1
HAPPINESS FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE
If you're still looking for happiness, you're not alone. An Internet search for it can get you over 100 million results. A search for “wisdom” will produce about the same. Who would have thought being happy and wise could be so elusive? You'd think by now we'd have absorbed the guidance of the multiple traditions handed down through time—spirituality, psychology, philosophy, shamanism, self-development, and even today's Energy Psychology and New Age.
We haven't absorbed it because a fundamental problem makes this guidance less effective than it could be. It's a core confusion that leads us to take sides instead of cooperating to find new ways to make the wisdom practical and accessible.
The essential problem is not the wisdom offered, but how we understand it. Whatever meaning we take away consciously, the unconscious mind consistently interprets the wisdom (regardless of how it's offered) as saying this: the solution to our pain and suffering is to permanently establish the positive and the good by permanently eliminating the negative and the bad. That will bring happiness and joy. This is the crucial issue: our deep misunderstanding of opposites and how to handle them.
I see this with most people who come to work with me. They are intensely engaged in removing anything bad or negative, but they feel overwhelmed with all it entails—and the unsatisfactory results. Emily is an excellent example.
Chasing After Happiness Is What We Humans Do
Emily, a thirty-eight-year-old supermom, had a handsome, loving husband, three pre-teen kids, a nice home, a career in the medical field, and a way to give back through volunteer work at the homeless shelter. She was convinced this was as good as it got and should have been the key to her fulfillment and happiness. Yet when she came to see me, her stress level was off the charts and anxiety was her constant companion.
One day, desperate for relief, Emily flew into my office, gripping her cup of jasmine tea so tightly I thought she would break it. She flopped into her usual chair and began to cry. “I try my best, but I just can't keep things under control. I can't keep my husband happy, the kids focused on school, the house clean, and my career on track and stay sane. Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I'm sure I could do it better if I just knew how.”
Emily isn't alone. She is one of the thousands of unhappy individuals I've encountered in my work who have had the same complaint: “I can't seem to deal with all the choices I have to make every day and be happy. There has to be a better way, doesn't there? My life is driving me crazy!”
And it's not just that Emily has the stress of being a working mom. Emily wants not only happiness, but also wisdom—a practical way to better manage her responsibilities. She told me she wants to stay calm and make decisions without going in circles, worrying if they're right or wrong—decisions such as whether to
- pick up the kids' clothes or leave them lying around for a day
- cook good organic food for dinner or eat out at a fast-food restaurant
- finish that art project sitting in the garage or put it off for another day to take a seminar for her medical career
- have coffee with her friends or hang out at home by herself
Emily goes in circles because she wants to feel good and pick the right choice to get her there. But she's not aware that all of her decisions, big and small, are deeply influenced by something outside her awareness: her unconscious mind's drive to feel good, be happy, and choose what will bring maximum good feelings and pleasure. This seems like it should make her happy, right? The problem is, following your unconscious directive to always choose what feels good doesn't always make you happy in the long run.
When you find yourself struggling with an either/or situation, it's your unconscious mind that makes deciding hard. And you may not realize that you're faced with these kinds of decisions all the time:
- Being alone or being together
- Taking care of you or taking care of others
- Being safe or taking a risk
These dilemmas can leave us paralyzed, corner us into arguments, catch us in power trips, make us controlling, debilitate our health, make us lose courage to stand up for ourselves, exhaust us, turn us into workaholics and codependents, block us from choosing our career path, and hook us into other addictive behaviors.
All of this is because we don't know how to navigate the flow between opposites and the tension between them—the things that make up dilemmas.
An unconscious drive to feel good influences all your decisions.
A Different Brand of Happiness Is Available
I'm glad to report there is another way to find happiness and feel good. It still requires you to choose and make decisions (after all, that's human life), but there's a wise way to do it that frees you to feel good about yourself—no matter how bad you feel. Paradoxical? Yes. Impossible? No.
I'm going to map out for you another route to a different brand of happiness—one that doesn't depend on outside circumstances, or whether your body is feeling pleasant or unpleasant emotions. This is very different from the happiness that comes when you get what you want (and don't get what you don't want), the most ordinary go-get-it brand of happiness. It's also not the same as that more mysterious, esoteric brand of happiness that comes for no reason at all.
The focus of this brand of happiness is creating a sustainable sense of peace and calm in the presence of your own emotional turmoil, not in its absence. As a bonus, it offers you a wonderful way to travel between the other two brands of happiness.
