The Happiness Guru:

The Happiness Guru
What's Your Pleasure
The Life Of Desire, Part I
The Life Of Desire, Part II

Loving Your Relationship:

We Can Work It Out
For This Valentine's Day Write a Love Letter

Loving Your Relationship
For This Valentine's Day Write a Love Letter
(download this article)

Now. Put pen to paper. There are all sorts of places to start. For example you might go back to the first time you met or the first time you noticed that being around her made you come more alive. Or you might focus on a moment of no obvious consequence: The two of you were just sitting on the couch watching a movie together and you happened to look at him, and it occurred to you how perfect he is and how perfect you are together. During an argument you suddenly, inexplicably had the urge to touch her face, you fantasized about pulling him down to the ground to make love. Or you realized how meaningless the argument was compared to how grateful you are for his very existence. Often it's the little things that open our hearts: She made you that special soup when you were sick; periodically she leaves you love notes on the fridge. Then there are the big things: He got you through the death of your mother; she worked an extra year at a job she hated so you could finish school.

Write about things that embarrass you. Who knows why that certain silly look she gets on her face turns you on? Why one unkind word from her hurts you more than just about anything else anyone might say? Why no one's praise means more than his? Go beyond what she does to who she is: How would you describe her spirit, her soul? What is his defining character trait? Be precise. If need be pull out the dictionary or use a thesaurus. Insist on finding just the right word to express what is inexpressible-the essence of your lover. What does it feel like to love her, to make love to her?

Don't be afraid to use poetry. Somebody else's. Your own. If you want to write poetically, try metaphors. Leave out the words "like" and "as". Instead of saying, "When you look at me I blush like a rose" say "When you look at me I become a rose". It's more powerful-and true. And don't make it just about sex. It's great to let her know that she turns you on. But what about the ways she brings you to your knees? Be funny. Be ironic. But be careful not to hide behind this. Above all, be honest. Otherwise, why write the thing in the first place?

You might have to go through several rewrites before you are satisfied (though the first draft is often the best and the most honest). Be careful not to "over-edit". The letter does not have to be perfect but it should represent your best effort at the time you write it. Have some fun with the presentation: After writing it out, put it in an envelope and then put the envelope in a big box. Then wrap the box and put a nice bow on it. Or go for simplicity. After all, you just bared your soul. Maybe the letter itself should come to him naked and without packaging, a folded piece of paper left on his pillow in the morning before you go to work.

I promise you that a love letter is more than enough. It's better than expensive jewelry or a trip to Cancun. It's inexpensive and priceless at the same time. And rare. Writing a good love letter can take something out of you. But it should also fill you up. Both the sender and the receiver benefit. So go ahead. Put down this paper. Find that quiet place and have a seat. Let the experience of writing this letter be like love itself. Be prepared for something extraordinary and excruciating to take hold of you. Trust it. Write.

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Loving Your Relationship
"We Can We Work It Out"
(download this article)

As a couples therapist I work with smart, gifted, accomplished people who are having a terrible time living and loving together. What makes this even more poignant is that the "how to's" of a successful relationship are not all that difficult to learn and to master. As a matter of common sense most of us know how to have relationships that are harmonious and satisfying. Most of us, for example, have a dear friend or two with whom we share hopes and doubts, celebrate life's victories, and commiserate during hard times. It may be easier to cut this friend some slack when he or she does something we don't like than when our intimate partner disappoints us in some way. The plain truth is that we sometimes treat total strangers better than our own beloved. When I think about this I hear the optimism of the old Beatles refrain, "We can work it out. We can work it out." and I think, "Can we? Can we really?" I believe the answer is "yes"- but that it often takes a commitment to really knowing ourselves and letting our partner in on our deepest fears, as well as our greatest dreams.

Take as an example the complaint that many couples bring into therapy: "We just don't communicate very well." I find usually that when there is a block in communication it is because the two partners have become "hypnotized" by the content of what they have been arguing about. Couples tend to argue about the same things over and over, using mostly the same words and phrases. When a couple is arguing in my office I will often stop them and ask, "Have you had this argument before?" Both partners usually look at me with their heads bobbing in agreement (it may be the first thing they've agreed on all session). "Yes," one or both may say. Then they will admit they have actually stopped listening to each other because each knows exactly what the other is going to say. I call this being "hypnotized" by the content because each person believes the fight is only about "my position vs. your position". If I have your position memorized then I really don't have to listen to you-I know what you'll say even before you say it. So instead of listening to you while you are talking I am busy planning a way of restating my position, preparing to use even stronger language-and in a louder voice. A conflict that does not work its way beyond content tends to stay stuck in a "right-wrong" orientation with both partners trading accusations and criticisms, getting more and more defensive until one or the other pulls away, disappointed and resentful again that he or she has not been heard or understood.

