What does ‘friendliness’ mean?

It does NOT mean walking around saying ‘Have a nice day’ to everyone you meet, as if you were a robot. It doesn’t mean smiling at everyone you meet, because if that is what you are trying to do, the smile will just be on your lips and not in your eyes. It will be fake, and people will sense that. Usually what we call ‘friendliness’ is just an effort to manipulate people – I like you so you will like me. It is political in a way. And it comes from our minds.

Osho says that friendliness is a quality of the heart, and it is a seed we have inside us, but it does not get much chance to be developed. Instead, right from the moment we exit the womb our enmity is developed. In the very moment of birth fear is there, and fear creates enmity, not love. And then many other experiences throughout our life keep activating that source of enmity, hatred. We rarely have or use opportunities to develop the source of our friendliness, our love.

If you think about how you approach life you will see the truth of this. For example, when you are in new situations, meeting new people, do you tend to see them as potential enemies, threats, competition, wanting something from you, or wanting to take something you also want? Are you defensive? Are you suspicious – worried what they are thinking about you? Do you think they are feeling critical about you? Judging you? Or do you always assume that people are appreciating you, that they like you, respect you and want good for you.

Most people, if they are honest, are in the former category. Most people see the world as a place of dangers and threats, where you have to be on guard, where you have to protect yourself, watch out for yourself. Few see the world as a friendly place, a place where you can trust. You can just look at people getting into elevators – nobody says ‘hello’ – it is as if no-one else is there, everyone avoiding eye contact with anyone else.

This simply means that our distrust is stronger than our friendliness. It means we live in our head, the source of distrust, more than in our heart which is the source of trust. All our fears (I am not likeable), our beliefs (I will get hurt if I am vulnerable) and other obstacles (I can’t feel my heart) all live in the mind. Have you ever thought about how it is to go through life living like that?

How to develop the source of friendliness in yourself?

You have to give energy to the seed of friendliness in you, you have to activate it. You can do it by creating an atmosphere of friendliness around yourself, sending waves of friendliness to people around you. But this only works if you do it from the space of your heart, not as an exercise from your mind. In other words, it only works if you truly feel it, rather than just repeating friendly words in your head.

Now the important thing to remember about the heart is that it doesn’t have any goals, desires, or needs from others. It just feels friendly and loving because that is its nature. So in fact, all you have to do is connect to your heart and give it more space in your life.

And everyone has a heart, even you! We have just lost touch with it because all our education and conditioning went into developing our minds, and we were taught not to listen to our hearts. But it is always there, just waiting for you to remember that you are more than your mind.

In fact you are a lot more than your mind! Scientists say that the electromagnetic energy field that comes from our heart is 5,000 times more powerful than that produced by our heads. They say that the heart’s field permeates every cell in the body and radiates up to eight feet outside the body. Which is why we can feel ‘good vibes’ in someone. Theoretically the energy field of the heart travels even further, although its strength is too low to measure with current instruments.

So… we have a powerful untapped energy source in our hearts. We just have to learn how to use it.

Feel your heart radiating out through your senses.

In previous blogs I have explained how to connect to the heart. Now you can imagine gathering all the energy of your heart, all that loving energy, into your hands and eyes. Then practice sending that energy out in waves. Touch something, and feel that you are sending all the love in your heart through your hand.

It is easier to practice this with things or nature first. Once you have the feeling of it, then you can practice it with someone. They don’t need to know what you are doing. You don’t need to be serious (sincere, but not serious), and you don’t need to have any specially significant ‘look’. Just be natural, light and easy, as you are when you are in connection with your heart. All you have to do is have the feeling of gathering your whole heart in your hand, and then sense that it is flowing out through your hand when you touch something or someone. And let it all out, unconditionally. Don’t hold any back. The heart energy always flows unconditionally.

Similarly, when you look in someone’s eyes, feel that your heart is pouring out through your eyes. Again, it is better to practice this with nature first – less complicated! Remember that when you are in your heart, the feeling is of ‘allowing’ rather than ‘doing’. In other words it is a passive sensation. You are just resting inside yourself, breathing into your heart, and allowing the energy of your heart to do its own thing.

You will find many opportunities every day to practice this – use as many as you can. Instead of surfing the net or watching TV, go and give love to the moon or to a tree or a plant or animal. There are many small moments when you can be cultivating this source of friendliness inside you – and notice how it makes you feel when you do it. Really pay attention to how good it feels – remember, you are doing this for yourself, not for others.

Last month we looked at why the mind can be pleased, but not happy. We saw that pleasure comes from external sources, and so is dependent on things or people being a certain way. As soon as things change, or we grow weary of them (which happens faster than we can imagine) the pleasure goes. So it is temporary, because the mind is always looking for new stimulus, new excitement.