I introduced Emily to my Six-Step Process, guiding her through the notions and practices you'll learn in this book. Daily challenges didn't disappear, but she discovered how to handle them without the overwhelming anxiety and stress of trying to eliminate everything she perceived as negative or bad.
You can still feel good about yourself—no matter how bad you feel.
After using this process for a few months, Emily came back to see me—with a big smile on her face. She shared, “My life's just more workable now. I never thought I could change like this, but now I see things differently and handle things differently. I'm not just happier; I think I'm a whole lot wiser, too. And secretly, I'll tell you I finally feel like a real adult.”
Either/or decisions are hard when you don't know how to navigate the flow between the opposites and the tension between them.
Most people just want their dilemmas to go away. They have too much to do and too many decisions to make to take time for happiness. Yet, they can't get away from their deep unconscious desire to feel good—and perhaps more problematic, to not feel bad.
Not Feeling Bad Is Happiness, Too
Everyone wants to feel good. But is that the same sensation you get when you avoid feeling bad? Your unconscious mind thinks so. In fact, for your unconscious mind, feeling good is survival. It's following our core biological imperative that goes like this: go toward pleasure (keep the species going) and stay away from pain (don't die).
Whatever you choose to do, this imperative always influences your decisions. It becomes problematic when your unconscious mind also applies this directive to your emotions as well. It then forces you to move toward emotional pleasure and away from emotional pain (which isn't death, but can sure feel like it). This survival imperative makes you believe that not feeling bad will make you happy. The problem with this belief is that you can't get away from pain—physical or emotional—in human life. So no matter how hard you your unconscious try, you can't avoid the experience of is following feeling bad.
Life is as tough as it is gracious. It imperative: go brings each of us a multitude of disappointments. And each distressing turn of events motivates your unconscious mind to once again get you moving toward that impossible goal of never feeling bad (so you can feel good and survive).
Your unconscious toward pleasure is following a biological imperative: go toward pleasure (keep the species going) and stay away from pain (don't die).
Disappointments Galore
Rationally, you understand disappointment, discomfort, and un-happiness are a part of the package, but your unconscious mind doesn't. So when pain and suffering enter your life, your unconscious mind has to assume you're doing something wrong, someone else is to blame, or God has it in for you, or you'd be feeling good, wouldn't you?
Emily's unconscious mind might say to her: “You know, you're supposed to be able to handle all of these challenges. You must not be doing it right. You should squash that anxiety fast and be calm or your whole life is going to fall apart…and then, it's all over!”
Inner dialogues are often kind of melodramatic, with an aura of life and death. When dialogues continue (and they do), you may start feeling frightened because your unconscious mind thinks that feeling bad is dying! Avoid feeling bad at all costs.
Your unconscious mind also makes up lots of rules for how to reach its goal of feeling good: “Just do your to-do lists, have positive thoughts, be a good person, save money, be loving, connect with others, become successful, have faith, and cultivate kindness and compassion. Then unhappiness will leave you alone—and maybe you'll even get enlightened, and feeling bad will be gone for good.”
These tactics don't work, because your unconscious mind is blind to a huge truth: you don't get pleasure without pain, positive without negative, or enlightenment (living a conscious life) without endarkenment (living a life without awareness).
Some paths say living in the middle is the way out of this predicament. But life is both the middle and the extremes that create the middle. When you realize you don't get one without the other, the question becomes how to live with opposites and the predicaments they create, and still be happy. This book is all about helping you find the answer to that question.
You Cannot Not Want to Be Happy
When I heard the notion that, by design, life consists of both pleasure and pain, I thought it was a pretty stupid idea. Really, aren't love and success the answer to happiness, the ticket to a good life?
The unconscious mind is seeking a permanent state of feeling good.
At the unconscious level, everyone is engaged in a quest for happiness—just like I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter. You cannot not want to be happy. No matter where you search for it—food, alcohol, mochas with whip, relationships, children, community, career, hobbies, religion or spiritual path—happiness (and peace of mind) is always the unspoken promise.
The quest is a great motivator, like the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick. But the happiness that comes from getting what you want (and not getting what you don't want) can't deliver what your unconscious mind is seeking—a permanent state of feeling good. Blithely following this path only leads you into that same blind alley I mentioned in the Introduction.