The problem is that most of us don't really want to make ourselves understood, not completely at least. To be understood I have to take a risk and really be vulnerable with you, letting you know what it is I most fear and most want. The noted psychologist and couples therapist researcher John Gottman says that our greatest hopes are often disguised as criticism. Take as an example a man who criticizes his wife for not wanting to have sex with him very often. He may have spent months or years resenting her for being too tired or apathetic to be sexual. "Ever since she had our first child she just hasn't been very interested." She, on the other hand, may criticize him for not being romantic enough: "He used to do things to make me feel special and loved. Now he just wants me to get turned on at the drop of the hat. A woman needs to be wooed." This is a common dynamic between men and women, especially after the birth of a child. If this man stays focused on the fact that she is not showing us much interest in him sexually, if she stays focused on the fact that he takes her for granted, they will go on having the same argument over and over. The argument will in fact reinforce the behaviors they would like to change: A criticized woman is not likely to feel very sexual; a criticized man is less likely to be attentive and loving. How do they get beyond this impasse? First, by noticing that the way in which they are arguing is an extension of their sex life: Neither one is getting naked in front of the other. By "naked" I mean neither one is really being vulnerable and open; neither one is really sharing from his or her heart. Gottman coaches his couple to move beyond the criticism to what they really desire from one another-and how painful it is when these desires are not met.

We may ask the husband in our couple: "Why is it so important for you to have sex with this woman? Is it only about sex-or is it something deeper? What does it mean to you when she is available to you, when she openly desires you, when she invites you into her body and her world? What is the experience you want to create with her when the two of you make love?" We might also ask him about his fears: "What disturbs you exactly when she does not want to be sexual? How does her apathy worry you, make you anxious, scare you?" We might ask similar questions of the woman: "What makes his attention in particular so important? What type of attention are you wanting? How does it make you feel when you get it? How is romance part of the vision you have for this relationship?"

In the end, getting real with each other might be the biggest turn-on. Honesty and a heart-to-heart sharing is usually the "foreplay" needed to get a couple's sex life back on the right track.

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...He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

Last month we talked about how the pursuit of pleasure may actually bring us closer to happiness. We also discussed how pleasure has gotten a bad rap because it has become almost synonymous with the idea of satisfying certain physical or "ego" appetites that appear at odds with legitimate spiritual values. I gave as an example the life of Olympic runner and Christian missionary Eric Liddell who was chastised by some of his fellow Christians for engaging in a sport which seemed not only to glorify individual achievement but also the strength of the body over the strength of the Spirit. The movie Chariots of Fire-- which focuses in part on Liddell's personal struggles leading up to his winning of the gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics-takes as its title an allusion to one of the great poets of all time, William Blake. Blake, an 18th century mystic, poet, and artist, challenged the false piety and religious wisdom of his day and was largely ignored by his contemporaries. Among his more controversial ideas included an attempt to re-establish desire as the vehicle for spiritual evolution. In "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" Blake asserts:

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place and governs the unwilling.
And being restrained it by degrees becomes passive till it is only theshadow of desire...

Blake goes further in his "Proverbs of Hell":

... The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.

And finally:

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Judeo-Christian thinking has it that the Spirit and the body are separate, that any desire coming from the body is suspect and happiness (in this life or the next) comes at the expense of the body, by denying our "animal appetites" in favor of reason and a larger, "spiritual" vision. This dichotomous thinking shows up, too, in the contemplative traditions of the East. Even the Buddha first sought enlightenment by withdrawing from his senses and "mortifying" his body. He eventually came to the realization that the search for liberation need not condemn the body to starvation and abuse, and this served as the basis for his ground-breaking spiritual approach, "the Middle Path". The Zen masters of China and Japan took this even further. They saw in each ordinary moment an opportunity to leap beyond the mind's limitations into a boundless freedom, an ongoing unfolding of pure existential wonder. Far from denying the senses, Zen uses sensory experience as a way of heightening one's awareness and quieting the mind. So, too, there is a lineage of Indian and Persian mystics who do not discredit the body or its needs. Born in the early 14th century to a Brahman family, a spiritual seeker named Lalla became one of the great ecstatic poets of her generation. She admonishes others against placing themselves in opposition to nature:

