One Life Tutorial for July 2022
Don’t Look to History to Solve What is Now


​When something difficult happens in your life, do you look backwards, trying to find the origination of the problem? That is what many do. It is very common to look for a past lifetime that will explain the karma of this lifetime, or look for the behavior in the past that can explain the experience that is now painful. However, looking to the past to solve something difficult in the present is not likely to yield any insight. Why? Because that strategy is contingent upon the belief that there is causality, and that direct and complete creation of an outcome is caused by an origin you can uncover. The belief is that if you find the origin, and eliminate its influence, you can thereby alter the outcome. However, any origin you find will be the result of your biased memory attempting to explain something that is ultimately unknowable. It will be speculation, and not the cause. There is no true knowing of anything except in the right-here-right-now present.

When a problem arises, it is necessary to look at the problem and allow the solution to unfold. This is different than being attached to making a difference and creating a resolution to the problem. When difficulty arises, non-action can often be the best choice. Staying present with what is can be the most meaningful way to navigate the storm, and letting go of trying to find an answer to “Why?” questions can bring the greatest peace. So non-action, presence, and letting go of an automatic reactive run to the past is going to serve you best when in the midst of a troubling situation.
Don’t get stuck in the common thinking that all you have to do is unravel the past, and hack away at the roots of the situation in order to solve your current dilemma. How many times have you said or heard said, “If only I would have taken that fork in the road 10 years ago, I would not be here” (substitute your own “if only”) The deeper truth is you ARE here and that is all that matters. How you got here is ultimately irrelevant.

There are many justifications of past choices. “I only avoided the fork in the road because it looked much more challenging than steering straight ahead.” Or “I didn’t think I had the power to choose the fork in the road.” Or “Someone was in my way and blocked me from taking any other next step.” You can see how all these excuses can actually distract you from what is happening now, and get you lost in the interpretive fiction of the past, rather than cultivating a full-on acceptance of what is now present.

What is Now Present is exactly what is supposed to be Now Present—it could be nothing other than Now Present. You cannot take what is Now Present and find its cause in order to alter what you believe is the direct and complete outcome of this cause. It might look like a good way to try to avoid a future you have judged as troublesome, but actually you are just creating more confusion and delusion. You can only live in the Now Present. Nothing else exists. You must be present with whatever you are now experiencing in order to live whatever the experience is. Let go of all the assumptions of causality and you bring your whole self to the Now Present. The all that you are will then have the perfect experience of All That Is. You will never have a definitive answer to “Why” questions. “If only” statements are in the end meaningless. Just be with What Is and Present Now, and all will be as it is. 

Synchronization is defined as the coordination of two or more things so they happen at the same time or rate. There are lots of illustrations of this, for example, an orchestra uses a conductor to keep individual musicians playing in the same time signature. You and your friend both set matching timers on your phone. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronous and those that are not are asynchronous.

At first you might think that synchronization is dependent upon a conscious agreement amongst all parties involved. In the case of the orchestra, all the musicians desire to be in sync, and agree to follow the conductor’s instructions. But there are many examples of objects with rhythms that naturally tend to synchronize: crickets sing together, fireflies blink on and off together, and when placed side by side, pendulums swing in unison. Neither crickets, fireflies nor pendulums make agreements or have conductors.

Synchronization of rhythmic things is self-organizing and self-reinforcing. Once things are synchronized, there is very little reason for them to deviate, so synchronized objects are very stable and reliable. The influence that seems to initiate the synchronization can be anything, and systems of things that have rhythms most often synchronize naturally and spontaneously.

In computer simulations of sync science, often there is a mix of synchrony and asynchrony that appears. A state containing many exotic forms of synchronization, with regions of randomness and asynchrony has been called the chimera state. Consciousness can be understood as a complicated and delicate balance of synchrony and asynchrony, and from our perspective will always be a chimera—incongruous parts seeming to make a congruous whole.
When you look within, and dive deep, you will likely uncover ideas and feelings which seem to be in sync with your world and just as many ideas and feelings which seem to be out of sync with your world. In the human world of duality, even synchrony is an understanding that cannot exist without the presence of its partner, asynchrony. You find that neurons fire in patterns, heartbeats align in sync with other heartbeats. Yet total synchronization of all aspects of the self is impossible, and is always unachievable.