Whether you're aware of it or not, your unconscious desire for survival—otherwise known as feeling good—is always there, influencing your decisions. It works tirelessly to pull you toward certain choices and away from others. And it's also tiring (unless you know how to manage it). I think that's why the notion of heaven (perpetual pleasure and freedom from worry about making wrong decisions) is so appealing. It sounds like you'll be out of that blind alley and no longer have to make choices and decisions all alone—decisions based solely on your own assessment of what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad. You'd be free from those unpleasant inner tugs-of-war in your body that accompany the process of trying to resolve a dilemma.
Sounds just lovely. But unfortunately, that's not how life works.
Emily, like many of my clients, let her newfound wisdom about opposites guide her in a different direction. Her desire to be happy didn't go away, but her way of going after it did. She stepped away from the painful blind alley with the street sign of Perpetual Pleasure. Instead, she accepted that both feeling good and feeling bad were always going to be a part of her life. Through that, she experienced a deep relaxation. Then she was able to put her energy into finding that different brand of happiness I've been talking about—the kind where you get to feel good about yourself no matter how bad you feel.
This is the crucial issue: our deep misunderstanding of opposites and how to handle them.
Taking an Alternate Route
Is that same blind alley Emily and I found also in your neighborhood? Most of us keep turning into it, again and again, despite the fact that it always leaves us facing a dreary dead-end. The following chapters detail what this blind alley is, how to develop what you need to recognize it, and my precise map for locating the bridge that leads to that different brand of happiness.
This bridge is your alternate route. Actually, it's right there, now, in front of you. But don't worry if you can't see it yet. The next few chapters are going to stir up a few ideas in your head, and then the bridge will appear right there before your eyes, sort of like—dare I say it—magic.
This stirring begins when you recognize that the fabric of your life is comprised of opposites—like success and failure, trust and doubt, or aloneness and togetherness. Opposites are undeniable and unalterable experiences in your life (what I call “facticities”1). Not knowing how to handle the tension between them creates your stress. When you understand opposites and how they work—it's like “open sesame.” The wisdom of all the ages can flow into your life, granting you that different brand of happiness and peace of mind.
You may not see these opposites yet, but I'll show you how to verify that they do in fact make up the fundamental fabric of daily living. Why is this a life-changing shift? Instead of fighting them, you suddenly see for yourself that the tension between opposites is the flow of life. It's where life presents its amazing performances—including the exquisite miracle of you and your journey.
You don't get pleasure without pain, positive without negative, or enlightenment (living a conscious life) without endarkenment (living a life without awareness).
It sounds so glorious!
But there's a catch to getting there. First, your unconscious mind needs an update (from Happiness 1.0 to Happiness 3.0), and your brain (operating system) needs an upgrade to run it. The Six-Step Process accomplishes both tasks.
Your Unconscious Mind Needs an Update
Every day your unconscious mind demonstrates its tenacious commitment to wiping out that tension between opposites. It doesn't recognize that tension contributes to life, much less that its presence is the flow of life itself. Your unconscious mind will drive you to spend long hours, lots of dollars, and often an agonizing amount of effort following any path that promises to eradicate or banish the darker aspects of your life. Why does your unconscious mind do this? The biological imperative once again—so you will feel good (and not bad), and thus survive.
You might be familiar with the ways your unconscious operates. It will badger you to transform or transcend your “shadow self” (all the parts of you that you don't like and might even hate). It keeps repeating the same theme: feel good, not bad, and thus survive.
The flow of life is found in the tension between opposites
If you're unfamiliar with the notion of a shadow self, think of it as a gathering of all these parts: loser, fatty, ugly bitch, manipulator, people pleaser, coward, codependent, critic, know-it-all, judge, jury, and victim. You might have unwanted and disliked parts lined up around the block. Some may be resentful, some terrified, and others eager to become different and better. But the unconscious mind won't accept any of them as they are. Change is required!
Unfulfilled Promises
You can spend massive amounts of energy to change yourself…for years and years. That's not bad. It's just human.
I spent many decades trying to erase my shadow self by either transforming it so all the darkness in me shifted into light, or transcending it and leaving it behind. With great gusto and hope, I have
- zapped all my “bad” energy with imagined hues of divine illumination
- peeled darkness out of my energy field and banished it from my body and life
- thrown my shadow self up to the heavens for a modern-day makeover
- loved my self-hatred to death in daily morning meditation
- smothered my negativity and chronic complainitis with gobs of gratitude
I fell under the illusion (so easy to do) that when you get rid of the parts of yourself that make you feel bad, you'll always feel good. But that's not so. Even when you do feel good, your unconscious mind is strong in its commitment. Without hesitation, it continues its mission and re-creates that familiar desire to rid yourself (permanently) of the next set of things you fear, don't like, or simply find unpleasant about yourself, others, and life in general.
