The majority of people are eagerly awaiting when we can get back to normal. We are exhausted living in the Covid restrictions far too long. We can sense the fatigue of people’s social distancing, wearing masks, and sanitizing.
 
Do we want to go back to doing the same things as before? Don’t we see the need to define a new version of ourselves?
 
Have we ever thought if the universe is sending us a message to slow down? Are the external restrictions really to help our senses relax and calm down? Maybe we are walking into the path of destruction by living the so-called ‘normal’ routine. Have we at least given the prospect to contemplate on our present condition? Or Do we choose to be robotic and be persistent about getting back to normal?
 
Change is hard, but we also know that change is constant and an excellent opportunity to bring our creativity to a new way of thinking. As much as we are engaged in finding a solution to the deadly widespread virus, which is a significant task, is it not equally important to see the bigger picture of what this means to us as a human race and nature?
 
Why are we so threatened every time we face a new change in life and in nature?
Why is it so difficult for us to adapt to life changes?
 
In the ever-changing creative nature, we know that change is necessary for renewal and rejuvenation, both externally to the body and environment as well as to our subtle energies. We are living at a time when nature decided to bring a more profound change to the Macrocosmic universe as well as to the Microcosmic individual. Our minds’ are isolated and tend to block our creativity by bringing repetition to our patterns. Our mind feels uncomfortable with change and resists because change takes us one step closer to evolution.
 
Every disease has a vibration. We must build immunity and raise our consciousness to bring external protection to the body at the cellular level and the mind and subtle energies at the quantum level. Then we can change the vibration from disease to health. We must use good tools such as meditation, breath, and sound (chanting) to awaken our higher presence.
 
How can we calibrate our consciousness and fine-tune our body to receive signals of healthy vibrations? Can we see that these changes are not happening only at the physical but also at the subtle levels?
 
Join us at our monthly meditation on Sunday, April 26th at 11 AM to explore, discuss, and share, building inner awareness and attention through observation.
 
At the Happyness center, our main aim is to help you develop mindfulness and deeper awareness of your inner self. We learn to see ourselves in silent observation and enquiry rather than act from the noisy activity outside.
 
We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations have many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others.
 
Let’s raise our consciousness to understand what makes meaning to our lives.

​I was driving in my car and looking at the snow-covered marvellous mountains. As I was seeing,
there was a feeling and sensation of joy that I did not want to change anything about it.
Immediately a thought entered my mind that said, “I have to bring milk from the grocery store.” I was
disturbed that in the middle of experiencing the beautiful nature, the thought of grocery came
and distracted my experience. I felt upset and resisting the thought of grocery. I saw myself
putting effort to control the thought, so I could go back to enjoying the mountains without distracting thought.

How many of us find resisting something and make an effort to control our thoughts?

Every time when we have a thought that we dislike or when we wish to experience something,
we tend to make an effort to control our thoughts. We think that by controlling them we can achieve
what we want. But we don’t realize that by controlling our thoughts, we are creating an internal
division between “what is” in the moment and what we are trying to control because of what we think "should be”. This control creates conflict within us.

When I was watching the mountains there was no effort to change it. But division occured
in the thought of grocery and in my attempting to resist and control the thought in order to change it.

Why do we make any internal effort to change something all the time?

When we make an effort to change something inside, we create a division and conflict. But
when there is no desire to control or change anything about ourselves, we are connected to our
true self. As human beings, we subconsciously attempting to gain internal control all the time, because we lack the awareness that we are dividing ourselves against each other and are deceived that we have to
control and change our thoughts. We don’t realize that in this effort and control we are
creating a division between the thinker and the thought. We always seek the state of no division but by forcing the effort, we actively work against ourselves, going against our seeking.

When we can see that the thinker and thought are one, then we stop the effort to change it.
We will flow from one thought to another without any fragmentation of our consciousness.
Remembering your true Self is acknowledging the division within and recognising the futility of
effort. Then we stay with “what is” and flow without any internal effort.

At the Happyness center our main aim is to help you develop mindfulness and deeper inner awareness of the ego-self. Together, we learn how to passively observe rather than make an effort to control our thoughts.

