when will you reach complete happiness in your life?

TF, I bow again.

JLN

I find I often agree with what you say. So this makes you very wise, indeed!

Yes, indeed. Thanks.

Truth is Truth JL - wherever it is found.

I was talking more about Epictetus and Epicurus - but I realized the pain comment is VERY Buddhist and Hindu in essence.

I am not sure if there is a Cycle of reoocurrence before transcendence - but I certainly have not ruled it out.

Again - Truth is just truth. I think Christianity (I am referring to Paul, Augustine, Luther and others) has very much gone wrong in self loathing. I do not know how they can believe that we are creations of God and that we have a soul given to us by God - and yet we should hate ourselves. It sounds like the Chewbacca defense from Southpark "It just don't make sense."

Understanding your nature and seeking to transcend your nature makes sense. I merely believe there is a loving God who helps us and wants us to transcend.

TF

TF some would consider "the loving God who wants us to transcend" to be something like Nietzsche's Will to Power or Schopenhauer's Will in Nature. Do you insist on the anthrpomorphic notion of a God (i.e., making God in our image)?

Show me a person that has reached complete (and eternal) happiness in this lifetime.

Some say figures like Buddha did this.

Fine. But I am talking about someone that is alive today. Is there anyone?

It was an odd day when I realized NO ONE really "lives happily ever after."

Can any here name anyone has lived happily ever after?

I am not sure the central goal of this human life experience is to achieve never ending happiness. The conditions don't seem to be right for it. It seems like its almost set up to be a struggle, and most of us have to work hard to steal whatever few broken fleeting moments of happiness we can.

How can I be completely happy as long as there are pain & suffering in tis world, for example?

I mean, lets say I got it all figured out. I have a billion dollars, several mansions in key spots around the world, and a lovely family, etc. Everything is perfect in my little world.

But somewhere, someone is lying in the mud starving. Someone is getting tortured somewhere. A crimminal kidnaps a little girl. A bomb goes off in another capital city.

But I am utterly happy.

hmmm

Yes I'm aware of the argument that there is nothing I can do about the state of the world and I shouldn't let it interfere with my happiness.

But I think there is something to this We Are All One thing.

As long as someone suffers somewhere, can any of the rest of us be 100% happy?

Does human existence work like that? Intuition almost indicates that as long as someone is suffering somewhere, we cannot completely divorce ourselves from that and be totally happy as an ostrich with its head in the sand.

But perhaps I can be convinced otherwise?

Extra Medium, your unwillingness to be completely happy so long as others suffer and your suspicion that all is one suggest to me that you are on the way to complete happiness. But you also have to give up the notion of happiness. As I see it, fulfillment lies in each moment as it is, before, that is, we contort it with our expectations, ideals and prejudices.

Well Extra, "Happily ever after" is a state you could find in a nursery ryme, someone in a drunkin stupor, or the dying... It would be difficult to assign that state to anyone else

Although there is much to feel sad about in this world, it doesn't follow that happiness cannot be experienced at the same. Do not confuse the ability to experience happiness with inability to experience sadness!

" My Son graduates from college this week-The World Trade Center and the Pentagon is attacked, along with commercial flights, thousands Die".

9/11 was a tragic and a sad time for everyone, my son's college could pospone the ceremonies, but I still can be happy for my son's graduation.

Success is a veil of hypocrisy,
a game that we buy into, and become smaller to play.

Happiness is the greatness in all things,
the appreciation of elements, just as they are.

How can we wake up to the sublime?
Taste the porridge. Feel the burning iron. Sing to
our love. And sit with each person, every person
that we meet.

Simply be, and be aware, of each thing
just as they are. For what they are.

Happiness ... is when we exist.

Appreciate both positive and negative, equally
without judgement, without imposing our slanted selves.
Listen to all our facts and emotions, as messengers,
and make up our own mind ... to seek more
of what they gift and send.

Awareness builds gratitude and life, gradual truth
and the realization that regardless of how we struggle
with purpose, agenda and self-grandiosity within each thing,
we have been happy all along.

Glad to smell, touch, taste, hear, see, and understand
each thing.
To simply live.



Either that or we should drink more beer. Mmmm... did you
know that Milwaukee is the true center of all happiness?
Not that we drink, but simply that ... it exists.
Duff Beer (TM): Is there anything it can't do?

Nice post, CodeBorg!

Taking heroin might give you absolute happiness.

temporary. so very temporary.

I thought we were discussing more of an eternal happiness.

I have no doubt that heroin would give a short term feeling of ultimate serenity.

But in the long term, it kills you. Look at the long list of rich rock stars it has killed and nearly killed (Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious, it goes on & on & on...)

Most heroin addicts (whether rich or poor) end up dead, living in hell in a little room feeding their habit, or go through hell to kick the habit and work to get shades of their life back.

I haven't witnessed heroin bring long term happiness to anyone. Long term, it seems to invariably bring: Hell.

Heroin would give the person a that Story-book feeling of happiness and if they OD, then the feeling WOULD last for the rest of their life. You could say they have experienced Eternal Happiness. ]-)

As I see it, the pursuit of "happiness" is fundamentally the attitude of the dope addict. Trying to "make" good feelings or "control" one's experience by some means, drugs, fame, money, power, etc. These are all potential addictions.
Instead, we should follow Codeborg's advice and realize that "Happiness is the greatness in all things, the appreciation of elements, JUST as they are.

You know it's really hard to be happy. My parents divorced, I stopped skating,my mom's addicted to cocaine and I haven't seen her in a long while, didn't get to see her at Christmas,i'm doing horrible in school it really tough on me I'm quite slow in the noggin but you know everyone has rough times. I told a short version of some of my problems to show that you know it could always be worse. There are so many people out there that have it worse than me, all you can do is think optimistically and look at the damn silver lining! Complete happiness? I don't believe in complete happiness, i believe u can be completely happy when you fall in love or you get that job you've always wanted or when you get the last cookie, sure your completely happy then! but if life had no problems and everyone was happy, we'd all be annoyed and look for problems because we'd be so bored.

True jess, so true!

Yes, Jess. Challenges do help us avoid boredom.
But your statement--" i believe u can be completely happy when you fall in love or you get that job you've always wanted or when you get the last cookie, sure your completely happy then"--taken one way dangerously parallels the psychology of dope addiction (not that it necessarily describes you, but it may describe your poor mother). Love, jobs and cookies as paths to happiness are similar to drugs as paths to the Hell of "complete happiness".

How do you expect to be happy forever? You'll die soon...

oh man. I did not say I expect to be happy forever. I was simply responding to the orginal question, which mentions "complete happiness in your lifetime." In this context, "complete" implies "eternal."



hmmm...what do you mean by "absolute" happiness? In my mind, absolute happiness means it would not be temporary. If it goes away after awhile (ie when you come down from the heroin high); then it is not absolute.

Thus, if you are saying that heroin might give you a feeling of drug induced temporary pseudo happiness, I might agree with that.

But if you are saying heroin would give you true absolute eternal happiness, I disagree. In fact it would take you in the opposite direction.

Not to be a prude. If one wants to take heroin, so be it. Its just that with every heroin-taker I've come in contact with; the last thing I would call them is: happy.

I think you'll agree, extramedium, that any talk of "complete" happiness refers to a context of timelessness (Eternity), not foreverness.