Synchronization requires distinct and separate aspects of a system to be defined as such. You need two to tango—duality to synchronize. The point we wish to make is that synchronization with All That Is is not One Life Awareness. It is not an indication of movement towards One Life Awareness either. Consciousness is often in sync with All That Is, but just as likely may be “out of sync” at some junctures in the time and space of everyday life. That is the chimeric nature of consciousness. That is the mystery of All That Is.

​Synchronicities occur when synchrony is acknowledged, and recognized as present everywhere, and when asynchrony is recognized as necessary for synchrony to exist. Synchrony and asynchrony are mutually dependent. One Life Awareness is not dependent on your finding synchrony or asynchrony. One Life Awareness simply is. Non-duality is the recognition that underlying the multiplicity and diversity of life experience there is an infinite and indivisible reality, or One Life Awareness. Being present, being who you are, or just being, can allow you to sense that ultimately, synchrony is nothing to try to achieve, nor is asynchrony something to avoid. All That Is simply is, and all is One Life.

The very common understanding of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin is usually characterized as “Survival of the Fittest.” Evidence supports this claim with species of organisms arising and developing through the natural selection of inherited variations and adaptations that increase an individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce. This theory has influenced many, and has been modernized to include newer scientific theories of evolution. This biological sense of evolution grows out of the relative nature of duality. From the non-dual understanding, One Life Awareness, evolution would be represented more appropriately as “Thrival of the Cooperative.”

As you dive deeply into at this axiom, you will find that Thrival of the Cooperative operates in Awareness as a process of conectedness. Nothing thrives without cooperation as all life is interdependent and connected. You can see One Life Awareness in the midst of cooperation functioning in all levels of being, and all life expression.

In a world filled with fear, primarily fear of enoughness and death, Survival of the Fittest presents a roadmap for a seemingly successful navigation of life’s difficulties—just become the fittest and you win. The trouble is, that becoming the fittest is really only possible with the realization of deep connectedness to others, and must be fueled by cooperation.
In the realm of Thrival of the Cooperative, groups of organisms work or act together for common or mutual benefits, frequently understood as “adaptation” that promotes some benefit for all concerned. All involved see whatever they attain to be a positive result of cooperation, whereas in the throes of a Survival of the Fittest orientation, competition puts every organism at risk for survival. Without a Thrival of the Cooperative approach to life, the goals and achievements of individuals are unrelated to each other and tend to promote a sense of isolation and separation.

There are many different kinds of cooperation. What has been called direct cooperation refers to people all doing the same thing together with one goal or outcome in mind. This might be everyone pulling the weeds in the garden, or even everyone chanting together ceremoniously. This kind of cooperation is voluntary, and could be done by oneself if desired. Indirect cooperation is when people all do different things to achieve one goal. An example might be all the different laborers and tradesmen who are necessary to build a house, or perhaps all the musicians in an orchestra, or any other endeavor that requires a division of labor. When people specialize and add their skills to other specialists, the form of cooperation is considered to be indirect. Both forms utilize connectedness and achieve results that could not be attained without some form of cooperation.

Connectedness is the knowing that everything living and non-living is connected in some way. Not all connections are obvious or measurable. Yet connections exist and reinforce the truth of interdependency. Knowing you are connected to everyone and everything is the ground from which thrival commences, and cooperation is the path to express that knowing.

Think of all the ways you cooperate. It is one of the most primary elements of all experience. It doesn’t matter if you are cooperating with a friend or spouse, with your community or country. Cooperation is the process of One Life—All That Is—and it is difficult for an individual to thrive without it.

