Happiness Is a Be Thing: A Truth-Seekers Guide to Here & Now Happiness

By Russ Lawrence

The book is based on a four-part premise.
1. Everybody wants to be happy
2. People are much less happy than they could be
3. People could be much happier if they knew what happiness is and how to get there
4. The explanation of what happiness is and how to get there is badly missing

The objective of the book is to provide that missing information, positioning anyone to exit unhappiness and bring more happiness into their life. The book achieves that objective by taking an entirely unique approach.
The key to the book's momentous breakthroughs starts with the title. Happiness is not a transactional "know, do, have thing". Happiness is a BE thing. And as such it has to be defined in "be terms". It can only be found at the "be-level of life." And it has to be pursued by the part of our human nature the deals with "be things".
And yet all of those "be-type things" are almost entirely unknown.
As far as defining happiness in "be terms", the book explains how we humans emotionally and perceptually experience happiness and unhappiness. We finally have a universal definition of what happiness IS. Importantly, that definition allows us to learn to "listen and detect" our momentary degree of happiness or unhappiness.
In regards to finding happiness, it exists at the ever-active yet almost entirely unknown be-level of life. This is the level of life where happiness and unhappiness are constantly originating and expressing. There's much more to that.
Perhaps most powerful of all the happiness-related insights is the realization that our mind and body have little to do with determining happiness and unhappiness. It turns out that our spiritual / higher nature is the part of us that operates at the be-level of life. It's the primary source of here and now happiness.
Consistent with the book's objective, anyone can become aware of and understand these "be things" and in doing so get on a steady life-long path to what we all want – to simply BE happy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543971538

Book preview

© Russ Lawrence

Print ISBN: 978-1-54397-152-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54397-153-8

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

TO: My loving wife and children who mean everything to me

THANK YOU: To truth-seekers everywhere and my friend Ravi Rawat for his wisdom and insistence that I put my ideas into writing

Cover Design by Harrison Lee

Contents

Awareness and Understanding Section

HAPPINESS IS A BE THING

Ten Opening Observations on Happiness

Our Three Enabling Structures

Iteration I: The Machine That Is Us (Human Nature, Round 1)

Iteration II: The Path (Path, Round 1)

Iteration III: Our Total Human Nature (Human Nature, Round 2)

Iteration IV: The Two Levels of Life

Iteration V: Our Spiritual/Higher Nature – Three Tasks (Human Nature, Round 3)

Iteration VI – The Path (Path, Round 2)

Iteration VII: The Universal Definition of Happiness

ACTIONS SECTION

Part 1: The Four Launch Elements of Spiritual Endeavor

Part 2: Spiritual/Higher-Nature Endeavor – Practical Application

Be Section

The Be Level of Happiness

Awareness and

Understanding

Section

HAPPINESS IS A BE THING

The era of unknowing about happiness is over.

We humans have been asking the question What is happiness? for as long as we’ve had the capacity to ask. And why do we ask that question? Not because we want to know the definition itself. We ask that question because we figure that if we could know the answer, then we could find our way to what we really want—to simply be happy. Every person who has ever lived shares that primary motivation. We all want to be happy. Ideally very happy all the time.

Yet, after all these centuries of human civilization and all of our amazing advancements and everyone wanting to know what happiness is and wanting to be happy, the definition has remained elusive. And since we haven’t been able to figure out what happiness is, it shouldn’t be surprising that we struggle to be nearly as happy as we could be. After all, how well can we achieve anything, including happiness, when we don’t know what it is we’re trying to achieve? Well, the facts speak for themselves. We humans do countless billions of negative, hurtful, destructive things to others and even to ourselves every day that work directly against our own happiness and well-being. For instance, why is it that we humans, by far the most evolved of all creatures, are the only ones that routinely engage in huge volumes of self-destructive behaviors? So sure, we all want to be happy but it’s pretty clear that we have a substantial gap between the happiness we want and the happiness we’ve got both individually and collectively.

As far as defining happiness, we’ve come up with lots of attempts. We have rambling philosophical descriptions, vague cryptic definitions, short, trite and clever definitions, descriptions of individual feelings of happiness and events and circumstances that appear to cause us to be happy. We see terms such as well-being, success, positive relationships and self-actualization often used when trying to describe happiness. But none of those attempts to define happiness actually describes what happiness is because they miss the basic realization that . . . Happiness is a be thing. It’s a purely experiential thing. And so, it has to be defined and understood in experiential terms, what we might call be terms.

