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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
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Awakening To The
Miracle Of Ordinary Life:
Happiness & Suffering
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by Dennis Lewis |
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Though most of us will admit that what we want most from our lives is happiness, few of us have thought deeply about all that this involves. In most dictionaries, happiness is defined as having to do with luck and good fortune, pleasure and satisfaction. And most of us, most of the time, define our happiness using these sorts of terms in relation to our images of health, family, money, friends, security, jobs, possessions, and so on.
There are moments, however, when we know in our heart of hearts that another, deeper form of happiness exists—the happiness that we feel when we let go of all of our conceptions about who we are and are able to experience the miraculous nature of what we call “ordinary life.” That we exist at all, that we have the opportunity to participate in the extraordinary mystery of life, is the greatest "good fortune" imaginable. Yet, for most of us, the miracle that lies at the heart of our own existence is the one fact that always seems to elude us, the one fact that we always seem to forget.
It does not take much observation of our daily lives to see why we so easily forget. Almost everything in our media-driven culture is designed to suggest something to us or to influence us in one way or another—to entice us to purchase something, to believe something, to b e something, or to do something. And we identify with these suggestions and influences, as well as with our reactions to them, imagining that our happiness is somehow bound up with them. But, of course, the real problem is not our identification with what influences us, but rather with the images of ourselves that allow these influences to shape and define us. It is these images that fuel our constant suggestibility, the way in which we constantly believe that this object, that person, this job, that success, this experience, that pursuit will somehow bring us happiness.
And so, inevitably, we suffer. We suffer first because our images and expectations are so often illusory and unrealizable, and second, because even when they are realizable they are most often do not reflect who and what we really are. They do not reflect the miracle of being alive on this earth, and of our great opportunity to engage consciously from moment to moment in this miracle. Paradoxically, it is this second form of suffering that, if intentionally accepted, can show us the way to real happiness.
To be alive, in the truest sense of the word, means to be filled with life, to be able to receive whatever life brings—until it brings us nothing more. To live fully and freely means to welcome, without expectation, all sides of life: joy and suffering, peace and war, pleasure and pain, insight and ignorance, hope and disappointment, success and failure, clarity and confusion. Whatever noble aims we may have or necessary efforts we may make, this is the only real freedom—the freedom to say "yes" to what is, and to remember now and here the mystery and miracle of our aliveness, of the pure awareness that we are.
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Dennis Lewis,
Teacher of meditation |
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Dennis Lewis is a teacher of meditation, authentic breathing, and qigong. A long-time student and group leader in the Gurdjieff Work, he also studied for three years with Advaita Vedanta master Jean Klein.
Lewis has been certified to teach various qigong and Taoist meditation practices by Bruce Kumar Frantzis, Mantak Chia, and Dr. Wang Shan Long. The foundation of his approach today is the awakening of consciousness, of presence, in our everyday lives.
His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Yoga Journal, Gnosis, Parabola, Somatics, Library Journal, Manas, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is co-editor, with Jacob Needleman, of two books: Sacred Tradition & Present Need (Viking) and On the Way to Self Knowledge (Knopf).
His acclaimed book The Tao of Natural Breathing: For Health, Well-Being and Inner Growth, published in 1997, is now available in eight languages. His audio program Breathing as a Metaphor for Living was produced in 1998 by Sounds True.
His new book Boundless Breathing: Teachings, Exercises, and Meditations for Health and Self-Transformation will be published soon.
www.authentic-
breathing.com
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