​In the past two pandemic years cooperation has been highlighted. The only way to move beyond the virus has been to generate cooperation amongst individuals and use the power of coming together in new ways as a means of continuing to thrive. The human world is still quite unsettled around the virus and its activities. Connectedness has created thrival by using cooperation as a better strategy than a competitive “fittest” strategy. Ultimately everything and All That Is must cooperate directly and indirectly in order for all to thrive. Let go of fear in order to allow deep connectedness, and simply find ways to cooperate with All That Is. Every action is an opportunity to cooperate, every cooperative expression is an affirmation of connectedness and thrival.  

​ 
Making a choice is an exercise of incredible power. You might at first think that we mean that there is a lot of power in making the right choice, but we would suggest that the power of choice lies in the realization that all choices are ultimately right.
 
Understanding dualism, understanding the nature of living a human existence, is understanding that you will be constantly confronted by the either/or scenario. Basically, what happens in these either/or scenarios is that both sides get incredibly loaded up with all sorts of things and unconsciously the “ledger sheet” process is begun.
 
You have choice A and choice B and then you come up with an enormous number of concepts on which to compare these two options. Some pros go on one side of the ledger, and some cons go on the other side of the ledger, and the lists are endless That's what goes on unconsciously, and the fact is you'll never be able to resolve dualism with dualism. You'll never be able to resolve A or B by contrasting A to B because eventually you will have to recognize that A and B cannot exist without each other. It doesn't matter what A is or what B is, and the moment you acknowledge the interdependency of A and B, you are set free from the unconscious compulsion to pick the “right” one.
 
A and B are necessarily equal. Every choice leads to an infinity of possible outcomes. You cannot have a better experience with one than the other. You're going to have your experience with your choice no matter what it is. That is all you can have, just your experience with your choice.
 
Choices are quite arbitrary. The idea that one choice is better or worse than another, or easier, harder, or more important than another, is often fabricated out of fear of making the choice. If we were to tell you that good choices can be made without too much consideration of the possibilities, this often brings up a lot of resistance. You might believe that life is about making the right choices and not making wrong ones. You might think that you must evaluate all choices carefully. We would not suggest that this advice is wrong, only that this advice can lead you into a state of fear as your thinking plummets into a nerve-racking attempt to decide between two possibilities. And looking at your options is almost always a speculation of future events—a fantasy projection.
 
 We suggest that you settle into the here and now and make the choice with complete abandon. All choices are ultimately choices between two equals. You can get past the fear that you will choose something that brings you a bad outcome. Ultimately your experience of the outcome will be what you make of it. With this understanding, a choice between two perceived outcomes is a choice between two equivalents. You'll experience what you'll experience: your presence, your gratitude, your heart open, your spirit, in either situation if you allow that to be your intention, rather than an intention of a right choice. The deepest intention you hold is the best place from which to make a choice. If you superficially set the intention to “choose the right thing,” you will find yourself having a superficial experience. If what lies much deeper within you is to experience everything with the greatest compassion and wisdom you are, then allow that intention to be present when ever you are in the process of choice making. So if you find yourself paralyzed, because you are in a total conundrum about a choice, see the big picture, and understand that the feeling of being stuck between two choices is a picturing of duality. The resolution of duality is stepping completely out of it, not diving more deeply into it, which is what happens when you try to make choices based on comparison.
 
Tear up the ledger sheet. Stop thinking about what could be the result of this choice, and what could happen with another choice. It's all speculation, and bottom-line you're just going to experience you. Your expression of life is the you that you will experience in the moment of the experience. Keep it all very simple. Let the choices flow into one another with confidence that all of you is present making the choices. Becoming more aligned with One Life Awareness allows you to recognize how simple it is to let go of old limiting beliefs around the possibility that you could make choices that are wrong.
 
As you become more and more comfortable in One Life Awareness, you will stop obsessing about things in your life. A choice won’t become overwhelming. You will still focus, and be engaged in meaningful and joyful choice making, and the experience will come to match your intention naturally. You won’t be overwhelmed unless you get stuck in believing the power of choice is about making the right choice. If you open up beyond your choices into One Life Awareness, you will actually feel less overwhelmed. The more expanded you are, the smaller choices become in your totality of One Life Awareness.
 
