The paradox is — we want happiness but we get suffering, and that’s the curse of our desire for (instant) happiness.

Modern times are the epoch of the search for happiness and that’s perfectly fine, but when it is not based on meaning, our search very soon becomes an endless fountain of unhappiness or suffering. Happiness is a beautiful emotion and, naturally, we want to feel it. It will be difficult to find someone who wants to be unhappy.

Let’s have look at happiness. What does it mean to be happy? What is the condition for happiness? First of all, it is a very brief emotion. We all know that happiness does not last very long even when we get a strong dose of it, and staying for quite a long period in the emotion we will get used to it and soon we will want even more happiness and then more and more. Actually the search for happiness has no limits. Finally it will be never enough — we always want more of it.

Happiness is unstable in its very own nature (like all emotions). There are a lot of emotions in the body which like to be expressed, and each emotion wants its part. This involves a conflict — if our attention is focused on being happy, then we have to repress other emotions and that’s unhealthy. Happiness depends on the situation, on the circumstances. Life has to be a certain way to fulfil our projection of what it means to be happy and everything that doesn’t fit in is a problem, suffering and meaningless. When our lives are depending on the circumstances (internal or external) we become victims. It is impossible to control the situations all the time, and the reality is, most of us control almost nothing.

Happiness can’t resist the storms of existence but meaning can.

Meaning is the rock in the ocean of life, it is the save port from where we can start our journeys and where we always can come back too. When life has meaning we can face almost everything. We do not depend on the circumstances – we may be happy or maybe not, but our life is not anymore rooted in the superfluous search for happiness. We don’t depend on what people think about us, on success, money, good relation, good sex, health and so on. Of course, it is nice to have all these things but it is a road to suffering if we depend on then.

Meaning provides deepness, clarity, calmness, and serenity. It doesn’t matter which meaning we find in life — this has a wider vision that goes beyond ordinary life. Naturally, the more our meaning is in synchronization with life the better it is.

A lot of us have lost meaning and we became addicted to happiness. That’s why fake news, the addiction to “likes”, the epidemic explosion of depression, propaganda, the endless thirst for more, the obsession for the next and the lack of interest to the suffering of others became the structure of society.

But it is also in our hands to change this, and to be able to do it we have to step out of the vicious circle of our search for happiness and start going deeper.

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~Karsten Ramser

I’ve been working for over 40 years with art and the development of consciousness. My life was marked by traumatic experiences, depression and illness, which pushed me forward to find a different kind of consciousness. My influence has been and still is science, the metaphysic perspective, Buddhism, the Sufis, the Tao, history, politics, healing, nonduality, transpersonalty and of course art. I work as an Artist, Transpersonal Coach, Writer, Reconnective Healer, master of Nonduality and meditation/contemplation teacher.

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