Don't torture your body with thirst and starvation.
When the body is exhausted, take care of it.
Cursed be your fasts and religious ceremonies.
Do good to others, for that is the real religious practice.
(Translation by Jaishree Kak Odin)

Challenging the male-dominated religious order of her time, Lalla reportedly chanted her poems naked, using the physical as a metaphor for the spiritual:

Dance, Lalla, with nothing on
but air. Sing, Lalla,
wearing the sky.

Look at this glowing day! What clothes
could be so beautiful, or
more sacred? (Odin)

Her poetry stood as a protest against a hyper-masculine spirituality that placed nature (and by extension women) in a subservient role to the life of the mind (and by extension men). Just as radically, her nakedness served as a living symbol for the way in which we must all appear before the Beloved if we are to fully embrace and be embraced by Him or Her. Less than a century before, Jelaluddin Balkhi, a Persian poet and theologian known to us as Rumi, had produced hundreds of ecstatic poems using extraordinarily earthy metaphors to describe the soul's yearning to merge with God:

Last year, I admired wines. This,
I'm wandering inside the red world. Last year, I gazed at the fire.
This year I'm burnt kabob.

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up totally
lost in love with the thing itself.

Don't ask questions about longing.
Look in my face.

Soul drunk, body ruined, these two
sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.
Neither knows how to fix it.

And my heart, I'd say it is more
like a donkey sunk in a mudhole,
struggling and miring deeper.

But listen to me: for one moment,
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you. God.
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

Lalla , echoing Rumi, speaks of wine in connection with her own poetry:

I didn't trust it for a moment,
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.

It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces. (Barks)

Drinking and getting drunk are conventional images of debauchery, but the wine of which Rumi and Lalla speak refers to something unconventional, ultimately indescribable- union with God. Yet it is one thing to compare getting drunk to spiritual elevation (or making love to consorting with the Divine Lover), quite another to celebrate desire itself, wherever it may lead you-as William Blake seems to do:

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Blake, in recovering the value of pleasure for the Judeo-Christian psyche, stands on the shoulders of his poetic ancestors, Rumi and Lalla-and then goes beyond them. He does not, for example, compare "the lust of the goat" to a yearning for God. He states directly that lust is good, it is God's "bounty". Assuming he is not just referring to an animal's lust but to lust in general we must conclude he is saying something, too, about the human libido. Few of us in these times would argue that sexual desire is a bad thing. But what does Blake mean when he talks about excess? How far should we take our lust, our passion for wine, our desire for good food? What about the pleasure we get from work, from love, from spiritual pursuits? Can we not also take these to excess (think workaholism, love addiction, spiritual asceticism)? To put it plainly to Blake: What kind of excess are we talking about here? Can I really gain wisdom by getting drunk-on wine or success? If I follow pleasure for pleasure's sake will it make me happy?

Blake may be using "excessive" language as a way to shock his readers into a new awareness about the body. His readers, under the sway of religious doctrines disavowing the physical world (that this world is only a place of suffering and temptation, the battlefield on which we prove ourselves worthy or unworthy to enter the Kingdom of Heaven), have something to learn (in Blake's view) from the Devil. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" refers back to a pre-Christian understanding of the relationship between God and the Devil. The Devil represents the raw energies of the Spirit housed in the body, energies that can be used to serve Heaven but which also must be encountered and respected on their own terms. Blake reminds us, for example, that infants are at once angelic and devilish in nature. In "Infant Sorrow" Blake describes the newborn baby:

Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Angelic in their nakedness and helplessness, devilish in their unbridled expression of emotion, their aggressive impulses to satisfy their own needs, infants inspire both love and anxiety, even fear in the most balanced of adults. In the infant the overlapping and blending of Heaven and Hell are most evident. Blake goes so far as to say that, "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age."

