Gazing Into the Abyss of Happiness

excerpted from PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia


More and more creative people find they do their best work when they're feeling healthy and secure. We know writers who no longer need to be drunk or in agony in order to shed the numbness of their daily routine and tap into the full powers of their imagination. We have filmmaker friends whose best work flows not from the depths of alienated self-doubt but rather from the heights of well-earned bliss. Singer-songwriter P.J. Harvey is the patron saint of this new breed. "When I'm contented, I'm more open to receiving a lot of inspiration," she has testified. "I'm most creative when I feel safe and happy."



At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we've retired the archetype of the tormented genius. We have zero attraction to books and movies and songs by depressed jerks whose work is celebrated but whose lives are a mess. Stories about supposedly interesting creeps don't rouse our perverse fascination because we've broken our addiction to perverse fascination. When hearing about illustrious creators who brag that they feel most stimulated when they're angry or miserable, we unleash the Official Beauty and Truth Lab Histrionic Yawn.



Sadly, many storytellers and artists are still addicted to the old delusions about the risks of good mental health. Even those who don't view peace of mind as a threat to their creative power often believe that it's a rare commodity attainable only through dumb luck. "One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness," said novelist Willa Cather. "One only stumbles upon them by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere."



There is another obstacle to overthrowing the status quo. Oppressively nice, indiscriminately optimistic, sentimental comfort-hoarders give happiness a bad name. They seem to justify Flaubert's mean-spirited observation that "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost."



Here's a third blotch on the reputation of happiness: that it's mostly an absence of pain. In  The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche frames the issue well: "Would you prefer the happiness of scratching a mosquito bite over the happiness of not having a mosquito bite in the first place?"



It's possible to define a more supple variety of happiness that does not paralyze the will or sap ambition. For the first clue about how to proceed, we turn to Buddhist researchers Rick Foster and Greg Hicks.



In their book  How We Choose to Be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, they reveal that the number one trait of happy people is a serious determination to be happy. Bliss is a habit you can cultivate, in other words, not an accident that you stumble upon by chance, in a lucky hour, at the world's end somewhere.



For another clue about how to conjure up a kind of happiness that does not anesthetize the soul, we call on Kenneth Koch. Here's what he wrote about Nobel Prize-winning poet Saint-John Perse: "So many poets have the courage to look into the abyss. But Perse had the courage to look into happiness."

Daily Inspirations from don Miguel Ruiz

Ok, so it's a few days worth, but there are good things to consider here...who couldn't use a little inspiration?

You are an angel, and your life is your message. You can be a messenger of lies, fear, and destruction; or a messenger of truth, love, and creation. But you cannot deliver lies and truth at the same time.

The best moments of your life are when you are being your authentic self. When you are in your creation and doing what you love to do, you become what you really are again. You are not thinking in that moment; you are expressing. Your emotions are coming out, and you feel great.

Transform your life with self-love. From now on, let every action, every reaction, every thought, and every emotion be based on love. Increase your self-love until the entire dream of your life is transformed from fear and drama to love and joy.

Love and accept yourself just the way you are. You are what you are; you don't need to pretend to be something else. When you pretend to be what you are not, you are always going to fail.

The word is pure magic. The power of our word comes directly from God, and faith is the force that directs this power. Everything in our virtual reality is created with the word. We use the word for the creation of our story, to make sense out of everything we experience.

Love others without conditions. When you love without conditions, you the human, and you the God, align with the Spirit of Life moving through you. Your life becomes the expression of the beauty of the expression of the beauty of the Spirit, and your dream becomes a masterpiece of art.

You are only responsible for your half of a relationship. There are two halves in every relationship, but you are only responsible for your half of the relationship; it is not up to you to control the other half. Respect the other half and there is always going to be peace in that relationship.

To master love, you have to practice love. The art of relationship is a whole mastery, and the only way to reach mastery is with practice. To master a relationship is, therefore, about action; it is not about attaining knowledge.

Respect each others dream. In a relationship, there are two dreamers with two different dreams. You need to accept the differences that exist between two dreamers; you need to respect each other's dream.

Cultivate wisdom. You don't need to accumulate knowledge to become wise; anyone can become wise. When you become wise, you respect your body, you respect your mind, and you respect your soul. When you become wise, your life is controlled by your heart, not your head.

Create the perfect relationship between you and your body. Treat your body with all your love, honor, gratitude, and respect. When you make it your goal to adore your own body and accept yourself completely, you are learning to have a perfect relationship with anyone else you are with.

Love is the medicine that accelerates healing. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love your enemies, but begin with self-love. You cannot love others until you love yourself. You cannot share what you do not have. If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else either.

You are an artist of the spirit. Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art.

Accept your own divinity. Everything is a manifestation of God. When you know that the power that is Life is inside you, you accept your own divinity, and yet you are humble because you see the same divinity in everyone else.

Love is unconditional. In love, there are no conditions; you love for no reason, with no justification. You are free to be what you are, and you allow others to be what they are.

Love is kind and just. When you are in love, a smile is always on your face. You feel good about yourself and because you are happy, you are kind. Love is also just; when you make a mistake, you pay only once for that mistake.

Love is compassionate and respectful. Love is compassionate and respectful, but doesn't feel sorry for anyone. If someone falls, compassion helps you to say, "Stand up. You can do it." Compassion comes from respect, and is the result of knowing that others are strong enough and intelligent enough to make their own choices.