Can you change your unconscious mind so it's not like that? No. But…I'm going to show you a way to change how you and your brain relate to it so it doesn't keep guiding you down that blind alley. The Six-Step Process shows you how to achieve this, and how to make your life easier—and happier.
Getting to the Land of Unresolvable Dilemma
In my journey toward happiness, many of the personal and spiritual growth programs I used had good results. All that work was not in vain. But nothing removed my despair each time another negative thought appeared in the privacy of my mind, or when I found myself still feeling envious, jealous, angry, or sad. My unconscious goal was to get rid of these things for good. Thus, that sense of failing time and time again never left my side.
I kept on making life into an either/or predicament—over and over, again and again. This is why I kept going down that blind alley. I didn't yet understand that life is lived with the greatest ease when you perceive it as a both/and adventure—happy and sad, high and low, separate and connected, divine and human.
Until your unconscious mind truly understands the role of opposites and how they create those tension-filled dilemmas that can't be resolved (only managed), you won't be able to see the bridge leading to what I call the Land of Unresolvable Dilemma. This is where you find the wisdom you seek and that different brand of happiness.
First, you have to shift your thinking and perception—shake up your thoughts—and then let them settle in a new arrangement around the three specific experiences I mentioned in the Introduction:
- impermanence (usually called change)
- opposites (often called duality)
- pradox (typically felt as confusion)
Keep reading the rest of Part One to see how you can accomplish these powerful shifts that changed my life and the lives of thousands of my students and clients.
A Touch of Magic
Reorganizing your old ideas into new configurations makes your alternate route—the invisible bridge—suddenly appear before your eyes—presto and alakazam! When you walk across it, the portals to this amazing Land of Unresolvable Dilemma open up and welcome you in. All you need to acquire is a little bit of magic.
Have you ever seen those sci-fi movies where the bad guys skulk around in invisible ships hidden behind cloaking devices? Astonishingly, science now says invisibility cloaks can be a reality.2 With that in mind, not being able to see what's in front of your eyes may not be just your imagination.
Or maybe you remember spy movies, or fantasy tales, where secret messages were sent with disappearing ink. Or maybe you made disappearing ink as a kid. Then you heated the paper, rubbed it with lemon juice, held it up to the light, or used a special kind of lens to make the hidden words appear.
Let's look through the special lens I'm going to show you in chapter 2. It has just the magic required to get the show on the road.
10
BEYOND THE AWARENESS PARADOX
Congratulations! Reaching into Part Two means you've successfully navigated your first challenge—the Awareness Paradox I talked about in the last chapter. Your willingness to keep exploring the Six-Step Process means you're receptive and open (despite any skepticism), and you're ready to take your imagination out for a good long walk. In Part One, you successfully dreamed up a compelling vision of the swinging footbridge to the Land of Unresolvable Dilemma. You took a look through the lens of paradox and saw the unusual Three-Point Balancing Act between two dimensions—an essential for living with, and managing, paradox. You're all set to go.
You're going to walk through each of the Six Steps four times—once with Maggie, once with Max, once with my prime dilemma (which turns out to be an issue for a lot of folks), and finally, with your own dilemma. Each step has a different angle and will help install the process into your brain.
The Essential Element for Success—Changing Your Brain
If you want to get results and awaken your mystic's eye, working through one of your own dilemmas is extremely helpful. This Six-Step Process is not only practical but also brain changing.
Your brain can make the change you want—and apply it to your life. Your active participation accelerates your brain's ability to install this new option of embracing opposites.
Do we need speed here? It's questionable whether we have years to accomplish this shift in human awareness through conversation, therapy, and meditation alone. The legacy of our mystic friends is this Six-Step Process—a koan in modern form gleaned directly from the psychology of the mystics. (A koan is a Zen Buddhist riddle of sorts. Its goal is to throw you outside the realm of thinking logically so you can directly experience the reality of something beyond the mind.) The Six Steps attempt to mirror this pattern of brain activity common to mystics.
The Wonder of Neuroplasticity
Remember chapter 8 on impermanence? Everything, including your brain, changes. Your brain actually generates new neural pathways, or coding, that affect its functioning. This little piece of magic now has a fancy name: neuroplasticity.7 Neuroplasticity fashions new neuron trails by adding or removing neural connections, or adding cells. Pretty amazing, isn't it? The best part is that it means you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks.
