Have you ever been in a moment when you think that thinking about being happiness does make you happy or such a time in your life when you ask yourself if you are really happy? I bet it happened many times and is still happening and will be happening. Neither thinking of happiness makes us happy nor thinking if we are really happy makes us happy because as the book Search Inside Yourself says, “Happiness is the default state of our mind.” We don’t have to find happiness nor wait for happiness to come because we are wired to be happy we just don’t know how to activate this happiness within us.
Imagine your brain is not a mind but it has also a mind itself often psychologist and scientist called it brain-mind, a mind that thinks. Our mind knows how to defend itself from any unwanted emotions and thoughts we put in it. It has its own defense mechanism that helps us to cope with reality. When you feel depressed this negative emotion is being fought by the mind by releasing oxytocin in the brain that enables us to feel that we need somebody to help us out this emotion. This hormone signals our body that we need somebody’s help. Our brain helps us to the best of its ability so that we can survive the world.
“Happiness is the default state of the mind”, as mentioned in the book Search Inside Yourself. If this is the default state of the mind, how can we then put our minds into its default state? Simple analogy, our smartphones or any personal digital assistant (PDA) that we have work best when they are in their default state, default state would mean normal mode. Same with the mind, if the mind is in its default state, happiness comes out naturally.You don’t have to think about it nor search for it because genuine happiness results to joy and it can never be found in the external world. As Jesus said, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.” So it follows, search happiness inside you.
One of the ways the book suggests to put the mind in its default state is Meditation. Connecting yourself to yourself. The word Meditation has accumulated different meanings through out history but still its benefit to the mind and to self has remained and has been continually backed up by science and different studies. Great minds and personalities who changed the course of human history were found to be meditators. Ghandi, Mandela, Jesus, Lincoln, Guatama, and many others were all meditators. Constantly connecting themselves to themselves and bringing their minds to its default states.And in doing so produced positive effects to themselves and to humanity.
In our modern world, Meditation would seem a word that it unbeknown to many and known to few and practiced to least. Sad but true, it seems that meditation belongs only to the religious and pious people. Least knows the benefits it has to the mind, to the self and to humanity. Meditative people are the ones who are compassionate and caring, critical, deep and reflective thinkers. Kindness overflows to meditators.
Practice makes perfect if it’s not then at least it improves the work and gain a better result. Give yourself at least a 2-minute meditation a day. It can be done in the morning so that the mind is still fresh, catch the moment wherein the mind has nothing yet to think about, or before sleeping at night, concluding the day with a simple thanksgiving. Others would do it with prayer, connecting oneself to the transcendental. You might ignore this little suggestion but it has a tremendous effect once it becomes a part of your life and of your routine. You might think you don’t need it but your mind needs it. Give your mind a break, put it into its default state and be happy the easy way.
Mediation can be practiced anytime and everywhere. Once you have already gained that ability to connect to yourself, to the world, and to the Higher Being than you, then you can do meditation anytime and anywhere. It would not be easy because of the noise inside and outside within us. Think, are there times in your life you were able to think of yourself as a self itself? You were not alone all the way, your life has life itself.
dark nights of the soul 