We invite you to join our Happyness Center community online for our March Monthly Meditation,
Sunday March 28th , as we explore to remember our true self that is lost in the chaos of division.

We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations has many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others.

During the COVID pandemic, many of us might have had the time to review our lives, our relationships, and our priorities in life.
 
But in this time of reflection, have we asked ourselves as to what is our fundamental lasting interest in life?
 
If we answered truthfully, we would say, it is our own self. Some of us would say that it is wrong to be interested in ourselves, but the fact of the matter is that we are primarily interested in ourselves, even when we say it is more satisfactory to help another person.
 
We crave satisfaction in all sorts of ways, subtle and obvious; whether in family, or romantic relationships, helping others in society, a job title or position, or a material possession. We desire more than what we have.
 
Why? Well, we probably know the answer to that already, but most often, we are not willing to be truthful with ourselves or others about it.
 
We crave this satisfaction because we are afraid of being a nobody in our society. We are afraid of going unseen. Of not being desired, respected, or wanted.
 
Our mind might argue – what is wrong with self-satisfaction? What is wrong with wanting these things?
 
This craving for having a position in the society or to be recognized as somebody is a wish to dominate and domination is a form of aggression. Our cravings are based in a fear, and this psychological fear is one of the greatest problems in our lives. Inwardly we are whirlpools of misery and mischief and therefore look outward for gratification.
 
But when we are capable of loving and be kind to ourselves – accepting ourselves as we are, then we will no longer crave satisfaction and recognition. We can realize that satisfaction and happiness does not come from the recognition of others. It does not come from having that which may get us noticed. Instead, we realize that when we can truly love ourselves, we need nothing else.
 
To live a truly happy live, it is it essential for us to seek love and kindness from within ourselves. To make the transition from outward satisfaction that is fickle and ever-changing, to inner satisfaction that is constant and true.
 
And when we can do this, then we can truly give love and kindness to others, because we can give it freely without expectation of return, because we realize we need nothing outside of ourselves. This understanding radically shifts the way that we feel and our ability to give.
 
But how do we learn to look within and what does it look like to give to others unencumbered by our own self-serving cravings? As we enter into the new year, let’s explore this line of thought and discover the importance of loving kindness.
 
At the Happyness center our main aim is to help you develop mindfulness and deeper awareness of your inner self. We learn to enquiry and challenge ourselves to grow as human beings for a better quality of life.
 
We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations has many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others.
 
Due to pandemic, we will be bringing our monthly meditation to you from the Happyness Center via Zoom. We invite you to join our Happyness Center Community for our Monthly Meditation as we explore and discuss about building loving and kindness within.

In the midst of the pandemic, most of us feel uncertain and insecure about the future. We are not alone in our worry about what is going to happen with our lives - what things will look like - next week, next month, next year. As a collective, we wonder if we are ever going to experience a normal life again.

But what is “normal”? What does it mean to live a “normal life”?

The normal we typically mean when we use the word invokes feelings of safety and security - in our relationships, in our professional lives and in our personal lives. Our version of normal is too feel security to love and be loved.

Have we ever stopped and asked ourselves whether maybe what we think as normal, might not be the real normal? And if we did, how do we know the truth? Let us ask ourselves – in this normal that we know now, have we ever found permanent security in any of our relationships? Have we found love without brokenness? Perfect love? No. Why?

Let’s ask another question. Can we ever love purely, truly love, when each one of us are seeking our own security? When we are seeking love to experience it for ourselves not seeking to give love?

When we say we love, maybe it is the projection of our own imagination covered in a form of respect. We say, I love my country, I love this book, I love that mountain, I love pleasure, I love my partner, and so on. To some of us, Love is being possessive of another person, or having a form of attachment. From all the possession, attachment, and projection arises jealousy, and jealousy is of the past. But we conveniently label as love.

To us today, Love is just an idea or a desire that we twist in any way we want. What we call love is where there is pleasure, competition, jealousy, desire to possess, and control.   Love is not the product of thought, which belongs to the past. Real love – pure love - is when we can find complete freedom in all our relationships. It is when we seek to give love rather than to find it for ourselves and to fill our needs. Experiencing true love does not require us receiving it from someone else. True love is within ourselves and that is the real normal that we must learn to live.