So wouldn’t it be great if we could do that? Wouldn’t it be great if we could come up with a universal description of what happiness is, that we could understand and aspire to and that would truly help us and guide us towards what we really want—to simply be happy? Well, let’s take a look.

We’re all quite familiar with knowing and doing and having things. We’re also familiar with the day-to-day thoughts, words, actions and interactions that we apply when it comes to knowing, doing and having things. We call all of that the transactional level of life. And if happiness were a transactional know, do or have thing, we would have figured out what it is long ago. But it isn’t. Happiness is a be thing. So we can look for happiness all we want among those familiar transactional know, do and have things but we’re not going to find it. Because it isn’t there. True enduring here and now happiness doesn’t exist at the transactional level of life. And as we’re going to see, when we insist on trying to find it there, as we commonly do, we get a lot of neediness, existential anxiety and degrees of pain and negativity from mild to terrible for our misguided efforts. No kidding, almost all of life’s negativity is the output.

The fact is that happiness is a be thing, and if we want to understand happiness, we first have to understand be things. To date, we humans haven’t developed a common language, terminology, thinking models and constructs that allow us to think about, share ideas about and understand be things. So happiness—both its definition and the actual experience of happiness—remains elusive. But here’s the very good news. All of that is about to change, because we have absolutely cracked the code on be things. And as a result, we’ve been able to crack the code on what happiness is, what unhappiness is and how we arrive at both. By understanding be things, what we’ll call the be-level or consciousness level of life, we’re able to describe happiness and unhappiness in terms of how we humans actually experience happiness and unhappiness.

What we’re saying here is that we’ve figured out what the definition of happiness (and unhappiness) is. Not what we or anyone else thinks it is. But the description of how we humans emotionally and perceptually experience happiness and unhappiness. And in understanding be things and happiness, a number of other powerful and life-enhancing insights reveal themselves. One is that happiness is not just a be thing, it’s also a "higher nature thing. We’ll see that understanding our higher nature and how it promotes here-and-now happiness is as important as understanding be things. Continuing the insights, we’re also going to see exactly how happiness and unhappiness originate within us—where happiness and unhappiness come from. And we’ll see that it’s the exact same for everyone. We’ll also see how happiness and unhappiness express within us and how those inner expressions of happiness and unhappiness become our positive and negative external expressions," our interactions with the world around us – our transactional life.

And most importantly we’re going to fully understand how you, me and anyone can purposefully move/transition/evolve one’s self away from unhappiness and all things negative and towards increasing happiness and all things positive in life. In a nutshell, we’ll see exactly what we can know and do to be happy.

So with that introduction, let’s get rolling on this journey to what we can know and do to be happy, much, if not all the time. We ask that you bring your naturally provided toolkit for advancement of self-awareness and inner understanding. Bring your intuition, your common sense, your instincts and gut feel, your heart of hearts and much fearless self-honesty. And how about including an open, receptive, thoughtful, imaginative and disciplined mind. What we’re asking for is your willingness. We already know you’re able. We’re all able. But are you willing? Are you open to receive? If yes, we promise that you’ll get much life-enhancing benefit—much that is practical and useful—from what you’re about to read.

Let’s get started by gaining some broad perspective about this thing called happiness. We’ll do that with what we might call a happiness orientation.

Following are ten opening observations about happiness and one additional note that offers perspective about humankind’s current and future state of happiness. These observations cover a lot of ground, maybe too much. But they will quickly expand our perspective on the subject, get our thinking elevated and leveled and hopefully promote receptivity. So just zip through the introduction. Don’t dwell on it. This material will come up again in bits and pieces as we cumulatively build ideas and insights throughout the book.

Ten Opening Observations on Happiness

It’s what we all want.

Everybody wants to be happy. If we were to individually ask each of the seven billion or so of us whether we want to be happy or be unhappy, everyone is going to choose be happy. Regardless of country, culture, creed or anything else, humanity across the globe shares that common want, always has and always will. And, as we’ll see, happiness is universal. It’s exactly the same for everyone.

What we actually do.

Though we all want to be happy, we humans choose to do incalculable billions of controlling, deceptive, hurtful and destructive things every day that work directly against our own happiness and well-being. And most inexplicable is that we not only act in ways that are hostile to others but that we so commonly engage in self-destructive behaviors: some small, some devastating. How is it that we humans, the most evolved of all creatures, choose to engage in massive volumes of self-destructive behaviors that even the lowest life forms don’t do? Good question. We’ll answer that as we journey forward. The important point is that there’s a massive gap between the happiness we want and the happiness we’ve got both individually and collectively.

