Lessons in Happiness

How to find and how to not find happiness

Photo by MARK ADRIANE on Unsplash

Finish this sentence:

I will not be happy unless…

How you finish the sentence affects whether or not you will really be happy. Stay with me. I want to explain this and I want to integrate in this Substack, much of what I have come to learn about happiness and why certain people are not happy. Maybe…just maybe, this might be a lesson for some of us on happiness—a lesson we really are ready for now—at this stage and phrase of our lives.

Many of us finish the sentence with words or ideas about money, power, success, security, love, friendship and God. We think, “I will finally be happy when… I have this person; this job; this relationship; this thing in my life.” 

Many of us combine some of these words and values to make even larger statements about what would make us happy or who would make us happy.  We fall into a snare or trap when we equate our happiness with having a relationship with someone or some thing.

We cling, barter, work hard, manipulate, crave and even demand whatever it is that we have come to believe will make us happy. We have to have “it” in order to be happy. We will do any thing for “it”—arrange our lives, re-arrange our lives and order and dis-order our lives until we get “it”. 

These things or people are called attachments.  We attach our very soul to someone or something in order to get and receive what we think is happiness. This “thing” or “person” is something we become attached to—we “must” have it in order to be happy”. 

An attachment is not a fact. An attachment is a belief—a belief that you so, so, so believe that you have to have in order to be happy.

Richard Rohr writes: "All great spirituality is about letting go. Instead, we have made it to be about taking in, attaining, performing, winning, and succeeding. True spirituality echoes the paradox of life itself. It trains us in both detachment and attachment: detachment from the passing so we can attach to the substantial. But if we do not acquire good training in detachment, we may attach to the wrong things, especially our own self-image and its desire for security."

Here’s another question to ponder:  What training have you ever received in your life about attachments and detachment?  For many of us the short answer is none.  Perhaps this is precisely why we are facing an epidemic in unhappiness.

I like this definition of an attachment: “An attachment is an emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. The emotional state is composed of two elements: one positive and the other negative. The positive is a flash of pleasure and excitement—the thrill that you are experiencing when you get what you are attached to. The negative element is the sense of threat and tension that always accompanies the attachment…the flash of pleasure followed by weariness and the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.” (Anthony De Mello in The Way of Love).

How we face our attachments is really the story of our lives—a story that is personal, individual and private—often never, ever discussed or brought to the light.  It’s here that the work of Thomas Keating has offered the most simple, concise and wise perspective.  Keating developed what he calls our “emotional programs for happiness.”  He uses the word “program” because Keating describes four basic areas of life that we form our attachments:

Keating sees our emotional needs are summarized in the categories of -power/control,

-esteem/affection,

-and security/survival).

We develop attachments to people, places, and situations that bring us comfort, and aversions to people, places, and situations that lead to discomfort in the light of these wounds in our past.

It is here, in each of the categories that Keating outlines that we do our work on detaching ourselves from what has hooked us—and the key to this in our stories is understanding the hook, how we got hooked and how we get unhooked. All of this work is beautifully summarized in Thomas Keating’s prayer called, “The Welcome Prayer.”  (This is a link to a podcast Gwen and did on Keating’s prayer. You can find a copy of the prayer in the show notes of the podcast). As you read through Keating’s prayer,  you’ll see how he used the categories that we are programmed by to experience happiness and how we really do need help to unhook ourselves. This unhooking is the work of Alcoholics Anonymous’ methods of recovery. It’s really a training that all of us should undergo at some time in our lives no matter how we navigated alcohol.  Gwen and I discovered Thomas Keating at one of the darkest and hardest times in our lives—when our grandson died. We spent our sabbatical studying Keating and eventually meeting him at his monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.

All of us need work on recovering and the older I become, the more I see the roots of this hook in my own family of origin and in the stories I have believed about my own formation. My own “program for happiness” needed to be explored and dismantled.

Learning to detach from the hooks is really the work of discovering a new narrative or new story that we can live by and live with.  In healthy detachment, we find ways forward to happiness and contentment. For me, this is the message of the Christian faith. And it’s in the re-reading of some of the words of Jesus that I have found a key to unlock the chains that imprisoned me and my unhappy programs and illusions.

Not only Keating helped me but other voices helped me as well. Consider these words of Thomas Merton who wrote extensively on attachments: "The one thing necessary is a true interior and spiritual life, true growth, on my own, in depth, in a new direction. Whatever new direction God opens up for me. My job is to press forward, to grow interiorly, to pray, to break away from attachments and to defy fears, to grow in faith, which has its own solitude, to seek an entirely new perspective and new dimension in my life. To open up new horizons at any cost. To desire this and let the Holy Spirit take care of the rest. But really to desire this and work for it." (Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life From His Journals (1999).