It is simply training the mind, not to gain dominion over your thoughts, but to allow all thoughts to just be whatever they are without making them substantial. You are energy, your thoughts, your mind, all is energy. Training the mind is not controlling the mind, or conquering the thoughts, but allowing them to simply be. There is always a you that is not invested in any of the thoughts. This you has power. This you has the power to choose from what we call a deeper place—One Life Awareness. In One Life Awareness all thoughts are equal, therefore all choices are equal. Look deeply within, notice your thoughts, accept them for what they are--just thoughts. This place we call the deepest part of you, the you that can access other points of view, is the place of One Life, an indescribable yet simple place where all choices are equal.
 
There is a lot of power in choice making. Make all your choices from the deepest place, from the you that you know is loved, and all choices will be loving choices. Make your choices not from a ledger sheet that you have studied with an intense comparing and contrasting of speculations of results, but from an open-hearted, expansive, flowing you that is present, right here and right now, willing to choose with abandon, confident in the rightness of all that is, letting go of thinking you create “rightness” in favor of knowing you are simply One Life Awareness expressing what is.
 
 

Tutorial for March 2022
 
The Observer
 
To be “The Observer,” also sometimes called “The Witness,” requires you to enter a realm of consciousness that is absolutely neutral and free of attachments. The Observer realm of consciousness is simple awareness, noticing, seeing without judging, just being present with the here and now. When you are observing yourself, you are gathering information about who you are, therefore gaining in self-awareness. This information ultimately becomes a database for your perceptions, and the foundation for the stories you tell yourself about who you are.
 
You don’t have to conjure up this realm of consciousness, it is a part of your natural state. Your experience is the sensory data you have amassed combined with your perception of the data, and that is followed up with your inner narration of the events. How you engage with the sensory input and how you perceive it is habitual, and generally automatic and unconscious. You can, however, train yourself to perceive things in new ways—this is what an artist does. An artist can learn to see things in terms of shadow, light and perspective, for example, and use that trained perception to reproduce what is seen on a canvas with paint. A pet owner can learn the various sounds their pet makes and interpret them, while anyone else might just hear generic pet noises.
 
The part of this process over which you have the most agency is the inner narration. In The Observer realm, you are aware of your thoughts and feelings and have some sense of their usual biases. But you also have the capacity to shift from your usual point of view to something more unique and responsive to the here and now moment. The story you then generate is not attached to the point of view, but rather is fluid and malleable. You come to realize you are not stuck or submerged in any of it, not the experience as it is narrated, nor the narration itself. This Observer becomes liberated from habitual processing of sensory input. That is sometimes seen an experience of “stepping back” but it is actually a releasing of your customary way experiencing.
 
With the self-awareness that arises in the Observer realm as we are calling it, often comes the ability to feel more joy and compassion for self and others. It is truly a present state of One Life Awareness. By paying attention to the subtleties of the inner narration, you can train yourself not to believe the parts that are full of judgments and attachments even if these judgments and attachments do creep into the story from time to time. By not believing your inner stories as being absolute truth, you open the door for the judgments and attachments to simply dissolve. Once you know the place within you that is not attached to your stories and judgments, you will glimpse the pure view, the experience as it simply is, life as it simply is. There is great joy in simply being alive and being right here, right now. Assuming The Observer point of view can be a wonderful tool to remember that joy.
 
Let being The Observer be a centering tool for you. Have confidence that you know what we are speaking about—it is not a great mystery. It is just the observance of the mind and its habits of perception without distractions. You don’t interfere with what you are observing, you are not affected by it, but instead, when noticing how you are interpreting the experience, let go of believing it. It is like the outbreath of the experience. Breathe in and out, and let it all be. 

Practice Generosity

One Life Tutorial
February 2022

Generosity is often mentioned in Buddhist teachings as a practice that helps to clear the mind of attachments and fears. What matters most is the intention with which you are generous. You need to have a pure motivation to simply give without any craving for personal benefit as a result of your giving.  Generosity can be a spontaneous and natural act emanating from a loving and open mind or heart. There is no effort, it just flows as a result of feeling connected to the One Life, All That Is. Generosity can also be a practice undertaken as a means of cultivating a natural flow of generosity. This practice, coupled with meditation, can amplify feelings of connection and improve relationships. As a practice, generosity can also point out to you where you hold back or are aloof, and where you have fear and resistance to connectedness or to the understanding of interdependency. There is only One Life, and All That Is truly arises from an interdependent state of being.

