Have you ever felt sad enough to seek to acquire happiness desperately? At the point of feeling isolated and lonely, do you constantly check your phone, searching and scrolling mindlessly through social media, to look for something or someone to connect to? In these circumstances, perhaps you reach out to food, or simply exhaust yourself at work in order to buy something bigger and better – something to fill the hole in your life. The effort means you hardly get to see your family or real-world friends, leaving you even more disconnected.
Feeling unloved and deeply unhappy can lead to so many other manifestations. Some people find themselves in repetitively bad relationships which offer only false validation. Others develop a dependency on alcohol, without which they cannot stabilise themselves. The problem being that the chemical addiction holds only temporary relief, and actually perpetuates a constant swing between feeling overwhelmed and completely empty.
As a matter of fact, when enough stress and pressure is applied, many people engage in activities that leave them emotionally imprisoned. Seduced by the hope that these passing supports will lead to something better, we lock the gate to our prison with our very own hands! The modern-day pursuit of happiness leaves us more lacking and hungry than we began. Fleeting moments of pleasure quickly turn to more dissatisfaction.
Instead of questioning as to why these efforts only yield brief moments of joy, people strive even harder. Maybe just another pair of sports shoes, jewellery or a new watch will make things better? Perhaps more money spent on luxury items that carry the promise of comfort, will help with rest and sleep? Maybe what is needed is more time creating virtual connections on the smartphone – surely a few more friends and likes will ease the hurt? People more ruthlessly lose themselves in the identity of brands and become desperately disconnected from the identity of self. In seeking to ease the pain people begin to spend more time with possessions, less time with others, and hardly any time with themselves.
When we try to repair a problem with the same process that created it, the problem only becomes more ingrained. Doing the same things as before, with more passion and yet more expectation, leads to the same outcomes. Only temporary gratification is felt, whilst purpose and meaning becomes more elusive. Quite frankly, the person is caught in the grip of habits. It is known that the same neurological mechanisms are activated, whether we rely on alcohol to cope, or fall back on habitual patterns of relating and behaving. We become vulnerable to acting in ways that are detrimental to our sense of self. Brain circuits associated with addiction and primal reward system become active, closing in on a person at both at the biological and the emotional level of influence. It seems there can be no escape!
But there is a way out. We have to address the root of the problem. The fluctuations people feel between approval and affirmation, sadness and joy, fulfillment and emptiness are all a response to deep seated insecurities. There may be shame, guilt or a struggle with life-long trauma. Something has got in the way of our connection to self, and in so doing we have become disconnected from others. Such distraction and confusion serves to help in the avoidance of pain – a defence if you like, through material pleasures. People are actually crying out for something to make them feel whole again. It is this need for wholeness, which must be satisfied.
A focus on the healing power of spirit, is the solution. Everything else comes and goes, being subject to birth and death. Only the spiritual self is immortal, everlasting, and enduring. This spiritual self has the capacity to absorb all pain and hurt, and transmute it into strength, courage and resilience. Psychotherapies may use different terms for it, but essentially the human connection that is forged in a therapeutic relationship is a reflection of the divine. I am not suggesting Psychotherapists are supernatural, god-like beings! Not at all – they are as human as anyone else. But the trust, kindness, unconditional regard, attentive listening and non-judgmental approach approximates a certain divinity, in which we can see ourselves more clearly.
There are many parallels between spirituality and psychotherapy. Both help us see that pain in itself is also neither good or bad, but it is how we think about the pain, and how we subsequently deal with it, which makes the difference in our lives. Both traditions encourage us to see that there may be many situations that we have no control over, but we should never allow them to define who we are. We are more than our experience, and much more than what happens to us. Observing what is happening or has happened, without becoming engrossed within it, is the key out of imprisonment. When we reach an observer perspective, choices open up to us – we may choose how we wish to feel, in any set of given circumstances.
Psychotherapy, like Spirituality, is a profoundly human affair. When we are most deeply human, we are most deeply divine. Mata ji, my Spiritual Teacher, taught me that one of the harshest things a person can do to themselves is to deny themselves the opportunity to be human.
All that we feel, even that which we may be ashamed of or wish to deny, is part of the human experience. These feelings serve a purpose. They offer us a clue to something that must be addressed within, rather than without. When we need courage, the universe presents us with opportunities to be courageous. When we need love, we are given opportunities to love others or indeed, love ourselves.
Facing up to our deepest hurts is uncomfortable, but real growth is something that occurs outside the comfort zones we make for ourselves. Unlike the medial portrayal, happiness is not something to be found, but rather to be created within and amongst the struggles and pains of life. In so doing, we turn on the light, which necessarily pushes the darkness away.
I once heard Rapper Kayne West’s lyrics that the lottery ticket is just to tease us. Indeed, materialistic desires only taunt us with the idea of fulfilment. Instead of leaving our happiness in the hands of temporal achievements and external devices, let us offer love to those innermost places of ourselves that have too long been left unloved, and lend dialogue to the places within that have hitherto been mute and unspeaking. Let us allow the humanness within, the spirit that animates life, to move us in ways we could never imagine.
Babaji, and now Mataji, help me see that lasting bliss is beyond the senses. It is beyond intellect and thought. It is realised when we become totally and wholly aware of who and what we really are. In connecting to this source, we begin a process of healing. When this process starts, we are never really the same again.
– Harishta Kaur, Huddersfield, UK
