Approaching The Vow of Happiness
Something as sacred as a Vow of Happiness is probably beyond words. I believe that most women took vows of happiness before being born if that were possible. Not being a woman I had to work many years to come to this point in my life. But I do believe that women could benefit from renewing their Vow of Happiness especially if it were taken with a life partner. I should say that at the end of this essay I will explain how women and even men can take this Vow of Happiness without a life partner, but for obvious reasons I will concentrate on the more common path of togetherness. I should explain my view of the Three Levels of Happiness before discussing the actual Vow as the Vow should not be taken until Level 2 is achieved.
To me the best illustration of the First Level of Happiness is a young single woman with a new boy friend. That woman is likely to achieve a high degree of happiness that is however temporary. The Second Level of Happiness can easily be achieved if her new boy friend asks her for her emotional history so that the two of them can achieve a more solid basis for her happiness. If she agrees to share her emotions, the man's responsibility is to listen and to touch her from time to time. An emotional history can take a couple of weeks to process. The best analogy is to psychotherapy where unconscious memories are made conscious so the adult can deal with trauma. A woman and her life partner can deal with all of the emotions that had weighed her down in just a couple of weeks, because a mentally healthy female wants to be happy. Happiness is the natural state of a young girl until she has to deal with parents, schools, immature boy friends and her own ego. I would like to explain a little bit more about this Second Level before proceeding to the Third Level.
As an exercise towards the end of the first two weeks or so, her life partner can ask her to remember a particularly humiliating or painful incident and then touch her and ask her to relive that scene with him present and touching her and talking to her. This can be repeated a few times for different situations. When a woman talks about her emotions, her life partner is only asking for her emotional reactions to an event. He does not have to ask for intimate details. The word emotion is a compound of the the word motion and the prefix e which means out of. I interpret emotion therefore as meaning a feeling toned judgment or response to an event. To me Love is not an emotion. Love that turns to hate was never Love which is a realization of Oneness. Love does not judge.
Love and Oneness can be experienced alone when we are in a particularly beautiful meadow, forest or beach. The Beauty of Nature can suspend the human ego which makes judgments to survive. Most of these judgments are not needed or even helpful. How many of your ego thoughts deal with making an actual decision, such as, should I turn at this intersection? The ideal we are striving for is that Love to replace the more mercurial emotions that bog men and women down in misery and depression or, at best, keep them on the treadmill of temporary-happiness and permanent misery.
At the end of the first couple of weeks, a woman will approach a more stable happiness and will be almost ready to enter Level Three where she can take a Vow of Happiness with her life partner. However, they do need to understand a few things about the ego first. The word ego merely means I in Greek and in Latin. We do need to develop an ego in order to function in this world. But we also do need to understand and to even overcome it to live peaceably with our neighbors. The ego thinks it is you. It is not. I prefer a religious definition of the word ego which says that it is a false belief in separation from God and from our fellow humans and even our animal friends. When a woman takes a Vow of Happiness with her life partner, she is pledging to keep sacred this experience of Oneness and to keep this newly experienced Oneness with both her partner and with all of Creation in the forefront of her soul and of her relationship both with her chosen mate and with the many people who cross her path or even her mind.
I mentioned that a Vow of Happiness does not need to be made with a life partner. It can be made alone, as the result of deep introspection and meditation. Or, I think a group of women who have been studying a particular path of transformation together could take a Vow in a guided group encounter. Men of course can be happy too. My experience is that women are more eager to surrender their ego than a man. Women usually feel a strong sense of Oneness when they give birth or otherwise participate in the miracle of the birth process. A woman can more easily be convinced to merge her soul with another human being which is what ideally she is doing when she marries.
The Third Level of Happiness is a commitment between two people to Love, Joy and Beauty. Socrates defined Beauty as that which we adore or love. Women often drive themselves sick over their appearance to others. The key to achieving happiness is for her life partner to affirm that his love is sufficient to guarantee his judgement that she has beauty to offer him and the world. Women function on feeling. Women need to feel Beauty inside themselves in some fashion before proceeding to Level Three. One of the first things a young man should do when he meets a girl is to discover if she thinks she is pretty.
The actual Vow of Happiness has no words. It can be taken alone or with another to either join in this sacred act or to be a witness. The Vow of Happiness requires a mature personality to search the inner mind and to resolve at all levels of being and experience to commit the totality of your life to happiness. It is sacred, because Life is sacred. Life is One. There is but One Life we all share. That is the basis of Indestructible Love. Oneness is already there to be experienced. That is why Joy and Beauty are everywhere we look. There are inside us waiting patiently for us to see them and to share them with our fellow creatures human and animal. We are social beings so it is best that we walk the Path of Happiness with a partner.
I should say that there is a Fourth Level of Happiness and that I am currently working through that experience. It requires a dedicated life of study and practice. I will write of that elsewhere at some future date.
