A perspective to enjoy

Everyone has a perspective, a “point of view,” or POV, if you will. We all have a vantage point from which we perceive the world around us with our senses and, moreover, everyone has their own way of thinking and feeling about what they are perceiving with those senses.

Thinking and feeling are interconnected. Thinking and feeling certain ways can cause a person to say certain things and behave in certain ways, and then, one will feel and think certain ways after having said or done what one has said and done because saying certain things (to yourself or out loud) and behaving in certain ways reinforces what one already thinks and feels. 

It’s a loop, really.

Source: The Loop of Thinking, Feeling, Being

If you’re not happily looping, however, there is a way out, and, once out, one is free to enjoy without needing anything or having to go anywhere and with the added bonus of a light-hearted happy feeling of good humor.

What could be better?

“Good humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us,” Ernest Renan (1823-1892).

It begins with cultivating an awareness of how one’s thoughts affect one’s feelings. As an online grief assistant put it (not that you’re grieving, but this applies to all feelings), “When your thoughts appear to be the product of your overwhelming sadness and grief, know that it is your thoughts that are feeding the sadness rather than the other way around. Your thoughts generate a feeling which you then act upon” (“How our thoughts govern how we feel“).

When you have a good, bad or indifferent thought, a matching good, bad or indifferent feeling will be the result. It’s all cause (thought) and effect (feeling) in a chain of causes and effects.

If one isn’t aware of how one’s thoughts affect one’s feelings and thus one’s self and the world at large, one can unknowingly let thoughts get the better of one by looping in a way that limits or eliminates happiness, because happiness, if you dig into it, is the ground of one’s being. Happiness is there all the time in the background before we muddle ourselves with thinking and feeling.

Cue music:

As a kid you were probably naturally happy, that is, unless your happiness was tarnished by someone equally tarnished, but even then, even if it feels like your happiness is or was tarnished, even if you think happiness is completely missing, it actually isn’t.

You can have everything but still not be happy and, conversely, you can have nothing and be happy. It depends on how one thinks. The trick is to limit bad thoughts and feelings and nurture good thoughts and feelings. By repeating the latter (good thoughts and feelings), the former (bad thoughts and feelings), evaporate.

Happiness doesn’t come from outside sources like cars and money, nor does it come from experiences like world travel or cannabis imbibing. We know how thoughts and feelings come and go like clouds on any given day as we age, but one thing remains in the background blue sky: one’s self prior to thinking.

To enjoy is to agree to partake. Violence begets violence. Peace begets peace. So it is. Make your choice. Enjoyment is affirmed when one says, “I will enjoy” but not at the expense of others. Just as one can initiate enjoyment with an affirmation, so too can enjoyment be prevented by a lack of attention or unrealistic expectations.

Metaphorically speaking, who one is, as a person, is like someone wearing sunglasses. The sunglasses one wears affects how one sees. When one wears pink sunglasses, the world appears pink. Likewise, so too is the world colored by the lens of one’s thoughts and feelings about what one has seen, thought or felt in the past and is seeing, thinking and feeling in the present.

The reality that we assume to be real—that each of us perceives with our senses combined with awareness—the reality that we consider to be reality, is not really reality, at least, not directly.

Looking at reality is kind of like watching reality TV. Reality TV is not reality. It’s TV reality. So too is one’s personal subjective reality. If one perceives reality as harsh and unenjoyable, reality appears harsh and unenjoyable and then one acts accordingly.

In this choice to enjoy, willpower might come to mind, but enjoyment is like sleep, you can’t make it happen. You can, however, set the stage for enjoyment. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-186) said that the will is like “the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.” The strong blind man symbolizes willpower and the lame man symbolizes one’s conscious mind. Not everyone has willpower, however. That’s where a contrasting philosophical concept called free will comes in. Whereas willpower emphasizes persistence and determination, free will emphasizes the choices we make and our individual autonomy as conscious beings (The Socratic Method). Having autonomy means one is free to follow one’s heart. 

It is one’s conscious mind that possesses the faculties to evaluate the consequences of one’s actions. It is will power and free will in combination that allows one to navigate the complexities of living. Repeated thoughts become like grooves in a record that play again and again. If one has been treated harshly, one may treat others likewise but if one perceives the world without a bias initiated by a past experience, one can get out of the rut of past thinking to realize the beauty that is in front of one, like a blue sky hidden by clouds.

Clouds are like thoughts. They come and they go. They cover the background blue sky which is the happiness we feel when we let all those thoughts drift on by.

If one can see the big-picture, one can see one’s sameness with others and the beauty of living and, if one can see that big-picture and enjoy the feeling of being and breathing in that blue sky feeling without thinking or needing, well then, one is effortlessly and naturally happy.

Enjoy An Interlude

Which of the following statements are true or false?

