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Authentic
Happiness
by Rev. Christa Heiden Landon
delivered at First Unitarian Church of Des Moines
January 5, 2003
Before the American Revolution, the purpose of our
social contracts was to secure life, liberty, and
property. American Dream was invented when
Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of
Independence, redirecting us to build a society
which would protect our natural and inalienable
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.
Contemporary consumer culture is focused on meeting
our demand for anything that will serve our quest
for happiness. Pharmacists – legal and
recreational – try to sell it in pills. But merely
stimulating a pleasure center in the brain, is
artificial, and we know it, and it lacks the quality
of meaning that is so central to authentic
happiness. To make matters worse, we become readily
habituated to physical pleasures: MORE sensation
ceases to delight, and eventually the sensory
mechanism becomes numb. In cases of addiction, one
doesn't return to a neutral state after the
excitement passes; rather you need more and more
just to attain the neutral state, and desire becomes
painful craving.
>From a commercial point of view, the customer
loses interest in that 2nd or 3rd helping, Physical
pleasures and needs are self-limiting. To keep you
hooked as a customer, it's essential to engage your
search for happiness in something that is addictive
or otherwise unlimited.
So– like the evangelists – advertisers first
have to convince you of your wretchedness and second
that what they have to sell will make you happy.
Then they have only to keep that carrot just out of
reach so that you'll buy the next product.
Products abound promising cures for problems you
hadn't known you had
Why don't we catch on? Advertising tries to
sell you not products, but meanings; buy this and
you'll be popular, vigorous, and admired. Chew
Mentos and YOU'LL be fresh and full of life!
Pepsi is for those who think young! There's
something about an Aqua Velva man! But since the
products don't deliver results we end up feeling
still more feel drab and tired and inferior to
the airbrushed world presented to us by media.
Naturally, this sets us up to be suckers for the
next promise. We find ourselves running on an
ever faster treadmill of sensation and excitement
– which leaves us a little more tired,
disillusioned, and discouraged. Eventually, while
the hucksters succeed in selling you the sense of
dis-ease, they fail to sell you faith that indeed
their product will cured you of it.
Addictive behavior, broken relationships, and
collective ecological suicide all suggests that we
as a people are no happier for our gadgets, our
wealth, our pastimes or our even –if we dare to
acknowledge it – our educations.
But if – as our Declaration of Independence
implies – human societies ought to be organized to
support the pursuit of happiness, let us, as a
gathered community take a little time to reflect on
how we might do it.
Some say that religion was invented when the first
people asked themselves how they could be happier.
How well has that worked out?
Buddha's first principle was that life is suffering
and the only escape is non-attachment. Especially
since Augustine articulated the doctrine of Original
Sin, Western Christianity has tended to teach that
suffering is at least potentially good for you, and
your deserved lot in life.
In the past, Christianity has tended to try to
encourage virtue with threats of eternal punishment.
After studying the scientific literature for
decades, Dr. Seligman has concluded that "there
is NOT a shred of evidence that strength and virtue
are derived from negative motivation."
Some churches depend on the promise of a future
paradise to draw their members; other religions
focus on the pleasures of feeling superior to the
infidels. The most modern religious trend is selling
people the Gospel of Success & Prosperity.
You'll find that today among Pentacostals, New Agers,
and Fundamentalists alike.
Whatever product hucksters are selling, you'll note
that they'll promise it's fast, it's easy, and it
won't demand much participation, especially
disciplined, hard work or sacrifice, beyond the
purchase price.
People shop for religions now as they might shop for
any other lifestyle enhancement. Increasingly,
people relate to churches as consumers of a product,
rather than as partners in a shared ministry. THAT
social trend may be the greatest challenge to UUism
today.
Much of philosophy has asked what happiness really
is – in fact, Socrates said that the only
worthwhile question in philosophy is "what is
the good life?"
The Pagan Greek Epicureans taught that the purpose
of life was the pursuit of pleasure: but they DIDN'T
mere simple hedonism. They knew -- as Seligman
demonstrates – that physical pleasures are
self-limiting. They believed that the most
pleasant life was had by living beneath one's means,
living a life of peaceful simplicity, engaging with
a few friends in artistic and philosophical
pleasures, and avoiding conflict and contests for
power.
