Being Happy (2 page)

You will know when
you are making progress towards Self-Actualisation when you can
look honestly at yourself and recognise the following character
traits:

Realistically
oriented with an efficient perception of reality extending into all
areas of life
. SA people are unthreatened and not frightened by
the unknown. SA people usually have a superior ability to reason,
to see the truth.

Accept oneself,
others and the natural world the way they are.
SA people see
human nature as is. They have rid themselves of crippling guilt or
shame; they enjoy themselves without regret or apology, and have no
unnecessary inhibitions.

Spontaneous in
their inner life, thoughts and impulses
. SA people are
unhampered by convention. Their ethics are autonomous, they see
themselves as an individual, and are motivated towards continual
improvement.

Focus on
problems outside oneself
. SA people have a mission in life
requiring much energy, and their mission is their reason to be
alive. SA people are usually serene and worry-free as they pursue
their mission with unshakeable determination.

Detachment, the
need for privacy
. Alone but not lonely, unflappable, retaining
dignity amid confusion and personal misfortunes, objective. SA
people are self starters, responsible for themselves. They own
their behaviour.

Autonomous,
independent of culture and environment
. SA people rely on inner
self for satisfaction. Resilient and stable in the face of hard
knocks, SA people are self contained, independent from the love and
respect of others in the sense that they can resist attempts to use
these to manipulate them.

Freshness of
appreciation
. SA people have a fresh rather than stereotyped
appreciation of people and things. Moment to moment living is
thrilling, transcendent and spiritual. SA people live the present
moment to the fullest.

Peak
experiences
. In Maslow’s words ‘Feelings of limitless horizons
opening up to the vision, the feeling of being simultaneously more
powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the
feeling of ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placement in
time and space with, finally, the conviction that something
extremely important and valuable had happened, so that the subject
was to some extent transformed and strengthened even in his daily
life by such experiences. When peak experiences are especially
powerful, the sense of self dissolves into an awareness of a
greater unity.’ (from
Religion, Values and Peak Experiences
,
1970).

Here is an example
of a Peak Experience from my own life.

I resolved some
time ago to adopt an attitude of appreciating the many small things
around me as I went about my everyday life. To most people, these
small things seem so ordinary, so insignificant and common-place
that they are easy to overlook, even scorn. Why then are these
things worthy of our attention? In their way, they are perfect, and
they have much to tell us if we stop and notice with a child’s open
mind. Everyday objects have something of great value to give if you
would take a moment to receive it.

With this
mind-set, one day I noticed the humble moss plants growing in the
cracks between the paving stones as I walked along the service road
from the car-park to my office at Griffith University’s Nathan
campus. Moss is a common sight in shady places where the dew
lingers, even in dry eucalypt forests like this.

Moss is easy to
overlook because we are often pre-occupied and it is so small and
common. It is just one of thousands of objects passing through our
visual field any day of our life. Choose one instance of this
humble plant and look more closely. With a macro lens on my camera
it was revealed as a beautiful forest, as lovely as any full-sized
forest I had ever flown-over. (You can see it here:
http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~davidt/Griffith%20Moss.jpg
)

There is something
quite beautiful about moss when seen up close, this perfectly
adapted survivor on our planet for the past 500 million years.
Getting down on my hands and knees to see more clearly made me feel
humble. It was mind-expanding to think that this humble little
plant had existed in its current form for so long. I tried to
stretch my imagination across such a vast span of time.

Having stretched
my imagination so far into the past, I now tried sending it into
the future by the same amount. Now I had a billion year span
balanced on the fulcrum of the Now. This modest little plant turned
out to have a big story to tell to anyone willing to listen.

The story it told
me in that moment was that my appreciation of this little plant was
the dream of the Earth realised. Life
wants
to become
conscious of itself. After four billion years of evolution, life on
this planet had become aware of itself. This is a major milestone
which I felt greatly privileged to be a part of. I knew though that
the moss would have told the same story to anyone else willing to
listen.

Unlike the moss,
we humans will not survive a billion years in our current form. And
when our species has morphed into something else or become extinct,
the moss will still be modestly growing in shady places.

This train of
thought, I realised, was a continuation of one which began 35 years
earlier. In 1975 I visited an ancient forest in New Zealand. It was
near the Southland town of Te Anau. The glaciated terrain is like
that of the Cadillac National Park in Maine, or the fjord lands of
Norway.

The forest here is
as it has been since the last Ice Age, perhaps 8,000 years, though
this kind of forest had probably grown here on and off for many
millions of years during the inter-glacial periods.

The trees were
magnificent; tall, straight, and majestic in their ancientness.
There was a quality to the light filtering through the forest
canopy that gave this place a transcendent beauty. It was like
being on the set for the movie
Lord of the Rings
.

The moss in this
temperate forest covered every bit of available ground with a layer
perhaps a meter thick in places. It was soft underfoot, like
walking on a mattress. It exhaled a sweet earthy breath when walked
on. I felt an immense reverence for that moss. I wanted to sink
into it, be embraced by it, become one with it.

In that
peak-experience moment, as I lay on the moss, something in me
resonated with the spirit of the forest. It was a moment of
enlightenment, of Self-Actualisation. (visit the forest:
http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~davidt/Te%20Anau%20Moss.jpg
)

Peak experiences
like this have a way of staying with you forever, a constant source
of happiness. You can have that happiness too. You can start right
now.

The End

David Tuffley
PhD
combines a career as a university lecturer and researcher with
his very personal search for spiritual meaning over the past 40
years. This work is the fruit of that journey.

David's
academic interests range across Comparative Religion, Philosophy,
Psychology, Anthropology, Literature, History, Software Engineering
and Architecture. He blends his broad academic knowledge with the
ancient practice of Buddhism and Taoism to create a truly unique
work of timeless value.

Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/tuffley/

Smashwords Profile:
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tuffley

See these other
titles by the same author:

Buddhism: The Essence:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26233

The Bodhicaryavatara: A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of
Life:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/45368

The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49330

Communing with Nature:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26225

The Tao Te
Ching: Lao Tzu’s Timeless Classic for Today:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25703

Zen Koans:
Ancient Wisdom for Today:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25961

Satori Now: Awakening your Highest Self:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/25629

Cultivating Intuition:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26230

Leadership & the Tao:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/28342

What happens when I die?
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26221

Email Etiquette: Guide to email in the Information Age:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/49923