Desire is not exclusively the province of the body. And it may be true, as Lalla and Rumi taught, that channeling desire in the direction of union with the Beloved is the highest human pursuit. Yet it must also be said that this impulse towards union starts with the physical body. How else would we even know the experience of joining spiritually if we did not have as a template the experience of physical union? For the infant there is no body and soul, no heaven or hell: The mother's body is her universe, the source of pleasure and pain. As she grows old enough to distinguish herself from her mother, the child locates pleasure and pain in her own body, and it is through her physical experience that she learns whether or not the universe is reliable, trustworthy, friendly. As she grows older still she will learn to regulate her desires and impulses, to express herself in ways that are acceptable to her caretakers and to suppress what is deemed inappropriate or unacceptable. During this time Heaven and Hell will be separated in her mind and she will identify her caretaker's rules and norms with Heaven (i.e., love and acceptance) and "bad behavior" with Hell (i.e., rejection and punishment). Eventually she will learn to rationalize and talk herself out of what she desires, to delay gratification, to place reason in a ruling position over her vital energies. To this state of affairs Blake objected-and his objection is echoed by the modern day poetry of Mary Oliver:

Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Next Issue: The Life of Desire, Part 2: Loving the Body with Your Whole Soul, Loving the Soul with Your Whole Body

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The Happiness Guru
The Life of Desire, PART 2
Loving the Body with Your Whole Soul, Loving the Soul with Your Whole Body
(download this article)

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account.
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

Modern psychology has mostly neglected the body. With a few notable exceptions (like Stanislov Grof, Marion Woodman, and Arny and Amy Mindell) psychotherapists have tended to the mind as if it lived in a home set apart, away from the body. We've treated it as an "it", as a secondary appendage whose experiences are regulated by a nervous system and a glandular system controlled from "on high" by our thoughts and beliefs. From the Western point of view, ideas reign supreme-ever since Plato denigrated the physical world as a mere shadow of some supreme ideal.

Popular culture, on the other hand, is obsessed with bodies. We use bodies (mostly but not exclusively female) to sell everything from vacation trips to feminine hygiene products. We exercise and go to gyms to look more youthful, muscular, toned. We submit to plastic surgery to tighten our faces or to get just the right contour and fullness for this or that mound of flesh. Our media images are full of bodies half-clothed or naked. Much of what we see, though, is an M-TV version of the physical form-fast cut-aways and glimpses of thighs, buttocks, cleavage, glistening, muscular chests and hardened biceps. It is as though we are to look, but only long enough to be titillated. In this culture of consumerism bodies are used to "make the sale" by getting us to want more and to believe we are, in the final analysis, deficient.

What are we to feel about our bodies? In fourteenth century India the mystic and poet Lalla sang her poems in the nude in front of astonished audiences. If we have the courage, like Lalla, to lay ourselves bare, what do we see? The Biblical account of Genesis, our collective story about the origin of all things, tells us that in the beginning we stood naked and unashamed. In our original state and without the knowledge of good and evil our bodies existed as an outward manifestation of the soul. It is only when the first two people ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil that the soul became separated from the body. What separated them? The poet William Blake holds "reason" to blame, the analytical mind which divides us from our primal and life-giving energies. According to the Jewish Talmud, this is what enabled human beings to move beyond the static condition of the angels and into the realm of experience. If Adam and Eve had stayed innocent, free of the ability to think critically, they never would have left the Garden-and no learning or growth would have been possible. In this sense, the woman, Eve, by eating first of the forbidden fruit, became the mother of our story. Her desire to know (and thus to be like God) started us on our journey through this world. Yet, here in the labyrinth laid out between the two poles of Heaven and Hell, we often get lost. Without reminders, it is easy to mistake the soul for something other-worldly, pristine, and remote, and in so doing we may eschew the body as a lowly thing-- or make a golden calf out of it, cynically trading the Divine for the pornographic.

We need reminders, constant reminders that the soul and the body need not be set against each other, that their apparent separation is a condition of mind only. Blake proclaimed, "Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is a/portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in/this age." With the eyes of the lover Whitman saw that the body "of the male is perfect and that of the female is perfect." The lover's secret is that the divine and the physical are in essence the same, and so it is the alchemy of love that reconciles the inner and outer worlds.