The Pagan Roman Stoics taught that real happiness
was only had by taking pride in doing your duty and
detaching from anything else. They would have
thoroughly agreed with Arthur Schopenhauer who said,
"Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient
unto themselves. For all external sources of
happiness are, by their own nature, highly
uncertain, precarious, ephemeral, and subject to
chance."
To the early Christians, the comfort of Stoic honor
was mere intellectual pride to them. Medieval
Christianity hated the senses and the physical body,
and advocated mortification of the flesh. To
avoid eternal misery in hell, they undertook it
voluntarily in this life. Still, they sought joy in
mystical prayer, either in this life or in the next.
The splendor of church music, art and architecture
was a source of beauty and sometimes even dignity in
lives otherwise nasty, brutal, and short. When Marx
said that religion was the opiate of the people, he
was simply observing that Christian churches were
soothing the suffering with promises of "pie in
the sky when you die." It was his critique
which aroused the consciences of many to find within
Christianity a social gospel.
Religion, philosophy, New Age thought and
pop-psychology are all in the happiness business,
but none seem to have found the magic bullet.
But that doesn't stop the new products from coming.
just like the diet fads that bloom every January,
but fail to produce lasting results for almost
everyone. If it REALLY works, it'll be in the
scientific journals, and then we'll all do it.
And so when researcher Martin Seligman compiled
studies the scientific data on Happiness, I was
naturally intrigued. I'm a real UU: I love mystical
poetry, but I believe in science.
Seligman is a leading experimental psychologist, a
world authority on the scientific study of the
dynamics of optimism, its effects on health,
longevity, and satisfaction. His book, AUTHENTIC
HAPPINESS, is the final product of a lifetime of
work in his field, and yet it amazingly readable,
given that he is summarizing the results of many,
many studies done around the world. These were
scientifically done studies of the positive
emotions: joy, flow, glee, pleasure, contentment,
serenity, hope, and ecstacy.
Seligman's research shows there are, as the Pagan
Greeks and Romans knew, three different kinds of
experiences that people identify as happiness:
• the pleasant life, which focuses on pleasurable
sensations and emotions;
• the good life, which focues on the use of
strengths and virtues
• and the meaningful life, which focuses on
service.
I. Pleasant life resembles the
Epicurean ideal: the cultivation of sense and
emotion
This is more than simple hedonism, which seeks to
create a greater quantity of pleasurable moments and
a lesser number of painful ones. Pleasures are
evanscent, fleeting. After stimulation, there
is a refractory period when the nerve just won't
respond; pleasurable stimulus can't turn the switch
that's already on. Rapidly repeated, the
indulgence loses its power to please. What had been
thrilling becomes now merely another sensation.
In addition, habituation or adaptation occurs, the
brain ignores the familiar experience. In
physical addictions, more and more of a drug is
required just to maintain the neutral state as the
brain uses up neurotransmitters. Thus
cultivation of a pleasant life requires a focus on
quality rather than simple quantity.
We can cultivate physical or "higher"
pleasures by spacing them out; the optimal spacing
prevents habituation. If your desire to engage
in a particular pleasure declines to zero or even
becomes aversion, you're probably dealing with an
addiction, not a pleasure. Surprise enhances
pleasure, perhaps because all novelty stimulates the
brain.
Seligman's research also shows that the last moments
of any experience are the most important as you
reflect on the whole of an event. <It's TRUE, we
SHOULD eat desert last!>
We live the PLEASANT LIFE by 3 disciplines:
1. Savoring the pleasures of the present: giving
thanks, marveling in wonder, luxuriating in the
senses, and basking in praise and congratulations.
We learn to savor by sharing our pleasures with
others, building memories (perhaps aided by
journaling, pictures, or souvenires),
self-congratulation, sharpening perceptions by
focusing on some elements while "blocking out
others."
In Zen, the ideal is absorption or pure wordless
experience in which consciousness of pleasure itself
disappears.
2. Mindfulness is a cultivation of the senses that
resets the brain, so that it takes in everything, as
if it were novel. One method is perception shifting,
using imagination to see the world from
someone else's perspective. One side effect of the
practice of mindfulness is that it slows down the
hyperactive Western mind, thus reducing anxiety.
3. Forgiveness which releases the pain of the past
and Gratitude which gives us the fullness of the
Past. Indeed, he tells us to attend carefully to
endings, for they shape the way we internalize our
experiences. Our experience of the past
is key to our happiness.
To live the PLEASANT LIFE, we must do as the Pagan
Epicureans did: Savor the pleasures of the present,
remember the pleasures of the past with an attitude
of gratitude; and hold hopeful expectations of the
future.
