Chapter 6 of Search Inside Yourself begins with a categorisation of happiness. The author uses the categories of "Pleasure, Passion & Higher Purpose"
which I understand to be something like experiential happiness, achievement happiness and deferred happiness. The "pleasure" type happiness consists of
all the feel good experiences we chase in life, where the positive experience burns bright but briefly. Because of the highs these experiences bring
they have a certain addictive quality which makes us want to chase after them but they are not sustainable and are easily habituated, providing less and
less positive stimulus each time. Physiologically it makes sense to me why we would chase after these experiences, much like we crave sugary and fatty
foods, but to achieve a balanced mind we need to apply metacognition and ration our diet of these experiences.
The "passion" form of happiness is the sort of happiness we experience when we are achieving things in our life. The sort of feeling you get when you are
applying your skills to a task whether it be physical or mental and you feel like you have the ability to do well at it. The positive reinforcement we get
from performing well and achieving our goal is a feedback loop that encourages us to keep going and lingers beyond the performance of the task itself.
This sort of happiness is wher we should be directing more of our efforts as although the peaks are not as high, we are improving ourselves in the process
and the feelings of positivity can actually grow over time as our abilities improve.
Finally the author talks of "higher purpose", the sort of holy grail of sustainable happiness. This sort of happiness is the kind you might experience when
you have discovered what you feel is your lifes work, since every moment you work towards it you feel like you are being brought closer to this ultimate goal.
I see this as deferred happiness since you might never actually experience the sensation of achieving that goal and perhaps it is better that you do not,
but the pleasure comes from progressing towards what would be an unblievable feeling of accomplishment. I think I agree with the author that this is an
admirable sort of happiness to pursue but perhaps my perspective on why it brings you joy is a little more
grounded than his. I think ultimately everyone wants to have a feeling of purpose and meaning to their life and the feeling of creating something
greater than yourself achieves this and lets you feel like there is something you have created which will outlive you and have a lasting impact.
For me one of my core values is continual self improvement. I value improving my own abilities and understanding so that I can have a positive impact on the world around me. I would say that I stand for spreading selflessness in the world, many of the cultural and environmental problems we suffer could be lessened if people would be even a little more accountable for their own impact and willing to put their own priorities second every now and then.
I found this meditative experience to have a real positive impact. Revisiting an experience of failure quickly brought up the familiar gut churning physical sensation that comes with those moments but by sitting with it and observing it I did find that I was able to disconnect that physical sensation from the emotional experience a little and that it helped me feel a little more distanced from it. I think I will try to continue this exercise occasionally to see if I can take this even further.