In the middle of this month, and while still in the grips of winter (outwardly a "dead" season), we are curiously given a holiday celebrating love. I remember the elementary school ritual of giving out valentines. As kids we were encouraged to fill out as many of the small, two-sided greeting notes as possible, placing them on the desks of our classmates. The greetings were simple and vaguely suggestive: "Will you be my Valentine?" "Thinking of you, Valentine!" "From your secret admirer, Valentine." Sometimes we signed them and other times we did not, leaving a mark of intrigue in the mind of the receiver and hinting at the power of what was to come, when for most of us the river of our sexuality would overflow its banks and permanently rearrange the landscape of childhood. As adults we might use Valentines Day to honor what the Greeks called philia, the nonsexual love between friends. However, like Cupid, the commercialism of the holiday clearly takes aim at the erotic and sensual, encouraging us to romance a new love interest or to reignite the flames of passion with our spouse or partner. The Greeks had a word for sexual love, eros, but limited the term to describe love or affection between unequal partners. The word agape, on the other hand, was reserved for something more complex, the self-sacrificing, contemplative, and eternal love expressed towards a spouse, a family member, a teacher, or a student. Early Christians used the idea of agape to portray the love between God and His creation. Here we encounter, once again, a dichotomy that places the physical and the spiritual on opposite sides of a great divide. So the question remains, how are we to bring together eros and agape, desire and love? How are we to rejoin the body with the soul?

The answer, I think, lies in awareness and intention. Take this moment to stop reading and to stretch your body. Stand up or lie down on the floor and stretch everything. Bring your awareness back into your head and neck, shoulders, arms, hands. Keep moving down with your awareness into your back, your buttocks, your loins, your legs and your feet. Take your time. Notice as much as possible about the sensations you come upon with your awareness. Notice areas of tension, heat, cold, achy-ness, fullness, or emptiness. Notice how energized or tired you are. Now come to stillness in either a sitting or standing position. Choose one hand to represent your soul and one hand to represent your body. Start with your "soul hand". Find a movement that somehow represents your soul. Make this movement. If there is no movement, just allow your hand to be still. Whether in stillness or movement, let yourself experience whatever your "soul hand" is doing. Now, with the other hand make a movement that somehow represents the body. Experience this movement separately from the movement of the "soul". Now allow both the "soul hand" and the "body hand" to express their movements at the same time. As they are moving, gradually bring them together and allow them to interact. Notice how the interaction between the two hands changes what each hand is doing, how bringing awareness to the interaction may lead to new movements and experiences. It may feel like the two hands are making love. You may sense a fight wanting to break out. Perhaps they are indifferent or regard each other with cold suspicion. Trust the imaginative power of the body. Notice that the body has its own language and "reason". Whatever wants to happen, help it along. Notice how you feel when your two hands interact, what happens to you internally and externally. Last, find a way to bring this interaction to a close. When you feel the process has finished reflect on what you have learned.*

This is an example of a mind-body technique that joins awareness to movement. Mind-body exercises work because they unite what is visible and invisible within us. When we direct our awareness to any physical activity (from eating to roller-blading to making love) we bring soulfulness to that activity, for the soul follows awareness. This helps to break through our superficial or mechanical tendencies. Awareness unfolds the experience of the body into a new realm of wonder where the unexpected can and often does happen. When the body is activated in this way it inclines towards its original source, the state in which the first man and woman found themselves prior to eating the fruit of knowledge. The body loves the soul by expressing itself at the essence level of our existence, by becoming the physical expression of our deepest spiritual yearnings. The soul, in turn, has always loved the body, its most outward and beautiful form. As Blake understood, the ultimate love affair is between the Eternal and Itself-but this love affair could not be realized without "the productions of time."

* This exercise has been converted from the work of Arny and Amy Mindell, two psychologists who have pioneered a unique approach to psychotherapy called Process Work. Though the structure of the exercise is theirs the content is mine and I accept complete responsibility for its success or failure.

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The Happiness Guru
(download this article)

Sing and listen, and let Love fill your mind,
Pain will fly away, and peace will come to your heart.
-- From Jaap Ji Sahib, 5th Pauri, by Guru Nanak

In India my friend Mahan Singh would be called a householder. He is married with two grown children, owns his own sand blasting business, and grills a mean veggie kabob and garden burger. I have known him for several years, and, as it turns out, we are in love with the same long poem.