But the pure pursuit of pleasure is not the same as
happiness.
We must also cultivate our virtues and strengths (as
they did through philosophy and the arts) because
the pursuit of easy pleasure alone in the end
prevents us from the flow we know when we live the
Good Life.
II Good Life: Gratification – Pagan Greeks
called it Eudaimonia – is the experience we have
when totally engaged in an activity for a noble
purpose. It is being totally engaged in a task which
is challenging and requires skill, which gives you
immediate feedback, a sense of control and
effortlessness. One's sense of self and time
evaporates. Gratification isn't actually a sensation
or emotion. It comes from an exercise of one's
strengths and virtues, and builds for the future.
The happiness one experiences as a delightful
aftertaste. Some have called it "flow."
Low flow teens hang out and watch TV; Hi flow teens
spend a lot of time on homework, have hobbies, and
engage in sports. Hi flow teens think low flow teens
are having more "fun," but on every other
measure of psychological well being, the Hi flow
teens scored higher.
Habitually choosing easy pleasures over challenging
gratifications generates depression. So does
self-absorbed focus on one's emotions. The cult of
victimhood disempowers us as we seek anodynes to
dull our pain (any addiction will do), instead of
changing ourselves, our immediate communities, and
the world.
Pleasure is a conservative experience; it doesn't
generate change; gratification engages us in the
alchemy that challenges and transforms us and the
world.
"I don't know what your destiny will be, but
one thing I do
know: the only ones among you who will be really
happy are those who have
sought and found how to serve." - Albert
Schweitzer
The Pleasant life is focused on the immediate
present; the gratifications of the Good Life
is are experienced retrospectively, in the present
perfect or the immediate past. But the Meaningful
life derives its satisfactions largely in the
future.
III The Meaningful Life finds a positive answer to
the question, "Can human lives have a noble
purpose?"
Viktor Frankl, in MANS SEARCH FOR MEANING,
discovered in the Nazi concentration camps that
those who had an adequate reason to live, beyond the
possible pleasures of life, were the most resilient,
able to endure and survive. "If you have
a sufficient WHY, you can endure any HOW".
The meaningful life uses your signature strengths to
increase the knowledge, creativity, and goodness in
the world.
Seligman's research has established that by
understanding positive emotions one can learn
increase them and so live in the upper reaches of
your set range of happiness.
The ideal life is rich in positive emotions about
the past and the future, generates abundant
gratification from the use of your signature
strengths, and is extended into the whole of
humankind by using those strengths in service of a
noble purpose.
By cultivating pleasure, your signature strengths,
and virtues in the service of a worthy purpose, you
maximize your Authentic Happiness. Go and be happy.
Conclusion:
Seligman's research demonstrates that
"Authentic happiness comes from identifying and
cultivating your most fundamental strengths and
using them every day in work, love, play, and
parenting."
As our Universalist forebears taught 2 centuries
ago, human beings are MOST authentic when they are
happy, and happiness is a Godly goal. This was a
revolutionary idea at the time, and for all of the
cheap gospel of prosperity being peddled today,
authentic happiness is a worthy doctrine. Let's not
abdicate it.
The Gospel of Success and Prosperity is selling a
product to consumers. The Universalist Gospel
of Authentic Happiness grounded in gratitude,
self-actualization, and service is a call to all of
us to participate in a shared ministry, to be
partners in co-creating what Universalists called
the Kingdom of God here, now, among us and as a gift
to the whole world.
One of the 7 Principles of UUism is
"Acceptance of one another and encouragement to
spiritual growth in our congregations."
Each of us decides for ourselves the kind of
happiness we each want – probably it will be some
combination of the pleasant life, the good life, and
the meaningful life. But we are not going to
enjoy any of those fully without one another's help.
We need each other to remember to cultivate our
pleasures through the religious disciplines of
gratitude and opportunities to share our delights
with others, especially the youngest and oldest
among us.
We all desire to be happy, and, in the end,
authentic happiness is a gift of being part of a
congregation such as this.
Do as thou wilt and blessed be!
~)-l
Rev. Christa Landon, D.Min.
7331 Rosewood
Ln., N.
Maple Grove, MN
55369
Phone:
763-493-3634
FAX:
763-493-3657
"Don't ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive and go and do it.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive."
-----Howard Thurman
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