How To Be Both Happy And Well-Informed

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

The trick to being both happy and well-informed is making sure to expand your knowledge of your inner world as well as the outer world, and learning to get comfortable with the apparent contradictions this illuminates.

It is true that this civilization is rife with tyranny and abuse, and is constantly terrorizing the world with acts of mass military butchery. It is also true that beneath all the violence and wars there is an all-pervading peace which you can learn to experience in every moment. These facts may appear contradictory, but they do not negate each other.

It is true that the world is ruled by murderous tyrants who must be stopped, and ideally brought to justice. It is also true that all beings are ultimately innocent, with even our most destructive actions driven by unconscious impulses within ourselves whose underlying causes stretch back to the dawn of life on this planet. It is also true that from a certain perspective, cause and effect are an illusion, time doesn’t exist, and nothing has ever happened. All of these statements are true with regard to the sense in which they are true, and none of them cancel out the others.

It is true that we live in a mind-controlled dystopia where anything authentic gets marginalized and the masses are psychologically manipulated into thinking, speaking and behaving in ways which benefit the powerful. It is also true that there is a deep wisdom within us all that the propagandists have never touched, and will never be able to.

It is true that there are a great many ugly things happening in our world. It is also true that every single thing in every single moment is crackling with electrifying beauty, and that you can learn to see this for yourself.

It is true that we appear to be headed for planetary disaster in the not-too-distant future on multiple fronts. It is also true that humanity has dormant potentialities sleeping within itself which could awaken at any time and turn this ship around. It is also true that every instant contains heaven and eternity whether we steer clear of armageddon this time or not.

It is true that terrible things happen every day which will break your heart if you are an emotionally conscious person. It is also true that an unshakable happiness can coexist with that heartbreak, and with every other experience in life.

If you dedicate yourself to expanding your awareness both inwardly and outwardly, all of these paradoxical truths will become known to you. And you will learn to simply see the paradoxes as paradoxes, without any need to push or pull on them to square away their apparent contradictions.

I write about terrible things every day, which often leads people to assume I’m some kind of hardened, bitter individual with dark eyes and a callused heart, and I’ve had people tell me that they were very surprised to find something entirely different when they met me in person.

It is true that I spend much of my life staring into the heart of the murder machine and writing about butchered children and powerful psychopaths, but it is also true that I am one of the happiest people I know, and I find life rather blissful. I am frequently hurt and heartbroken by the awful things I see happening in places like Gaza, but the hurt and the heartbreak occurs in the context of something much larger which is always at peace.

I say this not to boast or make myself look special, but to show that it is possible. It is very possible to live a truth-driven life which does not shy away from the harsh realities of the world without being consumed by the darkness. All you have to do is make sure you’re expanding your knowledge in both directions, not just your knowledge of the outer world.

You do this by getting very curious about your own inner processes and your unquestioned assumptions about what this life is and how it’s occurring. If you rigorously interrogate your most basic beliefs about your self, your thoughts, consciousness, the senses, and the outer world, you will find that life isn’t happening in anything remotely like the way you’ve always assumed it is, and you will experience a shift into your way of perceiving things that is much saner and simpler than the egocentric framework we tend to think of as normal.

This might sound daunting, but really it’s no different from expanding your awareness of how the world works and getting rid of the power-serving worldviews that were indoctrinated into you when you were young — which, if you are reading this, you have probably already done to some extent. You’re just taking that same intense investigative energy you’ve applied to learning the truth about the outer world, and applying it to the inner world as well.

Then you’re really seeing life clearly. You’re getting a much more three-dimensional picture of the way this human adventure is actually playing out. And you get to be happy and peaceful while you engage in the work of steering that adventure in a healthy direction.

As an added bonus, you will find that understanding your inner world gives you a much better understanding of what’s going on in the outer world as well. All the destruction and abuse we’re seeing out there have their roots in what happened inside the people whose actions gave rise to it, and if you have some humility you can find things within yourself which could give rise to those same dynamics. The disorder of the outer world is just the inner world made manifest, and deepening our understanding of one can help deepen our understanding of both.

Once we see that we are not truly separate and separable from the world’s problems, we can also see the ways in which we can be part of the solution as well. We have maps toward a healthy world laid out within ourselves.

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