To me the best illustration of the First Level of Happiness is a young single woman with a new boy friend. That woman is likely to achieve a high degree of happiness that is however temporary. The Second Level of Happiness can easily be achieved if her new boy friend asks her for her emotional history so that the two of them can achieve a more solid basis for her happiness. If she agrees to share her emotions, the man's responsibility is to listen and to touch her from time to time. An emotional history can take a couple of weeks to process. The best analogy is to psychotherapy where unconscious memories are made conscious so the adult can deal with trauma. A woman and her life partner can deal with all of the emotions that had weighed her down in just a couple of weeks, because a mentally healthy female wants to be happy. Happiness is the natural state of a young girl until she has to deal with parents, schools, immature boy friends and her own ego. I would like to explain a little bit more about this Second Level before proceeding to the Third Level.
As an exercise towards the end of the first two weeks or so, her life partner can ask her to remember a particularly humiliating or painful incident and then touch her and ask her to relive that scene with him present and touching her and talking to her. This can be repeated a few times for different situations. When a woman talks about her emotions, her life partner is only asking for her emotional reactions to an event. He does not have to ask for intimate details. The word emotion is a compound of the the word motion and the prefix e which means out of. I interpret emotion therefore as meaning a feeling toned judgment or response to an event. To me Love is not an emotion. Love that turns to hate was never Love which is a realization of Oneness. Love does not judge.
Love and Oneness can be experienced alone when we are in a particularly beautiful meadow, forest or beach. The Beauty of Nature can suspend the human ego which makes judgments to survive. Most of these judgments are not needed or even helpful. How many of your ego thoughts deal with making an actual decision, such as, should I turn at this intersection? The ideal we are striving for is that Love to replace the more mercurial emotions that bog men and women down in misery and depression or, at best, keep them on the treadmill of temporary-happiness and permanent misery.
At the end of the first couple of weeks, a woman will approach a more stable happiness and will be almost ready to enter Level Three where she can take a Vow of Happiness with her life partner. However, they do need to understand a few things about the ego first. The word ego merely means I in Greek and in Latin. We do need to develop an ego in order to function in this world. But we also do need to understand and to even overcome it to live peaceably with our neighbors. The ego thinks it is you. It is not. I prefer a religious definition of the word ego which says that it is a false belief in separation from God and from our fellow humans and even our animal friends. When a woman takes a Vow of Happiness with her life partner, she is pledging to keep sacred this experience of Oneness and to keep this newly experienced Oneness with both her partner and with all of Creation in the forefront of her soul and of her relationship both with her chosen mate and with the many people who cross her path or even her mind.
I mentioned that a Vow of Happiness does not need to be made with a life partner. It can be made alone, as the result of deep introspection and meditation. Or, I think a group of women who have been studying a particular path of transformation together could take a Vow in a guided group encounter. Men of course can be happy too. My experience is that women are more eager to surrender their ego than a man. Women usually feel a strong sense of Oneness when they give birth or otherwise participate in the miracle of the birth process. A woman can more easily be convinced to merge her soul with another human being which is what ideally she is doing when she marries.
The Third Level of Happiness is a commitment between two people to Love, Joy and Beauty. Socrates defined Beauty as that which we adore or love. Women often drive themselves sick over their appearance to others. The key to achieving happiness is for her life partner to affirm that his love is sufficient to guarantee his judgement that she has beauty to offer him and the world. Women function on feeling. Women need to feel Beauty inside themselves in some fashion before proceeding to Level Three. One of the first things a young man should do when he meets a girl is to discover if she thinks she is pretty.
The actual Vow of Happiness has no words. It can be taken alone or with another to either join in this sacred act or to be a witness. The Vow of Happiness requires a mature personality to search the inner mind and to resolve at all levels of being and experience to commit the totality of your life to happiness. It is sacred, because Life is sacred. Life is One. There is but One Life we all share. That is the basis of Indestructible Love. Oneness is already there to be experienced. That is why Joy and Beauty are everywhere we look. There are inside us waiting patiently for us to see them and to share them with our fellow creatures human and animal. We are social beings so it is best that we walk the Path of Happiness with a partner.
I should say that there is a Fourth Level of Happiness and that I am currently working through that experience. It requires a dedicated life of study and practice. I will write of that elsewhere at some future date.
posted by Daniel F at 3:26 PM
1 Comments:
ah, daniel. perhaps you can help. i can feel love watching the beauty of trees, the land and sky, the wind. Learning of the intrivacy and beauty of ecological systems is like seeing God's face.
But i have a decidedly harder time feeling like that for many people. Overall, i find humanity horrendous and a blight on the planet. We behave as if we existed outside of Creation. The conundrum is how to feel love for those killing that which is lovely and full of life.
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