Why the gap?

Here’s part of the reason. Yes, we all want to be happy, but as we said in the opening comments, almost no one knows what happiness is. So how do we achieve anything effectively when we don’t know what it is we’re trying to achieve? Yeah, not so well. So given that we don’t know what happiness is, it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s so much unhappiness in the world and poor decision-making about what is truly best for us. Think about it—at any given moment we all do what we think is in our best interest at that moment. But when we don’t really know if those choices do or don’t align with our true best interest and happiness, we’re inevitably going to make a lot of bad choices. And of course, we do.

Why has happiness (the definition) been so elusive?

Let’s take a look at a couple reasons why this definition of happiness has been so elusive. This is good baseline information for upcoming discussions that will steadily resolve this elusiveness.

We touched on it briefly in the opening comments. Notice that when we humans talk about happiness, we always say that we want to be happy. Yes, exactly. We rightly sense that we don’t do happy or have happy. We can do just about anything and while doing it we can be happy or be unhappy. Happiness is not a do thing. Similarly, we can have anything and in having whatever that might be we could be happy or be unhappy. So happiness is not a have thing. We can do anything or have anything and be happy or unhappy. It may appear that doing things or having things or not doing things or not having things is the cause of happiness or unhappiness. But as will become very clear, happiness and unhappiness are much more a result of who we are than what we do or have.

When we think of our human nature, we all agree that we’re made of mind, body and spirit. But just as we’re all familiar with do things and have things and not familiar with be things, we’re also familiar with mind and body but not so much the spirit, or what we call our higher nature.

And it so happens that these two things that we have such limited awareness of—be things and our higher nature—have everything to do with the degree and frequency of happiness in our life. For now, we’ll leave it at that, but much more coming.

Happiness is universal.

Like we said, we all share this humanity-wide desire to be happy. What if it turns out that happiness is the exact same thing for everyone? What if 100 percent of humanity not only shared the desire to be happy but that individual happiness was the exact same for everyone? Many believe that one of the reasons that happiness has been so elusive is that it’s different for everyone, and therefore, there can’t be a consistent and universal definition. But the truth is that happiness is a universal thing. Happiness and unhappiness express internally in the exact same way for each person and all of humankind. Further, we’re going to see that the path to being happier is also the same for everyone. We all share the same definition of happiness and the same path to it, and that is a very big deal.

Exiting unhappiness is the bigger problem.

We’re going to find that, for most of us, the challenge to having a great degree and frequency of happiness in our life isn’t so much about understanding what happiness is and bringing more happiness into our lives. Happiness is simple. The greater challenge is to move away from false beliefs and things we habitually do that defeat our own happiness. We’re going to see that we have deeply imbedded beliefs and perceptions about ourselves, others and the world around us of which we’re mostly unaware. And those beliefs and perceptions ultimately dictate our deepest feelings and most foundational motivations. These feelings and motivations in turn drive our transactional thoughts, words and interactions with the world. So if we want to change negative behaviors that defeat our own happiness, we have to address those deeply imbedded beliefs and perceptions about ourselves, others and the world around us. Like observation # 5, this too is a very big deal.

Absolute truth exists and matters a lot.

Once we begin to see that here-and-now happiness and the path to it are the same for everyone, a very powerful realization will come clear. That there’s a truth to happiness. What do we mean by that? What we mean is that there is a way of perceiving, believing, thinking, feeling, acting—of living and being—that yields happiness, and that there is a way of perceiving, believing, thinking, feeling, acting—of living and being—that yields unhappiness. That’s a statement with massive implications if true. Think about it. If that were true and we were able to describe those beliefs, perceptions, motivations, feelings, thoughts, actions and outcomes that, in total, yield happiness, then all we would have to do is understand them, align with them, and we would be happy all the time. Yes, exactly.

Resolve age-old conflicts.

There’s a short list of age-old conflicts that have been at the root of disagreement among humans for as long as we’ve been around. A somewhat unanticipated added bonus of our truth-seeking work on happiness is that we found ourselves resolving some of these age-old conflicts in ways that we think the reader will find highly beneficial. These conflicts sit at the foundation of many disagreements and conflicts in the world.

We won’t list those age-old conflicts here. We’ll bump into them in the course of our discussions. But just to get an idea of what we’re talking about, one of those is the answer to the question, "Are people fundamentally good or fundamentally bad?" We’ll resolve that, because it’s quite meaningful to our understanding of happiness, unhappiness and how either occurs and expresses within us.