In this crisis of pandemic, we have an opportunity to learn, to become active and present. We are being reminded of the uncertainties and insecurities that are a constant within our world. We are being given a chance to re-frame what we understand as normal and to find calm in the chaos by looking within for safety, security and love. We are being given an incredible chance to become more whole, happier and more peaceful.  As we enter into the new year, let’s explore this line of thought and discover something new about ourselves. To go into the question of what love is we must first free it from all ideals we’ve created.

At the Happyness center our main aim is to help you develop mindfulness and deeper awareness of your inner self. We learn to enquiry and challenge ourselves to grow as human beings for a better quality of life. We invite you to join us as we seek to first free ourselves from the ideals and ideas of love we have created, and to re-learn what love is and what our lives can look like when we experience love in its true form.

Due to COVID and the most recent restrictions, we will be having our meditation online. Come join us at the Happyness Center for our Monthly Meditation as we explore and discuss about building love and inner awareness. We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations has many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others.

Register for the mediation here.

We all hold beliefs. Some are religious in nature, others sectarian and national, and some political. Others are complex beliefs about parenting, social ideals or resource consumption. Some things that we believe were instilled in us from a young age by our parents or caregivers, schoolteachers and other outside sources. Others we have chosen for ourselves with careful thought and consideration. Some beliefs we are passionate about, others we have given little thought to, yet all beliefs we hold we call our own. And in the face of challenge we are most likely to hold firmly to them with defense and zeal, and to try to convert the naysayers and those who disagree. We spend a great deal of our lives, often unconsciously, trying to convert those around us to our own set of beliefs.
 
While beliefs bring people together, they also separate and create intolerance. One only must turn on the news, or open social media to see countless examples of both.
 
So, what does this mean for us and our personal beliefs? First, we must find out if we can study ourselves in relationship to a belief. We must see if we can open ourselves enough to look at our beliefs objectively, with non-judgemental questioning. And we must get to the root of our beliefs – the very “why” we have them in the first place.
 
Why do we accept beliefs?
We accept beliefs in our lives out of fear – fear of emptiness, loneliness, stagnation, not succeeding, not achieving, not becoming something or someone. To escape from this fear, we create beliefs; they give us an anchor in this complex universe in which we live. They provide a sense of purpose and of reasoning for our lives and our place within it. This is why we accept beliefs so eagerly and greedily in our lives – we are constantly seeking comfort and security, and beliefs, often unconsciously, provide that for us.
 
But beliefs in fact, hinder our understanding – of self, of others and of the world. Belief is like a veil or layer through which we are looking at ourselves and the world. Beliefs feel like a safety net for us through which to determine our place and purpose in our lives, and yet this safety net does more constricting than freeing.
 
So, what is the alternative? If we had no belief, what would happen to us?
 
Is it possible to live without beliefs? To not change beliefs and not substitute one for another but to live entirely free from held opinions?

It is challenging, but yes this is possible and the freedom it provides is life-altering.
If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is—and then, surely, there is the beginning of the understanding of oneself, of others and the universe. Then we have the capacity to be without conditioning and reaction to the past. We become able to meet life afresh each minute and to live in true freedom and joy.
 
At the Happyness center our main aim is to help you develop mindfulness and deeper awareness of your inner self. It is within silent observation that we can learn to see ourselves.
 
We invite you to join us for our Monthly Meditation on Saturday November 28th, as we explore how our thoughts and beliefs affect our lives and discuss how we can building the inner awareness and attention we need to rid ourselves of beliefs and find peace.
 
We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations has many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others. 

One of our main goals at the Happyness Center is to help you develop inner awareness and a deeper observation of the ego self. It is only when we spend the time looking within, with curiosity and openness that we can truly find peace. This practice can be very challenging as many have no prior experience with it; it is not a common teaching in our culture. This is why we exist – we want to aid you in this journey – one of the most (if not the most) profound and important journey’s you can take in your life. So how do we do this?
 
We can observe the inner chatter of our ego-mind or ego-self and note the contents and nature of how it always ends up creating mischief and chaos in our lives. The ego-self generates insecurity with us – whether it’s with our colleagues at work, within our marriages or partnerships, in our own selves and our relationship to others via social media -  and it inevitable grows uncertainties in our relationships.
 