There are generally two ways of practicing generosity: Giving material things, and giving loving kindness. Giving away money and possessions, usually comes to mind immediately when thinking about generosity, but being kind and gentle to others—giving loving kindness--shows generosity of spirit. Being a generous person is ultimately more important than any particular act of giving. Acts purely coming from compassion and good will contribute to being a generous person. Allowing others to be recognized by putting them before yourself can be an act of generosity. Understanding and being empathetic can be an act of generosity. Just smiling at someone can be generous, too. Generosity is a practice of unselfish kindness.

​Kindness is one of humanity’s greatest assets. To be kind is to consider the feelings of others and to avoid actions that do harm to others. If kindness is as the root of all your actions, you can have confidence that your actions are in service to humanity. We suggest that you look at your motivation for actions of kindness. If you are motivated to help, it means you have evaluated the situation and see it to be in need, or lacking in some manner. If you are motivated to fix something, it means that you are seeing the situation as currently broken. If you have a sense of service arise within you, it means you will enhance with generosity what is already as it should be.

Now that does not mean that you cannot help or fix things, but that if helping and fixing underlie most of your believed altruistic actions, you may not have pure intentions, you may unconsciously be looking to benefit yourself or your ego in some way. If you desire reward or recognition, or even hope for a favor in return, you are not driven by pure intention. Being aware of why you are acting is necessary if you want your actions to really serve others. True generosity stems from unselfish motivations and will express in affection, empathy, gentleness and giving to others—all qualities of kindness.

There are personal benefits to giving generously with pure intention. Practicing generosity helps to eliminate unconscious greed and judgment, while extinguishing ill-will. You reduce your attachment to possessions by letting go of them, and if you can give your time and energy to benefit another, you will find many obstructions and obscurations lifting in your life—though they may not necessarily be connected in a logical way to your giving. Practice generosity, allow it to become a natural emanation from the who and what you truly are and all One Life will benefit.

When you realize that there is only One Life Awareness, and that all of life is an ever-expanding awakening to that knowing, you also come to know the attributes, or characteristics of One Life Awareness are innumerable and ultimately have no real meaning. And yet to acknowledge some of these attributes, and see them as describing how you naturally function in service to and recognition of One Life Awareness can be helpful in developing a focus on the awakening path.

Make the big leap to directly experience your life by knowing you are always who you are, and All-That-Is is always All-That-Is. No more and no less. Let go of hopes and fears, let go of wishes for things to be different or to remain the same. Refine the mental inner chatter till it has no more relevance, and abide in the stillness. Meanwhile, live your life without commentary or assessment by simply letting go of evaluating anything in terms of positive and negative.

​While there truly are no attributes of One Life Awareness in the absolute sense, there are qualities and potential traits that can be noticed in the relative sense of living life that are useful to cultivate. In this next year, allow yourself to effortlessly incorporate any and all of the following attributes into your life for the benefit of yourself and for all beings. Let this list encourage you to become truly all that you are. We recommend that you meditate with as many items on the list as interest you, one at a time, on your own schedule in whatever order you wish.
 