My job is to press forward…

My job is to grow interiorly…

My job is to pray…

My job is to breakaway from attachments…

My job is to defy fears….

My job is to seek an entirely new perspective and new dimension in my life…
My job is to open up to new horizons at any cost…

My job is to let the Spirit do the Spirit’s job in me and through me…

My job is to desire this…

My job is to really work for it….

Every sentence…every single sentence is not only important but a part of the work of unhooking ourselves from an unhealthy hook—an attachment that is rooted in us. Attachments thrive in the darkness of illusions and it is our real work to distinguish the truth from illusions.  What does make a person happy? What is the real truth of this question? That’s our work—to dig in there and to make all the adjustments and inner renovations that we can and to get all the help we can from God to find the truth.

These are the lessons in happiness that we must both learn and unlearn. We learn new ways of becoming truly happy and content. We unlearn old patterns and ways that have brought the fruit of unhealthy attachments.

In the work that Gwen and I have done together, it is right here—right in this very discussion of attachments that we have heard the sad, unhappy and gloomy stories of so many people who came to us seeking to understand why they were not happy. Most were in powerful positions in church and marketplace. But that position did not make them happy. Many had affairs seeking someone else to make them happy. Some rose to powerful platforms of position and status that they had fallen from or been fired for some reason. Some came tired. Some came worn out. Some came exhausted and some came, what we called, “DOA or Dead on Arrival.” But our real work was listening to their stories and helping them connect the dots—to see the patterns of their choices, attachments and face their brokenness to find hope and recovery.  As I look back on the core of our work now, what we did that seemed to work best was to simply let people connect the dots in their own stories and come to their own conclusions about what they saw by more dots being connected. 

I am here to tell you that we are the witnesses of so, so much recovery.  It is these stories of recovery that kept us keeping on until we simply came to a place in our own chronology that our work was done—at least for us.

By the way, as I look back now at my work and my life, I see my own work has being birthed from my own story of understanding the lessons of happiness through my own looking into the mirror and dismantling my own acquired illusions and more, to dismantle my programs from happiness that hooked me early, very early in my own story. Thomas Keating, Richard Rohr, Anthoy de Mello, Thomas Merton and the work of several counselors and my own spiritual director has helped me wade through the mud and to find some clarity.  First, my own dots needed to show me something…then out of my own story, Potter’s Inn was birthed—a ministry to help people recover their souls and care for their souls. That work brought both Gwen and I much happiness. It was deep work—the kind of work that was worthy of a lifetime and all of our combined training and energy. We loved this work because through our own work, we became more free as well. We became happy people.

Happiness may elude us as we go on through life, amassing more and more hooks without doing the deeply spiritual work of unhooking ourselves from illusions of happiness.  As I look back on my published books and articles, I now see that my work is really very autobiographical---very “memoirish”—to put into word what I was discovering at that particular time I published the work.  I think that is what we do—we come to this plateaus in life to just say, “This is what I know now to be true. But I’m still evolving and maturing, growing and changing. Come back to me in a few years, I may have more to say on this subject.”  And Substack is now my latest platform to clear the deck or clear my throat once again and just say “it” as concise and straightforward as I possibly can. 

A publisher once told me in my writing, “Steve, quit trying to clear your throat so much in your first few paragraphs and pages. Just say what it is you both want and need to say.” I’ve never forgotten her telling me this back in 2008 when I first published a book. Substack is the result of a lot of throat clearing…just in case you are wondering.

Take a moment now and get your journal or open a Document on your computer and write a paragraph about an illusion of happiness that now comes to mind after reading my words. Just a paragraph—not a novel. Just something to help you record what it is that is being brought to your attention now. Just one paragraph.

Leave it after you’ve written it. I’ll come back later and we will explore a bit more.

If you’re brave and willing, consider putting a few sentences in your comments so we can all see how this is landing. I’d so appreciate your bravery and words.

---

Don’t forget…the 3 C Group begins soon! Register…

And oh…one more thing… The 3C Group that I’m starting begins September 30. It’s a monthly gathering—a cohort to explore what I’ve written above—but through some poems written centuries ago or maybe a few weeks ago by voices who are trying to do exactly what I’m encouraging us to do right here…to become curious.

You can read about it and register here. It’s filling up. It’s limited to 25 people. When it fills, registrations will stop being received.

Click here to read more or scroll back a few Substacks to glean what’s going to happen in the all new 3C groups!

My poems are here on Substack for those who help me keep on going—keep on trying to talk “it” out and to use poems as a new and primary way of doing just this. Please consider becoming a Subscriber.