The practice of meditation provides us with the opportunity to watch this confusion happening inside our mind, and the chance to change how we respond to it, so that we don’t bring it outside of our self and manifest it in our relationships. Meditation is a significant tool to observe what is occurring daily in our thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Whether we are aware of it or not, our mind is always busy looking for outward solutions and is quick to run away from what is not pleasant inside. Its primary objective is to and ignore the uncomfortable and change it immediately through avoidance. But when we become capable of being mindful and still inside of the inner disturbance without trying to escape, we gain more insights and understanding about the contents and nature of our ego-self. This allows our mind to stay silent and observing rather than developing more noise and chaos. In this stillness we can find freedom from judgement, change and inner peace. In the calm we develop the ability to be aware at all times and in all surroundings, especially in our relationships, which has a positively life-altering effect on our lives.
 
Observation, awareness, and attention are the three important pillars of mindful practice. Research has shown that observation and awareness can help calm the mind chatter at a quantum level. Then right action will happen without the control of the ego-self.
 
We invite you to come and learn more about the deceptive ego-self and how to engage in the practice of observation. Join our team and others from our Happyness Community at our Monthly Meditation, Sunday October 24th, at Kamloops United Church, from 10.30 am – 12:30pm. Let’s explore together and discuss about building inner awareness and attention through observation.
 
We all lead busy lives, and meditation can help us relax and renew. We will share, learn, and practice together. Group meditations has many advantages that can reinforce our desires of daily practice that inspires us and others.

This September, we are focusing our monthly meditation on the practice of body and breath sensing.

For those who are unfamiliar with it (and no judgement if you are), the practice of body and breath sensing in meditation begins with a mental scanning of your body and paying attention to each part of the physical self in a gradual sequence from feet to head. By mentally scanning with focused concentration, you are able to become aware to every single part of your body - to, for many, suddenly become aware of the sensations that have been there all along. Often during this practice, many will come to be aware of general discomforts, aches, pains, and tension they are holding that they did not realize.
 
The primary objective of this meditation is to help each individual to become are of and connect to their unique physical sensations so one can observe what feelings and emotions are opening up. This will allow us to examine and explore to see what is troubling in our inner world, which then gives us the opportunity to find healing, freedom from pain and peace.

There are many scientific studies that shows how awareness allows us to see things and aspects of ourselves that are hidden, often in plain sight - things that we have missed simply because we have not taken the focused time to look into in our consciousness. In today’s world cultivating this practice of inner awareness is not only practical but has become a necessity even for our survival.

Following the body scan, we will move in to breath sensing - a practice which helps to connect the thoughts and feelings of our mind and regulate our energies. Breath awareness is one of the most powerful healing resources we have with us. Deep, slow, and rhythmic breathing can help reduce anxiety, fear, and depression. Research studies show that deep breathing also has the capacity to activate our immune system, hormones like serotonin and oxytocin, and our parasympathetic nervous systems - all of which physically helps us to find calm and peace.

Simple body and breath sensations have a powerful impact to release your stress levels and bring your body and mind into a state of relaxation. It can also help increase your inner awareness, enabling you to shift your focus, find peace and improve the quality of your life.

We invite you to join us at our Monthly Meditation on Saturday, September 26th as we explore and discuss how we can achieve mindfulness through body and breath sensing. Every tool shared by our dedicated practitioners will inspire you to look inside rather than seek solutions outside, as that is where you find real solutions to life problems. Though a regular practice of meditation and inner work, you can find true healing and peace, and our main aim is to walk with you in this journey to total wellness.

How can we understand the Divine? By accepting that we cannot know the unknown.
 
We know and understand the mind (our individual mind and the collective) through our senses and experiences. With this same mind, we try to understand the unknown – the Divine. But how can we comprehend the unknown with the known? We cannot. We can only know what we have experienced; what we have been taught and learned.
 
So where does this leave us?
 
If we continue to believe, and allow our mind to think that we can capture the unknown Divine within our limited capacity, we will live a life restricted and inhibited by noise as our mind attempts to talk, reject, choose and find some hidden way to understanding.
 