What this book isn’t.

Another worthwhile note as we get started is to separate this work from what many are likely to assume it to be. Our approach here is quite unique, and we want to be overt about explaining what is so different about it. That’s important because our unique approach has everything to do with our ability to provide the breakthrough ideas that will explain what happiness is and how we can achieve true, enduring happiness.

Unlike other works, we’re not providing inspiring stories, uplifting anecdotes or quotes that are followed by interpretations. There is no advice. And we’re not recommending anything. There is no do this or don’t do that. And surely we’re not telling anyone what they should think. All of those things, regardless of how well intended, carry some amount of force (control). Our intention is to operate as purely as we can from power, not force (power and force will be integrated into discussions as we go). So our entire focus is simply on providing our very best description of what is. And that’s it. We’re not here to prescriptively tell anyone what to do. That’s up to you.

We might say that our objective is to place our best explanation of the truth of our human nature and behaviors on a platter, put it in front of people and then let them choose as they please on the basis of what they believe is best for them. All power, no force.

Only here-and-now happiness.

A final important note to set the table for upcoming discussions is to define the scope of our efforts. We want to be abundantly clear that the entirety of this book and all of our other writings, videos, programs, songs, etc. is about one thing— here-and-now happiness. We’ll expand on this later, but in a nutshell, we offer no discussion whatsoever about anything else. We offer no opinion or ideas about where we humans came from. We offer no opinion or ideas about where we go once we’re no longer physically here. We’re about one thing and one thing only, and that is, here-and-now happiness. As far as where we humans came from, we have no dispute with anyone about any opinions or beliefs on the matter. In our view, our ability to effectively address here-and-now happiness doesn’t require a particular view about humankind’s origination.

As far as what happens to us beyond the here and now, again we have no dispute with anyone’s beliefs or opinions on that. Any of us can have any beliefs about that, and as far as we can tell, those beliefs are not consequential to our specific subject matter of here-and-now happiness. As for religious beliefs, we see the content of this book as both non-denominational and all-denominational. We’re neither promoting a belief system nor are we in any way opposing or denying any belief system. That will become clearer as we go.

Our thinking is that the effort to effectively explain what here-and-now happiness is and how we get there is plenty challenging, and we think that it’s also an extremely worthwhile objective. Any attempts by us to go beyond that would only subtract from our primary objective and dilute what we have to offer.

Our View—Humankind’s Evolution to Higher Nature

As a final introductory item, we would like to provide a brief description of our Assembling the Happiness Puzzle Perspective of what the future holds for humankind. This section is printed in a different type style to signify that it is our opinion and, unlike the rest of the book, not an explanation of what is.

The following highly optimistic view of humanity’s future is grounded in numerous observations of current life around us combined with our understanding of human nature and happiness. We won’t list and discuss those observations because it would take many pages. We’ll leave the expanded version of this perspective for another time.

We humans have become the dominant creatures on Earth, and we hold that position not as a result of a superior physical/biological nature (body) but as the result of a highly developed intellectual/reasoning nature (mind). Mind is a higher nature than body. We might say that we humans exist at a higher level because of our much more developed minds in relation to all other creatures.

But our total human nature is comprised of three big sub-natures. Mind, body and spirit (spiritual/higher nature). And it’s becoming increasingly clear that we humans are approaching a time when we need to take a significant next step in our advancement. Intellect/mind as our dominant nature has allowed us to advance in many positive ways and, in very recent times, to increase prosperity, knowledge and freedom across the globe to a great degree. There’s data that shows drastically increased living standards for huge percentages of the world’s population in the past two hundred or so years. But our intellectual/reasoning nature also has us at a point where we now have communication technologies that have the potential for mass manipulation and indoctrination to a frightening degree. And we all know that we’ve developed many inventions that can be used for mass destruction. So with our mind as our dominant nature, we have done mostly amazing, positive and wonderful things, but we also have created the potential for incredible negativity.

Coupled with this historically unprecedented potential for tremendous positive or negative outcomes, there’s clearly a need for humankind to have something in place that ensures that the massive potential negativity that we’ve created is diminished and the massive positive potential is realized going forward. Is there any doubt about that?

So what is that something?

