something infinite, awe-inspiring and connected.

The trick to real enjoyment is to stop thinking from a self-deceptive perspective. Be one with all things. Be happy. Be wise. And most of all, enjoy the ride!

Enjoy Happiness from the Periphery

One day, in searching for “happiness” on Google (as many people do), happiness appeared as a man and woman in hip medieval clothing.

Is that how you picture happiness?

Is happiness a warm puppy like Charles Schultz said in 1962? Is happiness that simple? Is it a moment of satisfaction with whatever your “warm puppy” is?

Or is happiness a warm gun as the Beatles sang it in 1968? Said John Lennon, “I thought it was a fantastic, insane thing to say” (Beatles Bible).

“Project Happiness” (where the science of happiness meets the art of living) says that 10% of happiness is due to circumstance, 50% comes from genes, and 40% comes from activities like forgiveness and gratitude. With practice, they say, you can make yourself happy. But what if, instead of making yourself happy, you make someone happy?

What then?

It’s strange. We feel so alone. Talk to someone and there’s a gulf between. We’re a universe apart. We don’t see how the consciousness looking back at us is the same as our own. The profound is hidden in the ordinary.

To look into another’s eyes and see love and mercy reflected there is a rare happiness. We grow up forming a healthy self-image but gain wisdom by letting it go (Jung).

A self-image is developed through what we say and think about ourselves and what others say of us. If that self-image is overly negative, inaccurate, or inflated, it creates problems.

It’s hard to see a self-image (Latin ego “I”). It hides behind opinions believed true, but if you follow the trail of emotions it leaves behind like anger at a slight or jealousy or a need to win and so on, in those emotions you find ego. It’s a condemning voice inside your head that’s critical and blaming.

But, “Smile,” says the research. “It’s good for your brain.” Who cares if you look insane?

The thinking is that if you’re not happy, there’s something wrong with you. Maybe that explains why antidepressant use went up 400% in the US between 2005–2008 (Harvard Medical School).

Too bad they don’t work – at least, according to the New England Journal of Medicine (Huffington Post, 2011).

Kirsch (2014) said, “Instead of curing depression, popular antidepressants may induce a biological vulnerability making people more likely to become depressed in the future” (Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect).

So, “What are you gonna do?” (language warning)

In Google, if you do a search for what “happiness” looks like, you’ll see images like the ones below:

“Happiness” image search results.

Happiness appears as beaches, beautiful skies, people with arms open wide at sunrise and jumping at sunset, we see ladies with balloons and a parasol soaking up sunshine and summer fields. As you look at these images, the word “freedom” might come to mind. The word freedom comes from Old English ‘freo’ meaning, “not in bondage, acting of one’s own will, noble, joyful” (Online Etymology Dictionary).

So, does freedom look like happiness? A search for the word freedom shows the following images.

Again we see sunshine, that same woman with a parasol and people with arms open wide as if to fly. Maybe Frank Sinatra was onto something when he sang, “Fly Me To The Moon.” From these images the word spirit, as in, “happy spirits” and “free-spirited” comes to mind.

The word spirit comes from Latin “spiritus” meaning, “breathing.”  Like “moo” or “BANG” such words mean their sound. Spirit is like that. It is an imitation of breathing (Online Etymology Dictionary).

An image search of the word spirit showed images from a Disney movie, but undeterred, entering the word “spiritual” reveals the images shown below.

“Spiritual” image search results.

Again we see beautiful skies, sunshine, beaches and arms open wide. Maybe Enya was onto something when she sang “Only Time.”

What if, instead of categorizing things into two opposites (either-or, self-other, good-bad, life-death, happy-sad…) we consider opposites as one process like a game of ping pong.

Without ping there is no pong. Happiness (ping) goes with sadness (pong). Life (ping) goes with death (pong).

Happiness might not be about getting what you want and having a good time all the time. Happiness could be a love of life in all its aspects – pleasant and unpleasant.

A self-image is like putting on eye-glasses. As Clark Kent, the world looks different. How we think colours everything we see. Should you take off your glasses of personality, you might enjoy reality (even if it is fuzzy). Maybe that’s what a higher consciousness experience is: It’s a union with reality. You see everyone and everything as interconnected. You see beauty.

When you focus on breathing, you are aware of it (in-out, in-out, repeat), but when you stop focusing, breathing continues. We are breathed in the same way that grass grows and produces the oxygen we need. It’s all a relationship. It’s all connection.

Life is a doing. It’s happening (see the Supreme’s sing “The Happening,” 1967). We might feel isolated, but that isn’t how it is.

A feeling of happiness doesn’t depend on what you know or do. You can’t make progress in it. You can’t do anything or not do anything to get it.

Happiness comes when you are so adapted to pleasure and pain that you say, “I love it!” No matter what happens. Like the Bad Finger song, “Knock down the old grey wall. Be a part of it all. Nothing to say, nothing to see, nothing to do,” you get it because you got it (see: Bad Finger “No Matter What”).

Let go your eggo (aka ego) and go out there and let the universe happen as you.

Enjoy.

References

1. Happiness (14th century) (Wikipedia)
2. Beatles Bible
3. Project Happiness
4. How Smiling Changes Your Brain
5. 5 Ways to Make Yourself Happier in the Next 5 Minutes (Psychology Today, 2014)
6. Harvard Medical School
7. Huffington Post (2011)
8. Antidepressants and the Placebo Effect (2014)
9. Online Etymology Dictionary.
10. Science of Happiness