PEACE
You will be engaging a deeper sense of peace in your life. This means bringing peace to all areas of your life, from what might seem meaningless to what might seem profound.
LOVING KINDNESS
You will be cultivating a deeper sense of loving kindness in your life by building bodhicitta with a pure heart, pure motivation, and pure intention.
HEALTH
You will be creating a deeper state of health on all levels in your life: including physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual well-being.
AWARENESS
You will be sensing a deeper stability of awareness in your life. Awareness as a natural state is a simple sense of knowing what is, with a peaceful, clear and open state of consciousness.
JOY
You will be refining a deeper internal sense of absolute joy in your life. Your elation will infect others’ contentment. Let your joy be derived from knowing complete well-being of your soul and spirit.
FRIENDSHIP
You will be increasing a deeper sense of true friendship in your life. You will find this deepening of friendship with those you have been close to for a long time, as well as with those new in your life. Friends will be loyal, connected, and share themselves with you.
POWER
You will be forming a deeper sense of personal and trans-personal power in your life. This power is based in faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.
HAPPINESS
You will be generating a deeper sense of happiness and contentment with everything in your life. This true happiness comes from having an unassailable connection to the deep state of unbounded awareness at your core.
ACCEPTANCE
You will be stabilizing a deeper sense of true acceptance in your life. Acceptance is the willingness to let go of your emotional opposition to the reality of “what is.” With acceptance you can overcome any obstacles that confront you.
PROSPERITY
You will be forming a true recognition of prosperity in all realms of your life. This is the understanding that All That Is, One Life, is inexhaustible and ultimate support and supply.
BEAUTY
You will be fashioning a deeper sense of inner and outer beauty in your life. The Navaho blessing "May you walk in beauty" catches the essence of this spiritual practice. Beauty is both a path you travel and what surrounds you inwardly and outwardly on the path.
ENERGY
You will be engendering and unleashing a deeper energy, an unstoppable, engaged, lively, selfless and utterly radiant presence in all levels of your being. 
INSPIRATION
You will be experiencing a deeper sense of inspiration and inspired action in your life. You will awaken to new possibilities by allowing a transcendence of ordinary experiences and limitations.
BRILLIANCE
You will be experiencing a deeper sense of the brilliance, and an intense brightness of your light, which will lead to greater awareness and loving kindness.
STILLNESS
You will be finding a deeper sense of stillness of the mind and finding inner peace in your life.
ENLIGHTENMENT
You will be allowing a deeper sense of natural enlightenment to guide you. You will discover a dimension of yourself which has been hidden, but now comes to light.
ABUNDANCE
You will be increasing a deeper sense of awesome abundance in your life. This refers to life in its abounding fullness of joy and strength for spirit, soul and body.
GRATITUDE
You will be invigorating a deeper sense of gratitude in your life. Gratitude is a fullness of heart that moves you from limitation and fear to expansion and love.
PRESENCE
You will be engaging a deeper sense of presence in your life. Presence is the awareness of your true nature manifesting as peace, love, wisdom, kindness, and connectedness.
EQUANIMITY
You will be cultivating a deeper sense of equanimity, an evenness of mind, in your life.  Neither a thought nor an emotion, it is rather the steady conscious realization of reality's transience. It is the ground for wisdom and freedom and the protector of compassion and love.

Tutorial for December 2021

The view of Dzogchen Buddhism is that you are already perfect, enlightened, awakened to One Life, exactly as you are. You and all living beings are pure, whole and complete, right here and right now. This is the “Great Perfection.” It is not developed or attained, it simply is.

How different that is from other religions and philosophies where every human being is considered to be full of original sin, flawed, and not whole. With the understanding that you are imperfect, life becomes a process of trying to fix the flaws and polish up the essential nature through atonement and other practices.

What would your life be if you came to know your “true nature” as the great perfection that it is? You would know the nature of your mind as spacious, luminous and compassionate. You would experience this true nature as who you really are. You would see that actually you are liberated from whatever pain you encounter, whatever suffering exists; you would see that you are beyond being defined by those encounters. You are essentially pure and will always be pure. You are also luminous and clear, with presence that is natural to who you are.

Describing your true nature as compassionate does not mean that you have ideas or actions that express compassion, more that compassionate awareness emanates from you in all ways that are radiant manifestations of One Life Awareness.

Once you become familiar with your true essence, your true nature, experiencing it and living it become your natural expression. You may still want to meditate and to practice in various ways to stabilize the recognition of your true nature. This does not mean practicing to achieve results, nor does it mean meditating to get somewhere. Instead, to keep on returning to the natural state of your true nature by recognizing it as such, utilize practice and meditation as simple reminders of what you already truly know. You know very deeply your true nature is the great perfection.