There are many trends and events occurring that are moving humankind towards that something. What is it? In a nutshell, it is the transition or self-evolution of humankind beyond the mind to the spirit or higher nature as our dominant self. As will become increasingly clear as this book proceeds, it’s our higher nature, not mind or body, that’s the primary source of here-and-now happiness. And of course, we all want here-and-now happiness. So there are powerful motivations already in place for people to want to transition/self-evolve towards their higher nature as self, and in doing that, each individual and all of us will benefit greatly. The question is, how do we do that (or be that)?

Well, that’s exactly what this book provides. To keep it brief, this book is very much intended to accelerate this inevitable humankind-wide transition towards this next more perfect version of ourselves, our higher nature as self. And in doing that, we’ll simultaneously transition away from potential negativity and instead move towards increased peace, prosperity and greater individual and collective happiness. As we’ll soon see, we have all the necessary tools, gifts, raw material and the motivations within us to make that happen, and the time is now.

So with those ten opening observations and that one commentary about humankind’s future, let’s move forward.

Our Three Enabling Structures

As mentioned in our introductory observations, happiness has been elusive for good reasons. We mentioned that it’s a be thing and a higher-nature thing, and there are other reasons. So it makes sense that providing clarity to this historically perplexing subject will require some creative approaches.

The following section is a description of the creative approaches we’ll be taking. Our approach will be to apply three enabling structures that will provide the superstructure upon which we’ll develop ideas and learn what we need to know and do to be happy.

We’ve come to realize that these enabling structures themselves may be as valuable as the actual ideas and insights about happiness. That’s because without them, it’s doubtful that we would have been able maintain enough cohesion among the individual ideas to translate the meaning and package them in a way that’s truly beneficial, useful, and actionable for the reader.

So before we go further, let’s take a look at these three enabling structures or thinking models.

And let’s also note that because of the way these enabling structures bring forth the content of the book, this book is designed to initially be read straight through from cover to cover. The primary takeaways of the book are ultimately a handful of most meaningful and life-enhancing insights. But importantly, getting the full meaning of those relatively few insights comes from a steady accumulation of just the right amount of understanding of many smaller supportive ideas that provide the context. So we don’t want to venture too deeply into specific ideas as we go. That over-analysis can cause a disruption of the steady accumulation of individual ideas that supports the bigger insights.

And let’s be sure to note that intuition is very powerful and will be key to understanding throughout the book. Oversimplified, our intuition is capable of considering many data points and their accumulated meaning simultaneously. It’s the ability to make associations among multiple data points and to draw meaningful conclusions from those associations. If we were to analyze that intuitive process it would require massive amounts of data and explanation. Our mind, when free to seek truth, has incredible intuitive capabilities, and we want to leverage that.

Another comment on intuition before we discuss the three enabling structures. It’s our view that everything in the book is intuitively valid. By that we mean that while our insights in total offer significant breakthroughs, at the same time the individual ideas are quite intuitive. We’re not so much providing new information as we’re helping people get in touch with the part of themselves that already knows what we’re discussing. That’s an important distinction. When we say something is intuitively valid, we’re saying that some part of you already knows. But it may seem new if one isn’t normally accessing the part of themselves (higher nature) that already knows. And that’s OK. As we’ll see, there are lots of reasons why we all struggle to tap into our highest intelligence, so to speak.

One last comment about our approach and these enabling structures. To best manage the accumulation of ideas that allows for the self-awareness lift that is the purpose of this work, there’s a fair amount of purposeful redundancy. Hopefully that redundancy is well-timed and well-placed to support the reader’s increasing understanding. We find that the same idea, when stated at the right time in a different context, can greatly expand understanding. So we’ll do that. That iterative way of learning is what works best for our subject matter.

Structure I: The Three-Part Framework

The first of the three enabling structures we’ll call our Three-Part Framework. It’s a way to take all the subject matter that explains what happiness is, what unhappiness is, and how we arrive at either one, and break all of that down into three pieces, each representing a substantial portion—let’s say a logical one-third— share of all of that subject matter.

The Three-Part Framework came about as a result of applying some practical common-sense thinking to the higher-nature subject of happiness, as follows. Let’s think about the three things we need to know and do to achieve anything—to move from where we are (current state) to where we want to be (desired future state).

One is some articulation or definition of what we’re trying to achieve or where it is we want to arrive—the new place we’re trying to get to, that desired future state.

The second thing is knowing that some kind of path or roadmap exists that can get us from wherever we are to where we want to be. We need to know that getting there is possible.

And third, we have to have the capability to do it; we have to have the ability to navigate that path to get to