#1: Life itself is pleasurable. 

#2: Life is pleasurable like a Pérez Prado mambo. 

#3: Life is pleasurable in a pretty English cottage. 

#4: Life is pleasurable in Syrian rubble. If you answered true to all of the statements, you are probably an irritant to people who find life pleasurable only on condition. To think life itself is pleasurable runs countrary to industrial desires for comfort and convenience (see also: Polarities… and Wisdom).

If you answered false to any statement, it’s probably hard to imagine finding life pleasurable in deplorable conditions.

Surely suffering psychologically in a Syrian city scarred by destruction and murder is not as pleasurable as having Jennifer Lopez sit on your shoulder?

And what about the guy who loves bananas but is denied? For such a one, a banana would be a pleasure beyond measure! Maybe pleasure isn’t in satisfaction but denial? Today we think about thinking and enter a no-thinking-thinking zone.

We drop in to see what condition your condition is in and in a moment of silence or as trippy water music plays, we ponder the mind where all psychological suffering begins (and ends).

When you open your eyes, what do you see? A world opening in seeing.

But does knowing the cause of psychological suffering stop suffering? A drug addict knows the cause of his suffering but knowing doesn’t stop him. We know we make a mess, but knowing doesn’t stop us. Knowing isn’t helping! Selfing isn’t helping! Maybe a no self would be better?

We don’t need self-reflection but self-expansion.

A  truth can hide  in plain sight when you are preoccupied. Reality is obscured by how you see the world. Freedom comes when you can see your self self–thinking.

By singing “I’ve Got To Be Me” (a bill of goods to impress dames) we create a Sid Vicious circle and think our way into a “me” way of thinking where trouble begins.

“…jovial… without anything envious, malicious, mischievous, or despicable… yields that peculiar delight… in Falstaff’s company” (source).

It isn’t about “me” or “we” thinking. It’s all just thinking.

Break free of me-thinking and sing “I want to break free!” by Queen.

In taking time to not do anything but relax and think about thinking you break free of trying to be because you already are.

Everything is a giant puzzle held together by nothing, but don’t take it serious.

Enjoy eating bananas when you can and when you can’t, c’est la vie.

Here we come to a truth, but as the mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) said, “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth we shall never know it” (Thoughts).

Relativists argue, “all points of view are equally valid” (source), but is something true because it pleases you like a Rick Nelson chorus, “But it’s all right now. I learned my lesson well. You see, ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself” (“Garden Party”)?

If you are blind and someone says, “The sky is blue,” unless you know blue, you won’t know if it’s true. If someone says, “The answer is 42!” (see: answer to life, universe and everything), how do you know?

The crux of the matter is that truth cannot be conveyed to another. In the TV show Boardwalk Empire Arnold Rothstein repeated something Blaise Pascal said, “All of man’s troubles come from his inability to sit in a quiet room by himself.” In an interval without a goal, we sit quiet and let troubles go by not hanging on.

There are labels we ascribe to ourselves that become self-fulfilling. When you look at the world from within a bag of skin, whether you think the world is good, bad or indifferent depends on your way of thinking. It’s more than about having a positive attitude or being self-reflective. It’s about letting go of ego and seeing Reality.

The world you see has a thin film of personality covering it. You imagine who you are through flashbacks, inspirations and self-talk (see: Levels of Enjoyment). Self-talk comes as a voice. In comics it’s a cloud of words. On TV it’s voice-over narration like when Pete did it in The Family Guy or as portrayed in Fight Club except with swearing.

We narrate ourselves into being and the life we are leading but in so doing we don’t see reality.

When the words in your head vanish and the cartoon cloud goes empty, where do you go? Without self-talk are you animal, vegetable, or spiritual?

As long as you think of ‘me and my thoughts’ and ‘me and outside world’ there will be conflict between with no peace of mind.

We think of thoughts as train cars connected on a track puff-puffing somewhere saying, “I think I can. I think I can. I think I can” which is fine for getting to a destination but not so for enjoying.

If you want to slip out of “I-think-I-can” thinking and enjoy peace of mind, shift your centre outward like Copernicus and pick up good vibrations.

“Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer” Nic Copernicus.

People thought the Sun went around the Earth (a 2012 study found one in four Americans still do), until Copernicus went far out and saw the big picture.

In noticing how things are connected by nothing, in calmly breathing and heart beating, in stilling circular thinking – not doing, sitting quiet, walking across a parking lot, on a beach, up a tree, on a bus, in a store, eating a banana on the floor… in not-doing you are an integrated personality no longer conscious of having a personality! In being ordinary in reality there is tranquility.

Between thought and not trying (on occasion), a profound realization and peaceful sensation beyond explanation spontaneously arrives in body and mind like snow gently falling and all you do is enjoy enjoying.