​Your true nature will become known to you as the ground of your being. That is who and what you truly are. Deepening your familiarity with this notion through practice and meditation will bring you to the full expression of your true nature. Your true nature is where you have always been, with wisdom, unlimited compassion and the capacity to benefit all living beings. This is the expression of the great perfection—your true nature.

So, there is truly nothing you can “do”—just everything you can “be.” Just to be present and allow everything to unfold as it will, having confidence in whatever outcome arises, is enough. You are the great perfection exactly as you are. There is no improvement necessary, nothing to fix, nowhere to go. Just be as you are, who you are.
​
All religions, spiritual paths and philosophies have points of view. Beyond whatever point of view you assimilate, there is only you and your perception of what is. Your spiritual journey, your path, your point of view can be anything that resonates with you. There is not a single absolutely truthful explanation for what is, because what is, is indescribable. We share with you words that ultimately can do nothing but point in a direction, or circle around the absolute. Find your way by being you, with whatever point of view you wish. Be natural, love and be loved, and that is all there is.

How can you find happiness? Stop looking for it. In fact, happiness is the euphoric feeling that occurs when the denial of its natural existence ceases. You have to stop investing in the search and come back to your natural self to experience happiness.
Everyone knows what happiness is. Everyone has experienced it,-- sometimes in short bursts, and sometimes for long durations,-- but no one knows where to find it. Looking for something or someone to make you happy never works. Neither does trying to make yourself happy when you are sure you are not happy. This is why there is a low rate of success for the use affirmations designed to convince you that you are already what you want to be. How can you find happiness, when happiness is literally the end of the pursuit for it?

True acceptance lies at the end of the pursuit and search for happiness. You will never be happy if you believe something, now or past, should be different than it was or is.

Happiness is revealed as the mental constructs and modifications of beliefs and thoughts are released and no longer reified. This is when Buddhism suggests that you have perceived the true nature of reality. It is not, however, that the true nature of reality is happiness, more that the true nature of reality is without the obscurations of attachments and afflictions.

Let’s not confuse happiness with gratification or pleasure. Engaging in sensual pleasure, self-indulgence, and instant gratification of desires, sometimes believed to be the pursuit of happiness, will not contribute to an achievement of happiness. Pleasure, indulgence, and gratification are all changeable and impermanent. Grasping for something, watching it slip away and trying to procure it again can cause you to feel more unhappy than happy. If you spend all your time, energy, and skill trying to protect, safeguard and secure what you believe you have achieved, you have lost happiness, not gained it. Fulfilling an insatiable desire momentarily does not bring happiness, it brings the frustration of limitation and the realization that happiness cannot be dependent upon time and space, but must be even more free of three-dimensional constraints.

So, what can you do?

Stop Pursuing and Start Expressing
Let go of the idea that you have to chase after happiness and learn how to simply express happiness in whatever form it takes in your world. There is no happiness savings account, whatever you have, spend it immediately on everyone around you.

Think of Happiness as Your Only Mission
The most essential mission of any human being is to be happy—to live in your most natural state. Happiness is not the ultimate outcome of a life “well lived,” it is the most fundamental outcome of a life. Get to happiness by diving deep into everything you are and just being that which you are in total acceptance of all that you are.
 
Remember Happiness Is Your Natural State
Whatever you are doing in your life, do it from a place of knowing happiness underwrites it all. Your nature is happy, however you might be feeling in any moment. Feelings move and change all the time, happiness is solid and deep inside you. It is reliable and abundant. It is at the source of your humanity, always ready to be shared.

Keep Your View Pure and Expansive
 The world is wonderful. Stars shine, the sun rises, everything is in order. Stop looking for what is wrong, and see what is wonderful. Appreciate your aliveness. It is your thoughts and feelings that determine your experience, and you are the thinker of your thoughts and the feeler of your feelings, but you are not the totality of All That Is. There is always happiness amidst and underneath and around all of life—all One Life. Allow yourself to keep returning your thoughts and feelings to the most expansive place, the purist view of One Life unfolding and expressing happiness.
 
