actualizing

So much attention on happiness these past couple days, but mostly from an intellectual distance. Happiness has never been much of a priority for me. I've always been more interested in something more like fulfillment or actualization. But are those just red herrings? Projections of beliefs of unworthiness, insufficientness, incompleteness?

In some ways, likely yes. But there's also the matter of not being true to myself much of the time, whether out of conditioned fear, desire, aversion, addiction, or any number of things that cause me to do or say something purely to influence events in a way that I'm perceiving in that moment as more favorable. The question is, is that a problem? Is that something to be concerned about?

Well, the effects appear to compound into an increasingly false and dissonant life. Each is essentially a moment of dishonesty, and each seems to stress the system. Maintaining a false external situation therefore requires tremendous and continuous energy. So by withholding or distorting the truth, desired things can be had/held and feared things can be kept at bay but it may not be worth the energetic costs in the end.

So, what does it mean to actualize? I'd argue that it's first to return to a state of overall inner truth and harmoniousness and then to express/manifest that externally. Overtime whatever emerges from this will be refined and enhanced by outside forces, leading to a steady fulfillment of inner potentials. I don't think it's possible to predict in advance what this will look like or be. It simply has to unfold organically.

I'd also link truth to happiness. When I'm truly acting from a place of willingness and acceptance, happiness tends to show up as a biproduct. It seems to come more from being at ease or at one with what's unfolding, from a lack of inner tension/resistance. Dissonant thoughts and feelings settle and quiet down, allowing a feeling of happiness to emerge.

Ultimately though, fulfillment, actualization and happiness are all elusive and transient concepts. Any attempt to attain or hold onto any of them is futile and more likely to keep them away. So, what's left to do?

As far as I can tell in this moment, it's simply to accept the transience of everything and do what I genuinely want and feel called to as often as possible. And, when that really isn't available, to completely accept and enjoy whatever it is that I have to do instead. This gives happiness an opening and I'm able to use it as a means to fulfillment and actualization through encountering it genuinely, without inner resistance or stress.

It may not produce a tangible result but that's just how life is much of the time, unless the thing in question is a creation of some sort. Most of the time, the fruits are invisible and transient. Blossoming in a single moment and then dissolving.