On a hot but pleasant afternoon we sit in his backyard enjoying the fruits of his cooking, friends and family around us in celebration of his children's June birthdays. The discussion turns to yoga and meditation-- and to Jaap Ji, a 40-stanza chant that is recited every morning at 4 AM by those of the Sikh faith. Written 500 years ago by an itinerant Indian teacher named Nanak, the message of Jaap Ji is simple: Everything comes from God, so relax and enjoy the play. The only effort that counts is the effort to draw closer to the Divine. It is called "Going Home" and ultimately everyone ends up remembering and returning. Jaap Ji was part of a quiet spiritual revolution during which the practice of yoga and meditation emerged from caves, descended from cliff tops, and came into the homes of common people. Nanak was a mystic but he was not an ascetic. Married with children, he taught that God dwells here in the world and with sincere and diligent effort we are all capable of knowing the Divine-- and being happy.

Mahan Singh is a follower of the religion founded by Nanak; but I am not here to talk about Sikhism or Jaap Ji or even spirituality per se. I am really here to talk about happiness.

Theoretically, both psychotherapy and yoga are sciences devoted to human happiness. And I am a practitioner of both-so I should be dwelling in ecstasy most of the time. But the truth is I'm just like everyone else (including most therapists and yogis I know). Sometimes happiness curls up on my lap like an old, contented cat-and stays for days. Other times it flies in and out of the window of my mind, a mythical bird, restless, beautiful, and fickle. This brings to mind a story from my oldest friend, Michael: Back in the mid-seventies he and some buddies were spending an afternoon together getting high. Michael had recently met Teo, a young man from Trinidad who seemed to march to his own drummer-- literally. While the other young men talked, Teo remained silent, tapping out a rhythm on the table. Suddenly, he piped up, announcing to no one in particular:

"They say good t'ings don't last forever. That's bullshit, Maan. It's YOU who don't last forever. Good t'ings are always around."

We are assured by the sadhus, saints, and prophets throughout time that our natural state is to be happy and whole. Rumi wrote, "The Soul is here for its own joy." Jesus proclaimed, "The Kingdom of God is within." Everyone from the Dalai Lama to John Rodger to Tony Robbins has written books about how to be happy. Apparently, in addition to being a natural state, happiness is also a skill one can learn. But I often find myself wondering, "Is that true?" Or is Happiness a wild thing, slightly unpredictable, a little dangerous, resisting definition or mastery? The kind of happiness I am looking for breathes and pants and constantly rearranges its feathers, threatening to escape again through the window and soar above my highest hopes and dreams. Etiquette requires that I not turn towards my happiness and look it directly in the eyes. Any attempt to analyze or pin it down and it vanishes without so much as a movement of its wings. This happiness (the kind I suspect Rumi and Nanak experienced) refuses to be domesticated or to stay put.

Getting back to my afternoon conversation with Mahan Singh: Nanak composed Jaap Ji while in a state of ecstasy, reciting the stanzas over and over-singing them really-while traveling the countryside of an India torn apart by religious strife and tension. The teachings of Jaap Ji urge the listener to think beyond human difference to the reality of our essential sameness: In Nanak's ashram there were no religious or caste distinctions. Women were not subject to men. Everyone lived together, worked together, ate together. And meditated together. Besides being a sand blaster, Mahan is also a yoga and meditation teacher. Jaap Ji, he tells his students, removes the mystery from meditation: "Just think of the most awesome thing possible. Fix your mind on it and then go beyond your mind, surrender to the possibility of that Impossible, Awesome thing." This opens the communication between what is finite and what is Infinite:

In the Ambrosial hours before dawn, chant the True Name and contemplate His Glorious Greatness.
Jaap Ji Sahib, 5th Pauri, Guru Nanak

What I realize is that Guru Nanak and Mahan are not just talking about meditation. They're talking about happiness and how to go about courting It. Really, what other reason is there to meditate? What reason is there to do anything if not because we feel that thing will make us happy? True, we also do things out of desperation or compulsion just to avoid feeling unhappy. But if we are at all hopeful about the future aren't we generally engaged in the pursuit of happiness?

The next morning after my conversation with Mahan I am dutifully doing my yoga, contemplating what he has said: "Just think of the most awesome thing possible. Fix your mind on it and then surrender your mind." I notice that just the thought of doing this makes me feel happy, alert, uplifted. My happiness seems predicated on this idea that there is some Great Intelligence out there ready to respond to me should I have the courage (and discipline) to open the conversation. Then I actually begin to feel a communication happening. Words form in my mind and I recite them to myself, my own personal Jaap Ji:

"Train your mind on Vastness. Decide: 'This is true.' Notice this Vastness reflected in you. Say: 'Everything that Is, I am, too.'"

