Is a western civilization phenomenon that constantly asks if we are happy? It seems to be predicated on the thought that if we have this thing or are with this person or have this title we will be happy. What if our happiness is not found in anything outside of ourselves? What if God has already equipped us with what we need to make us happy? I think most people at some point or another have acquired that thing only to find out they are not as happy as they anticipated. Is it simply a disproportionate expectation or the placing of happiness outside of ourselves? Is happiness a thought, a decision, an emotion or something more? Maybe we have warped the word so much we have lost sense of its meaning. Maybe if we halt from using the term and stop thinking about whether or not we are happy, we can experience it. My sense of happiness is sometimes context dependent and largely influenced as all things are on my perspective. If I am in a good place all kinds of things show up as happiness. If I am having a rough day it is easy for me to miss out on things that typically show up as happiness for me. I remember a time in my life, suffering from clinical depression when I felt like I was living in a cobweb and could not see my way out of it, let alone resonate with an idea of being happy. I was preoccupied with surviving and hoping it wouldn’t get any better. It was a time when I would swear God stopped listening. But it wasn’t so much a lack of happiness as a lack of being. Through the various circumstances of my life I had suppressed so much feeling because it was too painful. It wasn’t time for me to take a long hard look at my life and stop numbing out. I believe God was there by my side, but like the illusory happiness, I could not see it with my eyes. It wasn’t until I reached the opportunity for recovery and halted the very behaviors I thought made me happy (the very ones keeping me numbed out), that I began to restore my sense of self. It is often by halting one thing or even halting our thinking about it, we open the door to experiencing the very thing we are looking for. I believe God was backing me up and inching me towards a willingness to halt the very behavior that I thought made me feel some sense of happiness but no longer did. I had become so numbed out I didn’t stop to question if it truly brought me happiness. As I live my life hopefully more awake, I have the freedom to question what I think makes me happy and check in with my heart to see if it something worth halting today.
Be From Halting!
on April 14, 2017My prayer for us is the courage to question the thoughts of happiness and experiment with halting them to open the doors of our heart and see it by being today.
dailydatewithgod 
Leave a comment