Happiness is different – it comes from inside us (you can call it your heart space) and arises when there is no desire for anything, just a gratitude for what is. Then it is not a temporary state, because as long as you have gratitude, you have happiness.

The mystic Osho explained the science of happiness almost 50 years ago. Modern neuro-scientists, after spending a few million dollars, have reached many of the same conclusions, and a whole new breed of ‘happiness’ gurus has sprung up to teach the art of being happy. Unfortunately most of them miss the difference between the mind and the heart, so although they propound many of the same ‘keys,’ they don’t explain that they only work when they are genuinely felt in the heart. These keys do NOT work when they are something ‘done’ by your mind. This month we’ll look at my personal favorite ‘key’ from Osho – gratitude.

"The feeling of gratefulness can arise only if we become aware of what existence is giving us. We have nothing to give in return, hence we feel deep gratitude. We are not worthy of it all, we don’t deserve it. Still the flowers bloom, still the sun rises, still the moon comes, and the stars…. Still existence goes on giving, whether we take any note of it or not."
Osho

Key 1: Gratitude

The other day I was driving in my car to go somewhere I really didn’t want to go. I was grumbling away in my mind, feeling frustrated that I had let myself be pressured into this situation, and generally feeling pissed off about the whole thing.

Suddenly I realized what I was doing, and reminded myself how lucky I was to be living the life I am. In that moment I looked out the car window and saw the sun shining and the beautiful nature I was driving through. I hadn’t seen it before because I was so busy with my internal dialogue of complaining and feeling sorry for myself. It quite literally took my breath away – a huge sigh of contentment welled up from deep inside.

And with that breath came an immense gratitude. Gratitude that I was alive, that such beautiful nature was all around, gratitude for the crickets singing (I hadn’t even heard them til that moment), gratitude for all the gifts existence has showered on me and continues to shower. Immediately all the complains and mind-fuck disappeared and I felt flooded with well-being. Immediately! And I had a good laugh about my unconscious mind.

It had been a momentary lapse, because normally I do feel an incredible gratitude, each day, for how existence takes such wonderful care of me. But this lapse reminded me also of how much my life has changed. It used to be my way of life – complaining, judging, blaming, feeling unfairly treated, disrespected – you know, all the usual rubbish that the mind loves to chew on. Osho is absolutely right when he says that a complaining mind is never at peace.

It is actually through Osho that I came to understand that our attitude towards life is a choice, and whether we choose gratitude or complaint, that is exactly what life will reflect back to us.

Gratitude is an experience of the heart, not words in the mind.

Gratitude sounds easy – we have all learned to say ‘thank you’, but the gratitude that gives rise to happiness does not come from words. It is a feeling that arises in the heart, for no particular reason, just for the fact that a bird is singing or the sun has risen, or you are enjoying the feeling of being alive.

It is not so easy to savor such moments because we are utterly identified with our minds, and the mind cannot help itself but see what is wrong. It cannot help itself but complain and blame, it always wants things to be different.

But we have another aspect of our being that we rarely are aware of – our hearts. I am not talking about the emotional, sentimental heart. Our emotions and sentiments are triggered by thoughts, so they actually belong to the realm of the mind, not the heart. The heart I am talking about is a very peaceful space inside, which is always there.

It is the space we were born with that just says ‘Yes’ to life, ‘Yes’ to whatever is there (if you hadn’t that space you would not have survived birth). And because it accepts whatever life brings, it can also see the beauty in any situation. Because it is not interested in desires, it can enjoy what is already there all around us.

Most of us lost touch with that space a very long time ago, because we were taught to pay more attention to words than to feelings. But that space is still there inside you, just waiting for you to remember that you are actually more than your thoughts.

How to access that long-lost space of the heart?

You can start by moving your attention to the very center of your chest, between your armpits. That’s where your energetic heart is, as distinct from your physical heart. To help you have your awareness there, you can put a hand there, and you can also feel that your breathing is touching that place from the inside. Nothing special to do, just breathing gently and easily… And it helps to listen to music specially designed to touch the heart, such as Compassion, Prayer to the Mystery, or Spiritual Healing.

Take your time. Your mind will keep trying to pull your attention somewhere else, giving you all kinds of other things to think about. When you notice that, just keep bringing your attention back to the center of your chest. This is very boring for the mind, and after some time and practice it will get so bored it will give up. Then you will feel yourself dropping into a deeper peaceful space inside. From that space it is easy to reflect on all the things around you to be grateful for.