Current scientific theory suggests that thinking, learning, and acting actually change both the brain's physical structure and functional organization. As you think and learn about Unresolvable Dilemma and, most importantly, act in a new way by using the Six-Step Process, you speed up your brain's ability to adapt.
Both mystics and neuroscience say your brain is already hard-wired for seeing opposites in this new way. Your mystic's eye is already there, just as real as your physical eyes, but dormant. Stimulating your brain with paradoxical thinking awakens your mystic's eye. Thousands of folks who have used the Six-Step Process report the desired new behaviors do begin appearing.
As you read on, use your imagination again. Conjure up the possibility of new brain cells lighting up. Envision new neural pathways popping into view as you learn how to embrace both sides of a polar pair and to perceive it as one unified whole.
Imagine watching and feeling a new option arise—the opportunity to view life as an adventure through the lens of both/and (your mystic's eye) rather than viewing it as a predicament through the lens of either/or (your mind's eye).
Reading and doing the Six-Step Process stimulates your brain. It will transform the wisdom of your discontent into your own wisdom, freeing the new behaviors you desire to emerge.
Your Travel Companions: Maggie and Max
You've already gotten a glimpse of Maggie and Max in Part One, but let me fill you in on their back stories.
Maggie
Maggie was raised in a fundamentalist family on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. When she realized that her family's lifestyle was not to her liking, she left home, got married, had a child, and then divorced. As a single mom on welfare, she put herself through college and then law school, and she went on to dedicate her life to helping others—particularly focusing on alleviating poverty and hunger and on bettering the status of women around the world. She became quite well-known for her work in the field and was asked to consult with many international organizations who wanted her expertise.
When I met her, she was the mother of two children and had married a loving man. Together they made enough money to be upper-middle-class Americans living a beautiful and comfortable lifestyle. Several of Maggie's close friends were avid spiritual seekers. As she watched her friends grow and change, she envied their calm and centered way of being. She began longing for some kind of spiritual nourishment of her own. Maggie hoped that would be possible for her, but she couldn't get her head around the paths her friends were following.
Maggie's cynicism and fear of looking foolish were the overriding roadblocks to her exploration. But her courage and longing were stronger. She wanted something to give her life more meaning.
When I met Maggie, she was discouraged with her work, feeling it wasn't making much of a difference in the world. She wanted to stop traveling, stay home, and fulfill her dream of becoming a writer—and she wanted to write about her experiences abroad and all that she'd learned. She thought that might be a better way to help change the world, but she didn't know how to accomplish the task or fulfill her dream. The focus of her time with me was her desire to change her life and to send it in a more balanced direction.
Max
Max was born and raised in a tiny log cabin in Alaska. His father taught him all the things you had to learn to live in Alaska (fishing, hunting, hiking, chopping wood, staying warm in the cold), and Max discovered he loved working with his hands. He was always building something—and enjoying it immensely. At the same time, he knew there was more to life. There was a lot of wealth and glamour out there in the world, and he wanted some of it.
He studied hard and got his degree in architecture. But life took him in a different direction, and he found himself pulled into big corporations where his skills as a manager and speaker were fostered and rewarded. Max got a taste of the good life and went after it at full speed. Success became his most important goal. Although he had a lovely wife and four children, Max stayed focused on his career—with the aim of gathering as many executive perks as he could.
After several years and lots of promotions, Max quit his job as an executive vice president in the building industry and quickly established himself as a public speaker. He loved being on stage and receiving recognition for his achievements, but he didn't love anything else about it.
When I met him, his fear of failure had mushroomed to monumental proportions. He felt stalked by the threat of defeat. Because Max had always been a closet personal-growth junkie, he knew a lot about self-help. But this time, he needed more personalized support. Our coaching work focused on helping him learn a new strategy for managing his escalating fear of failure and managing his obsession with success.
Despite his stage persona, Max was actually shy and very sweet. He wanted some clarity and specific guidance for how to stop worrying about failure and to just enjoy his life, and he wanted to stop being so afraid of emotions—others' and his own. He saw them as a weakness rather than a strength, and he avoided even acknowledging them as much as possible.
In doing the Six-Step Process, Maggie and Max voiced a lot of objections that reflected the concerns I've heard over the years as I've taught this process around the world. I've included them all here to help you as you work your way through the Six-Step Process too. If you have any concerns that aren't answered here, just let me know (www.RaginiMichaels.com). The input of people like you has helped this work grow into a precise and effective tool.
Now, on to Step One.