Perceive with the eyes of love. If you have the eyes of love, you see wherever you go. The trees are made with love. The animals are made with love. Everything is made with love. When you perceive with the eyes of love, you see God everywhere.

Love is all around you. You search for love outside yourself when love is all around you. Love is everywhere, but you need to have the eyes to see.

Listen to the silent voice of your integrity. When the voice of knowledge becomes the voice of integrity, your emotional body becomes the way it was when you were a child. You return to the truth, to your own common sense. You return to love, and you live in happiness again.

We are born with silent knowledge. When we are born, our body knows what it is, and it knows what to do. We can feel silent knowledge every time we breathe.

I enjoy the presence of myself. I find myself smiling and having fun, even when I am just by myself. The more I enjoy myself, the more I enjoy my life, and the more I enjoy the presence of everyone around me.

Epilogue ~ Tree of Dreams

There is magic in this world if you want the world to be magical.  If you want life to be special, it will be.  No one wants to be bored or consumed by ordinary drudgery.  But what happens, all too often, is that when magic is presented to us, we don't believe it because we don't trust ourselves.  We don't realize what can really be accomplished.  We don't realize that if we wish to, we can take other forms.  We can sit in the presence of the great masters, angles, or ancient seers of wisdom and find peace and wisdom, but it takes many small deaths, the giving away of old limitations, to get there.

I want you to know that there is much, much more to your life than what you think is there.  It doesn't matter what you believe in, which God, which Life, which Creator, which Messiah.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is your ability to love.  What matters is your dialogue with the divine and how you manifest that in life for the simple joy of it, for the healing of it, and for the inspiration of beauty that it provides for all those around you.

Getting Closer to Waking Up

(Excerpted from the revised and expanded edition ofPronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia. To hear a podcast version of this text, go here.)

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia. It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly. It's a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

OBJECTIVE OF PRONOIA: To explore the secrets of becoming a wildly disciplined, fiercely tender, ironically sincere, scrupulously curious, aggressively sensitive, blasphemously reverent, lyrically logical, lustfully compassionate Master of Rowdy Bliss.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic. Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy. Joy is fascinating. Love is an act of heroic genius. Pleasure is your birthright. Receptivity is a superpower.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination. Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be. Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

GUIDING QUESTION: "The secret of life," said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, "is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do." What is that task for you?

UNDIGNIFIED MEDITATIONS TO KEEP YOU HONEST: Brag about what you can't do and don't have. Confess profound secrets to people who aren't particularly interested. Pray for the success of your enemies while you're making love. Change your name every day for a thousand days.

MYTHIC ROLE MODELS: Prometheus and Pronoia. In Greek mythology, Pronoia was the consort of Prometheus, the divine rebel who pilfered a glowing coal from his fellow gods so that he could slip the gift of fire to humans.

TOP-SECRET ALLIES: Sacred janitors, benevolent pranksters, apathy debunkers, lyrical logicians, ethical outlaws, aspiring masters of curiosity, homeless millionaires, humble megalomaniacs, hedonistic midwives, lunatic saints, sly optimists, mystical scientists, dissident bodhisattvas, macho feminists, and socialist libertarians who possess inside information about the big bang.

DAILY PRACTICE: Push hard to get better, become smarter, grow your devotion to the truth, fuel your commitment to beauty, refine your emotional intelligence, hone your dreams, negotiate with your shadow, cure your ignorance, shed your pettiness, heighten your drive to look for the best in people, and soften your heart -- even as you always accept yourself for exactly who you are with all of your so-called imperfections.

POSSIBLE REWARDS: You will be able to claim the rewards promised you at the beginning of time -- not just any old beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, freedom, and justice, but rather: exhilarating beauty that incites you to be true to yourself; crazy wisdom that immunizes you against the temptation to believe your ideals are ultimate truths; outrageous goodness that inspires you to experiment with irrepressible empathy; generous freedom that keeps you alert for opportunities to share your wealth; insurrectionary love that endlessly transforms you; and a lust for justice that's leavened with a knack for comedy, keeping you honest as you work humbly to liberate everyone in the world from ignorance and suffering.

USAGE NOTE: We employ the adjectival form "pronoiac" rather than "pronoid." That way, it rhymes with "aphrodisiac" and resonates with "paradisiacal" instead of being conditioned by "paranoid."

DISCLAIMER: Material in this book may be too intense and controversial for some readers. It contains graphic scenes of peace, love, joy, passion, reverence, splendor, and understanding. You will not find any references to harsh, buzzing fluorescent lights in a cheap hotel room where a heroin dealer plots to get revenge against the authorities at his old high school by releasing sarin gas into the teachers' lounge. There are no reports of Nazi skinheads obsessed with re-creating the 14th-century Tartars' war strategy of catapulting plague-ridden corpses into an enemy's citadel.

Completely absent from these pages are any stories about a psychotic CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has intentionally disfigured his face to help him elude the CIA, which wants to arrest him for the treasonous sale of his company's nanotech weapons technology to the Chinese. You should therefore proceed with caution if you are a jaded hipster who is suspicious of feeling healthy and happy. Ask yourself: "Am I ready to stop equating cynicism with insight? Do I dare take the risk that exposing myself to uplifting entertainment might dull my intelligence?" If you doubt your ability to handle relaxing breakthroughs, you should stop reading now.