You can start with your body – are you aware of what a miracle it is, working for you day and night, keeping the blood and oxygen circulating, taking care of a hundred and one complex matters so you can keep on living. You eat some food and the stomach digests it… such an incredible miracle…

Check with yourself – are you friendly to your body? (ahem… just remember back to the last time you saw yourself naked in the mirror and remember the comments you made inside about yourself). Do you listen to your body’s messages? Do you love it? If not, maybe it is time to get better acquainted with it, and to start appreciating it. Because I tell you a secret – if you don’t love your own body, you can never really love another person’s body, not totally. And you will never allow another person to be totally intimate with you, because you will always be afraid they will come up with the same criticisms that you have.

If you can become aware of what a wonderful mechanism your body actually is, you will automatically start to feel a gratitude arising. It is the same with nature – isn’t the sun amazing – we would not be alive without it. If you look around, you will see that nature is full of miracles, including you.

And everything in nature is unique – each blade of grass, each cloud in the sky, each eyeball, each fingerprint. In the billions of people on this planet, you are unique. This is a scientific fact, not new age bullshit. There has never existed anyone else exactly like you, and there never will. You, as you are, are a perfectly unique creation of existence, or whatever you want to call it. If you can really take that in, you cannot help but feel gratitude arising.

Gratitude is a feeling, not a thought.

True gratitude does not come from just making a mental list of things to be grateful for – that will only give you a temporary glow. (This is one of the areas where I am in fundamental disagreement with happiness gurus). It is a question of genuinely feeling a sense of gratitude, which can only be felt in the heart.

Once you get the knack of feeling gratitude, then you can start allowing that feeling to be more and more present in your body. It will become easier and easier, because it feels so good. The mind will of course keep focusing on what is going wrong all around you, so you need to give this some special attention in your life.

One thing you can do: every evening, when you are lying down on your bed just before going to sleep, think back over the day and remember some of the things to be grateful for – they are usually small things like having a piss when your bladder is bursting, or drinking water when you are thirsty or watching any innocent child or animal playing. Find one thing, and imagine that you are stepping right back into that moment again. Feel again the feeling in your body and behind your face, which you may not even have been aware of at the time. And allow that feeling to grow – feel that with each breath that feeling is expanding more and more throughout your body, until it has touched every cell. Then go to sleep with that.

And maybe you can try one whole day (aiyeeeee) without complaining – just to see how that is. And let me know what happens!

The mind can never be happy.

‘Happiness’ is in fashion. There is a new Science of Happiness, and plenty of people are giving (actually, usually they are selling) all kinds of good advice about bringing more happiness into your life. Simple suggestions like smile more, do good deeds, say kind things to people…. Sounds easy. So why aren’t people becoming more happy? I suspect it is because most of the advice ignores a vital factor: it is impossible for the mind to be happy!

Did you just do a double-take? Well it’s true – the mind can never be happy. As the Indian mystic Osho says, the mind is always desiring – that is its nature. And once it gets what it had been desiring, it looks for the next object of desire. “The mind can never be happy with what it has, it is always striving after that which it doesn’t have, or cannot have. The mind can exist only with a goal, because it needs a way to remain tense. If it has a goal, then it can remain unfulfilled, frustrated, and living in hope.”

Do you recognize that from your life? And the problem is intensified because we are identified with our minds: we think we are our thoughts, no? So then as long as we are ruled by our minds, we will always be in misery and frustration, always chasing after some desire. Even the desire to be happy or peaceful is a goal in the mind.

The problem with all the good advice about how to be happy is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that the mind is in the way, advice feeds our goal-oriented minds – it asks you to ‘do’ things, as a practice, as a special effort, in order to achieve a result (happiness), it then calculates that if we follow this advice, then we will be happy. It is a kind of bargain/deal. There is a motive in our actions. And that does not bring happiness.

This is why, no matter how much you smile and say to people ‘Have a nice day,’ you don’t actually change your basic happiness (or unhappiness). You may feel good for a little while, but the glow disappears the moment some arsehole rubs up you the wrong way, or even just cuts in front of you at the traffic lights. Doesn’t it?

Pleasure is not happiness.

The mind can be pleased, even excited, but these are temporary states, dependant on something outside us. For example, we get pleasure from a new lover, a new car, a new electronic gadget, clothing or a new house, it lasts only as long as the mind continues to remain excited about it. Pleasure is triggered by a thing or a person, and as far as our ‘love’ is concerned, If someone loves us, we are happy, when they don’t love us any more, what happens to that happiness?

Isn’t it amazing how fast we take things for granted – even our friends. And as far as our ‘love’ is concerned, it is also very dependant on something outside of us: If someone loves us, we are happy. But when they don’t love us any more, what happens to that happiness?