Could this be the core concept, the mental foundation for my happiness? I don't know for sure. But what I do know is this: Happiness is the only reason to be alive. We didn't come here to struggle, to be in pain, to pay taxes, to fight wars, to make lots of money, or to look good. Perhaps ultimately we did not even come here to do good things-- to get married, to have kids, to make things better, or make a contribution. Perhaps we came here simply to be happy. Really happy. Ecstatically happy. To enjoy ourselves.

Okay, so that statement, I realize, sounds simplistic. It may also sound like a recipe for hedonism. But if it were true, if it is only required that we enjoy ourselves, that we notice more often that "good things are always around" how would this change the way we behave in the world? How would it change our relationships? How would it change our politics? Our social policies? Could it be that our good deeds, our creativity, our desire to be of service emanate from happiness-and that those good deeds in turn reinforce our happiness? Imagine: What if we simply trusted our nature? That at the heart of things what makes us happy is consonant with the collective good?

This leads to more interesting questions. Like, "What is happiness, anyway?" and "How is happiness meaningful if it isn't connected to doing anything worthwhile?" and "What about 'bad' people? Wasn't Ted Bundy just doing what made him happy?" Indeed, most of us learn that there are "baser" pleasures and "higher" pleasures-and the difference between the two is evident as we mature spiritually, as we learn to distinguish between what makes us happy momentarily and what leads to true joy, life-enriching and everlasting.

You may already have some strong ideas on this subject, beliefs that help you get out of bed in the morning, rev up your optimism-engine and hit the road of whatever grind you have planned for the day. Or perhaps you have few ideas and the title "Happiness Guru" caught your eye because you are lonesome for happiness and looking for a way to bring it into your life. Then again, maybe you despair of the notion that you can ever be happy and are reading this with a smirk of well-earned cynicism. Perhaps happiness seems to you beside the point, a positive by-product of living according to your faith or your principles. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

So I am extending you an invitation-- to have a conversation with me like the one I've been having with Mahan Singh. Pretend you are the Happiness Guru: How do you define happiness? What does it mean to you? How important is happiness in your life? How do you "achieve" it? Is it an attitude that persists no matter what is happening? Or does it depend, at least to a certain extent, on circumstance? Feel free also to share about times when you felt completely and utterly happy and how you think you arrived there-- or about times when you have felt unbelievably depressed and wondered what was missing.

Stay tuned: I'll be printing readers' responses in future columns.

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The Happiness Guru
What's Your Pleasure?
(download this article)

"I believe that God made me for a purpose... But He also made me fast.
And when I run I feel His pleasure."
Missionary and Olympic gold medalist Eric Liddell
as portrayed in Chariots of Fire

After reading the title of this column in Catalyst's September issue a friend of mine looked at me wryly and said, "So, what now-- you're the 'Happiness Guru'?"

I'd been expecting something like this from at least one person who knows me. "Uh, no," I answered. "The idea is that each one of us is the 'Happiness Guru'-- on some level." She chuckled, clearly suspicious. I heard a voice in my head: "Don't think even for a second that you're somehow going to get your hands on the Holy Grail." To this part of me (the doubting part) any effort to crack the "happiness code" seems in itself audacious, arrogant, another in a series of ego bubbles that are just so much fun to burst.

"Who are you to be happy?" the Skeptic in me jeers. In fact I wonder if we Westerners have an unhealthy obsession with happiness. Did our ancestors toiling in fields to eek out a living or hunting for boar in some dark jungle think much about happiness? What about citizens of third world nations for whom survival is a daily preoccupation? How happy do they expect to be? Or have we in this post-modern world taken too material a view of the subject, supposing that more conveniences, more physical comforts, more technology might secure the keys to the Kingdom? In the meantime perhaps those who live with less means enjoy more happiness precisely because they expect less comfort and security, because the circumstances of their lives have forced them into a more direct and unadorned relationship with existence.