Smile
 Something as simple as a smile can change your experience from suffering to happiness. Smile at yourself from the inside out. Smile at everyone you see today, and the next day, and the next. Don’t think you have to feel happiness first, then you will smile. Smile first and then you have a good chance of remembering happiness as your natural state of being.
 
Practice happiness. Be happiness. See the world through rose-colored glasses. Reality is not the fixed place “out there” where suffering occurs. Reality is whatever you are experiencing in the moment. Let this moment be whatever it is, accept it unconditionally, and express your truest nature: Happiness!

Acceptance is key for One Life Awareness. It is a foundation for stability and fuel for abiding in One Life Awareness. It is usually understood as something like “loving What Is” and seems easy unless you find yourself in the midst of suffering. What does acceptance in the midst of suffering really entail? Essentially, it means not resisting the natural unfolding, seeing things the way things are, and letting go of the notion that you are something permanent or special.

​Like most people, your tendency is to attempt the creation of a self that reflects your notions of perfection, or the ideal. You want to be loved and admired, to be a good person, to feel like you are leading a meaningful life. In essence, the desire is to be the best you can be, whatever that sense of best might be for you. Having those aspirations is laudable. However, if you become attached to achieving those aspirations and find yourself constantly criticizing your current level of attainment, you may be perpetrating a mistaken sense of self. You may be holding yourself to impossible standards, or not holding yourself to any standards. Neither of these stances is acceptance, both are operations of the ego. Acceptance is not approval, nor is it a result of disapproval. Acceptance is not ambivalent, it just is the natural unfolding of reality.
Most thoughts you entertain are thoughts about yourself. They are about “I” and “me” or “mine.” You tend to make all your thoughts, opinions, and commentary important and you view them as “yours.” In the midst of suffering, doubt and hesitation arise. As you focus on your self, self-acceptance becomes more important than any other sort of acceptance. Especially if self-acceptance has become the imagined result of attaining some state of pre-determined perfection, doubt about who you are may fill your thoughts. Everyone invokes a version of perfection from time to time, but some get lost in constant comparison of self to an idealized version of self, believing either or both of these versions of self are real. Your self is a fabrication of ideas that is changeable and reflects your moment-to-moment sense of reality. Practicing unconditional self-acceptance means noticing and not avoiding what you are thinking and feeling in the moment, and noticing and stopping this avoidance when it becomes chronic. This is particularly true in the midst of suffering, when you want to stop the thoughts that are uncomfortable.
Avoidance of the moment’s full experience is usually the outcome of seeing the experience as painful and causing suffering. Of course, it seems easiest just to sidestep the pain, put blinders on, and not see the suffering. The trouble is that when this becomes a pattern of behavior, you become trapped in an unconscious resistance that tends to blame all sorts of outsiders like fate, karma, parents, government, spouse, etc. for your suffering. This is disempowering, and if everything outside of you is blamed for your experience, there is no way out. Embracing What Is allows you to step out of your unhealthy habits of resistance and into true liberation. It does not require approval, you do not need to condone or judge the experience at all, you just need to allow it to be what it is.
It’s easy to think your suffering is special, that no one else has suffered like you. That could seem true—you might even look for evidence to support that notion. However, you are most likely trying to make your self seem special because in your suffering, you have judged yourself to be less than you want to be.  A special self might seem to answer “why” this suffering has come down upon you. You might think that it alleviates pain, but this kind of thinking actually increases the pain for most people. The pain of self-judgment is a trickster. There is no judgment—positive or negative—that limits or reduces pain. Judgment always leads to a lack of Awareness, not an increase in Awareness. This is because true Awareness, One Life Awareness, is always obscured when there is a lack of acceptance of What Is.
Notice if you are fighting against reality with ideas like “It shouldn’t be this way”. Acknowledge that life is magnificent even in the midst of pain and suffering. Love life for all of its complexity and diversity of experience. Let go of striving to be what you believe you are not. Open your mind and heart to love What Is without complacency or ambivalence. Acceptance is not becoming a doormat or hiding on a cushion atop a mountain. Unconditional self-acceptance is an active state of wisely allowing the experience to be whatever it is. Let it be, and you will be, all will be as it is.