What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
The Pursuit of Happiness
February 22 2011
If you’re like most people, you may feel as if happiness is just around the corner. It often seems like there’s just one small thing (or maybe one large thing!) missing from life that would make you happy. For instance, if you could have ... success, the love of a perfect partner, peace, a better job, more money, an iPhone ...
And yet, when I ask my clients to slow down a little bit, to look deeper and ask what it is they really want, they begin to realize that although it might be nice to have the better job, the iPhone, or even love, that isn’t what would bring lasting happiness.
They begin to see that whatever they feel they want is only a temporary answer at best. As one client put it, “I realized the other day that what I was longing for — what I honestly felt I needed to feel better — was what I’d actually had that weekend. But it hadn’t brought me the sense of lasting peace and spaciousness I’d imagined. That was a real eye-opener for me!”
Most people seek happiness. It’s even written into the U.S. Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And there’s nothing wrong with wanting happiness. It’s just that what you think will bring you lasting happiness seldom does. And then you’re off in pursuit once again, wondering why you can’t seem to have, or hold onto, what you want.
This type of happiness — the happiness that one pursues — is an experience. Experience, by definition, is transient; it comes, it goes, it moves. Clinging to the experience or running after it is a sure way to have it slip through your fingers.
What does it take to find a more lasting sense of peacefulness and stability — which is, in the end, also a deeper, more sublime happiness? Everyone’s answer to that question is individual and unique. Here are some ways to explore and discover your own answer.
The freedom to experience
Wanting something usually creates an expectation that having what you want will bring happiness. And it certainly might — but the experience, like all experience, will come and go, no matter how hard you try to hang on to it.
On the other hand, when you allow yourself to experience fully what it’s like to achieve what you want without expecting the moment to last, your happiness will be more tangible — and the subsequent fading will be less painful.
“In giving myself the freedom to experience gladness about having what I want, and remembering not to cling to it (because I know it won’t last), I find the joy of achievement is much deeper and much more fun,” my client told me. “And instead of trying to hang onto it for tomorrow, I remind myself to look forward to what new experience will come — instead of trying to drag today’s experience with me."
Is it already present?
Ask yourself: is peace, stillness, love, and even happiness already present?
“That question made me stop in my tracks,” a client said. “I never even considered that happiness might be present inside me somewhere. And it’s not always in reach — sometimes I really do feel unhappiness, grief, anger, and loneliness. But even though happiness may not seem available, I can almost always feel some sense of stillness deep inside. But only,” she added, “if I stop and ask myself the question: Is what I'm so desperately seeking outside myself already present within?”
Wanting or grasping?
When you’re convinced that something — whatever it might be — is necessary for your happiness, you grasp for it. It becomes a craving and even an obsession.
And that craving creates your sense that something’s missing.
As my client noticed, when you stop and ask ... is happiness already present? ... you also stop the external seeking and grasping.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting. Wanting is a natural and even enjoyable part of being human. But when wanting turns into grasping, into a belief that you must have whatever it is in order to be happy, then you force yourself into being unhappy.
It’s a subtle distinction, and an important one.
So ask yourself: Is the happiness you’re seeking already present?
“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I’m happy. I can’t figure it out. What am I doing right?” Charles Schulz, 1922-2000, American cartoonist and creator of the Peanuts comic strip.
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