I HAVE THE KEYS TO BLISS: THE HAPPINESS IN LIFE

I HAVE THE KEYS TO BLISS: THE HAPPINESS IN LIFE

By Col SC Sood (Retd)

(20 October 2008)

(Enhanced on 02 May 2010)

Bliss means perfect joy or happiness. It is the ultimate goal in life and everyone is looking for bliss: the way to happiness. In general, all religions as well as spiritual philosophies aim at providing ways and means for achieving bliss. Meditation has been considered basic to pursuit of happiness. The wisdom lies in creating friendship with our surroundings. The path for journey from misery to bliss has to be found individually. The principles can be learnt from all around. The great teachers in the world have experimented and listed their findings and the same are available to us in the form of their teachings.

After lot of struggle for so many years and having read the great scriptures like Gita, Bible, Quran, Guru Granth Sahib, and so on …, alongwith the principles of scientific systems, I have learnt some aspects of human psychology that give insight into this journey.

We start with a simple communication system. Every communication system has the following essential components:-

1. Source of information

2. Transmitter

3. Medium for flow of information

4. Receiver system

5. Destination

6. System of delivery of information to the destination

7. Interpretation and utilisation of information at the destination

Suppose, I receive a phone call saying that my child has got injured, I get worried and feel stressed and troubled. Though, nothing has changed in physical environment around me, yet I experience stress. Where from has the stress crept in? Is it the source causing me the stress? No, all sources of information have their role of generating information. As such, the source has nothing to do with my stress and strain. Had the information not reached me, the source in any case had generated the information. In a similar way, transmitter has the role of transmitting the information and it can not be the cause of my suffering. From source to destination, each element has its own role and they are not the cause of my suffering. What is the destination in this case? Our mind is the destination. We have our sense organs as receivers for receiving all types of information: visible, audible, sensational, smell, taste etc. They would continue to perform their respective role. As such they can not be the cause of my misery. Which portion of the system causes stress and strain to us? Let us assume that you did not understand the language in which the information was received. Would you have felt hurt? Not at all! Every element in the system was still the same.

It is imperative to understand that the elements in the above system can not hurt us. Where does the stress come from? The stress comes up immediately when I interpret the received information telling myself “Why has this happened to my child? What a bad luck! Why is God unkind to us? People have no sense of responsibility,” …so on and so forth.

Had I received a different message that my child has received first prize in a competition, I would have interpreted and told myself “Excellent! What a great child we have.” This would have resulted in pleasure and happiness rather than stress and strain.

Had I told myself “Our child has been hurt. We need to provide immediate care. Let us do it fast.” This interpretation would have definitely kept me outside the umbrella of stress and strain.

Here lies the key to bliss. On receipt of information, it is my interpretation to myself that puts me under stress and strain or gives me pleasure and happiness. This means whenever under stress and strain, I need to change my interpretation and I would get rid of stress and strain! Try it and get back to me if the key fails. This technique for pursuit of happiness would ultimately make you happy. You must make this positive effort to be happy. If I could pass on my experience to you - is my aim in life. I am sure this would help you in stress management.

In brief, everything revolves around only one question: "After receiving various inputs i.e. on seeing or hearing something, what did I tell myself?" If I said to myself "very bad, very bad, etc" I shall be surely unhappy. If I say "It is alright, it is part of life", I'll be better off, and if I said "very good", I'll be surely happy. So whatever you tell yourself, will make you happy or sad.