So what IS happiness? Is it a state of mind? An emotion? A quality of consciousness? When I thought of the idea for this column I immediately started asking people around me what they believed. A colleague of mine pointed out that there is a difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure, he reasoned, is a temporary experience, not necessarily related to any lasting sense of fulfillment-- whereas true happiness lives longer in us and changes us permanently, irrevocably. In this case I think my colleague is using the word pleasure to refer to the satisfying of appetites, both physical and psychological. Here's an example: It may give me an emotional boost to win a game of Scrabble, but I don't expect that feeling to greatly improve my quality of life. Then, too, the satisfying of appetites may have negative consequences: The almost magnetic pull of sensual pleasure on the body can get us into trouble, from gaining 10 lbs after indulging in good food on a cruise ship for two weeks to losing a marriage over a brief but passionate sexual affair. Often people feel guilty about satisfying a physical or psychological urge that seems at odds with their values-hence the phrase "guilty pleasures". In this case our pursuit of pleasure can actually detract from our long-term happiness.

From a yogic point of view the experience of pleasure is mostly a conditioned response developed over many years (or life times) to some stimulus, a habit of the mind which actually limits our awareness and distracts us from a purposeful life. The yogi is the one who has freed her mind from attachment to pleasure or the reflexive avoidance of pain. Through meditation she develops the quality of neutrality, making her impervious to the "law of opposites" and the mind's dualistic formulations of "right and wrong", "good or bad", "this or that". This liberates her into an ongoing, moment-to-moment experience of what Is. And yogic disciplines promise that the Is'ness of who we are is the ultimate source of our satisfaction and bliss.

It all sounds good-but also a little too abstract and impersonal

I like pleasure. Pleasure is personal and earthy and comprehensible. One trap of the yogic or contemplative life style is that it can be used to discredit the very psyche which embraces it. But we seek pleasure because our whole organism wants it. Pleasure lights us up from the inside or, like a hard rain, penetrates to our roots, reviving us when the soil of our life has grown overly dry with custom and routine. If it is true that we live for happiness then perhaps pleasure is how happiness is registered, how it leaves its mark, indelibly, on the Soul.

Chariots of Fire is one of my favorite movies. The quote above may or may not be fictional, but in any case it captures something brave and true about the human spirit: That we are at our best when we feel the pleasure of a calling-and respond with all of our passion and dedication. The movie focuses on Eric Liddell, the great Scottish runner who won a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Liddell, as portrayed in the movie, is a spiritual athlete, one who tied his natural athletic gifts to his spiritual mission. In his mind, running is a way to honor God, for it is God who has bestowed him with these gifts in the first place. While others doubt the wisdom of engaging in competition, believing that earthly pursuits might divert him from his calling as a spiritual leader, Liddell maintained that pleasure can be a signal from God that we are on the right path after all. His "chariot of fire" is not only his natural speed but his conviction that God speaks to us through pleasure, that what we enjoy with the fullness of our being is what we were born to do.

In my private practice I've discovered that people have by and large marginalized the pleasure-seeking part of themselves. I am constantly surprised by how much we distrust what gives us enjoyment, delight, and satisfaction. Often when I ask the question of a client, "What do you really want?" or "What would make you happy?" I get a quizzical or confused stare in return, as if the question were illegitimate or a trick of some sort. I have the feeling that after 4 centuries we Americans are still struggling with a conflict that is essentially Puritanical in nature: Though we live in a body and mind that seek pleasure we hold pleasure itself suspect. From a Judeo-Christian perspective pleasure is the Devil's way of manipulating us and betraying God. Psychologically, admitting what we enjoy to ourselves and others puts us in a vulnerable position: If people know what we want they can deny us what we want. Desire and pleasure are signs, after all, that we are truly human, that we are not completely self-contained or self-reliant, that we depend on certain experiences to make us feel more alive and complete.

Try an experiment. Choose someone in your life-a friend, a lover, a family member-and spend 10 minutes talking to that person about a deep desire you have, something you would like to experience or create that you believe would make you fantastically happy. If you want more of a challenge, tell this person what they could do for you to help make your dream come true. Notice if you can do this without laughing uncomfortably, losing your train of thought, playing down your desire, or discounting it all together. Not easy, is it?

When my friend asked me that question about being the "Happiness Guru" I wanted to say, "Yes, I'm searching for happiness-and I think I may be on to something." Because thinking and writing about happiness gives me pleasure. The truth is I want to be utterly and unreasonably happy, a fool who lives joyfully and dies that way, too. So maybe if I start behaving more like the Happiness Guru I'll find myself getting closer to whatever it is that grants this kind of happiness.

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