So, pleasure is dependant on something external – sex, money, the things money can buy, or people being a certain way. And it exists in the mind. Happiness is altogether different from pleasure. Happiness is something that is not dependant on anything outside being a certain way – it has no conditions. It is a state of being that comes from inside you. As Osho says, "Happiness is when there is no desire for something, just a gratitude for what is. Then it is not a temporary state, because as long as you have gratitude, you have happiness."

To understand the difference between happiness & pleasure, remember a moment when you got a new gadget / dress / computer / shoes / car – something you had been desiring. See if you can remember that feeling again, that same excitement, and notice what triggers it. It is triggered by thoughts, isn’t it? All that internal dialogue about that new object -can you feel how that triggers your excitement? And just notice if it is easy, to feel exactly that same excitement again right now. Can you? And something else – do you remember how long that excitement lasted?

Now remember a moment when you showed a little love to someone without expecting something in return. It might have been a simple thing like helping an elderly person cross the road, or letting someone go ahead of you who seemed to be in a hurry, or stopping to say hello to a small baby, or just smiling at a stranger who looked unhappy. As you remember that moment again, notice where in the body you feel it. Do you notice a kind of contentment in your chest – around the area of your heart?

And finally, remember a moment not involving anyone, when you just felt happy or peaceful for no reason… perhaps walking in nature, seeing a beautiful sunset or feeling the wind on your face or the grass under your feet… Or maybe just lying down on your bed one night after a long day. How easy is it to recall that feeling again? And what is that feeling? Where do you feel that in your body?

Out of the three situations, which feeling was easier to recall? Hopefully you noticed that it was either the second or the third. And hopefully you also noticed that those feelings were not in your head, but around the area of your heart. Why were those feelings easier to recall in your body? It is because they arose from inside you, they were not provoked in you by anyone or anything else. And you might also notice that those moments when you felt happy or peaceful arose when you were not expecting anything. You had no particular desire for anything. Do you see that?

This is the difference between happiness and pleasure. We feel happiness in the heart, and pleasure in the mind. The things that give us pleasure activate the mind, and that is a temporary state. The feelings that well up from within us are not temporary – you can recall them whenever you want, right, just by accessing that space again.

In the next couple of blogs I am going to write about the four keys Osho gives to rekindle the natural state of happiness in you. But first, there is another important point to be aware of:

Happiness is a natural state, so why are our minds so attached to misery?

Why is it that the mind can never be happy, can never be contented? Why do our minds always choose to see the bad rather than the good? Why do we let one criticism affect us rather than nine positive comments?

It is because our ego is stronger when we are miserable. Think about it… when you are just easily flowing with life, when there are no big problems, when you are just happy for no reason, then your sense of ‘I’ as a separate individual is not very great. Remember back to one of those heart moments mentioned above and see if you can notice that.

But when we are having big problems, when we are suffering, then our sense of ‘I’ is very strong. Remember back to such a situation, and notice the difference. Do you see that you feel more important when you are miserable? That sense of importance is your ego! And because our ego is strengthened when we are suffering, it is of course very attached to misery. Our problems give us our identity in a way. Who would you be without your problems? Think about it…

And on top of all that, we carry in our unconscious a whole bunch of conditioned ideas that it is not OK to be happy – people are suffering all around us, we see it every day on the TV and the internet. Our parents are not happy, and out of a kind of unconscious loyalty we feel it is therefore not OK for us to be happy. Or we may have the unconscious idea that if we are happy now we will pay for it later.

So being happy, resting easy with contentment, is not something natural and easy for the mind. After all, it has nothing to do when you are happy, does it? So be clear, THE MIND DOES NOT LIKE TO BE HAPPY.

How to be more in contact with your heart – the source of your happiness.

The easiest way to connect to your heart is to use music which has been written from the heart. I suggest Reiki Hands of Light, Buddha Garden, Feng Shui, and De Profundis: Out of the Depths II. Put the music on and then make sure you are comfortable, sitting or lying, and move your attention to the very center of your chest, between your armpits. That’s where your energetic heart is, as distinct from your physical heart. To help you have your awareness there, you can put a hand there, and you can also feel that your breathing is touching that place from the inside. Nothing special to do, just breathing gently and easily.

If you like you can imagine that your heart has two big ears attached to it, and that the music is entering directly into your heart. Take your time. Your mind will keep trying to pull your attention somewhere else, giving you all kinds of other things to think about. When you notice that, just keep bringing your attention back to the center of your chest. This is very boring for the mind, and after some time and practice it will get so bored it will give up.

The knack is to do nothing! Just give yourself permission to relax and enjoy listening to the music for twenty to thirty minutes (or however long you can manage). And feel the peaceful state beginning to build up in the center of your chest.