True understanding of the Divine comes in acceptance that we cannot know it. A mind that realizes its limitations in knowing becomes quiet. It is no longer in despair, seeking anything and everything to find it’s way to understanding. In its acceptance, it can find the space and silence to simply become aware. And it is only in this state in which all thought has ceased that it is possible for us to connect to the Divine Self and allow the energy to come into being.
 
And when we are able to come into this energy and understanding, we are able to understand that the Divine and the Known are not opposites; that we do not have to live in one without the other.  We can move away from the frantic and noisy search ( that we engage often only in times of despair) for a supreme being that will give us guidance, support and understanding, and instead move towards the understanding that the Divine is within us and that it takes silence and awareness to understand it. And what we are able to find in this new understanding, in this new quiet, is a release of our self from our limitations and encumbrances and a new and profound joy and peace in our selves.
 
All learning of our self and the Divine takes quiet and practice. We invite you to join us on Sunday, August 30th for our Monthly Meditation during which we will learn and discuss how to move from our drive to understand to the Divine to a quiet stillness and awareness in which we can allow the Divine energy to come into being in our lives.

Have you ever stopped to contemplate pleasure? If you have, have you noticed that our minds crave it? Even demand it?
 
Pleasure is, by definition, a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment. In and of itself, it is a wonderful thing – a beautiful emotion and feeling that we can experience in this human life.
 
But what happens to this feeling when our mind demands it? When it becomes a necessity for us to believe or feel that we are living a good life?
 
Then the other side of pleasure shows. The darker side.
 
Let us explain.
 
Pleasure comes into being through four stages: perception, sensation, contact and desire. In the first stage: perception, our senses first take notice of an object - we first experience a feeling. This is quickly followed by the second stage during which we experience a sensation from looking at the object. Once we make physical contact with the object, the third stage takes place and we are often suddenly overcome by a desire to own it. Then the final stage occurs as thought steps in and clings to the desire (the want) and turns it into the experience of pleasure. Thought repeats the experience (because it feels good in the moment) and then it becomes mechanical, habitual, and addictive.
 
What does this look like in real life? Let’s use shopping as an example: have you ever noticed that once you go to one shop to look for something, you have a desire to continue shopping? And the more you shop and spend, the more you want to continue to do so? On the other hand, if you refrain from shopping for a period and the habit has time to wane, you have less of a desire to spend money on something new and you become more contended with you already have.

The pleasure we experience from physical things is relatively easy to recognize. But what about pleasure in other forms? In the desire and subsequent pleasure from obtaining power, position, status, recognition and success (as the world defines it). Pleasure is not only derived from the physical and the material – our mind craves it in all its forms and most often, we do everything we can to satiate our minds addiction to it.
 
And this is where the dark side of pleasure comes in. Our mind does everything it can to achieve the feeling of pleasure.
 
There is nothing wrong with having pleasure. The problem comes when we become obsessed with the pleasure and want it to repeat again and again. We become attached to that pleasure. And when we let our smaller self – our ego self, control us – determine what it is we need (i.e. to satisfy this feeling of want and the pleasure derived from it), we will do anything we can to fulfill that need. We begin to put pleasure before everything else in our life – our relationships, love, kindness, generosity, satisfaction with what is and what we have.
 
That is when the darker side of pleasure begins. We breed and experience hatred, resentment, brutality and war (within ourselves, our relationships, in our communities etc.). And because we are naturally afraid of these consequences – the darker side of pleasure – we look for subtle ways to escape from them, by seeking out pleasure even more – more shopping, more success, more societal achievement - and the cycle perpetuates itself. From childhood until death, we pursue pleasure – whether in secret or more obviously. We allow pleasure to guide and shape our entire lives.
 
You may ask: why shouldn’t our lives be guided by pleasure when it brings feelings of enjoyment or satisfaction? The answer? For the very simple reason that striving for pleasure inevitably brings pain, frustration, sorrow, and fear. And out of fear comes violence, destruction, and great sadness. If we want to be free from sorrow, and live a truly joyful life, we must understand the whole structure of pleasure. Understanding the pleasure, is not to deny it. But if we are seeking pleasure in life, then pleasure will inevitably find its shadow self; they cannot be separated even if we try to avoid pain.