Written by Jen Liu

“As we begin to develop greater awareness of our projections, desires, aversions, and gaps in understanding, we simultaneously develop a sense of truly plugging into our lives. … Through this effort, we can arrive at happiness, but without having grasped for it as a cure for sadness, or some fix for the inherent problem of being human.”

The wellness industry is saturated with promises of increased happiness; after all, happiness is marketable. But while meditation frequently gets filed away under that same category, the tradition of mindfulness practice doesn't actually propose more happiness. It proposes more wakefulness.

In mindfulness meditation, we practice being radically unbiased towards our naturally occurring thoughts and emotions — that is, neither grasping onto them if they feel nice nor pushing them away if they feel bad. We do this with the fundamental understanding that awareness is the very means by which we can make anything that arises, pleasant or unpleasant, workable.

As we begin to develop greater awareness of our projections, desires, aversions, and gaps in understanding, we simultaneously develop a sense of truly plugging into our lives. It's as if we begin to wake up, applying consciousness and self-inquiry to the previously more shadowy or automatic aspects of how we move through life.

Through this effort, we can arrive at happiness, but without having grasped for it as a cure for sadness, or some fix for the inherent problem of being human. In the process of living more authentically and wakefully, we simply open ourselves up to the possibility of experiencing joy and contentment less accessible to a mind twisted up with resistance and confusion.

We even begin to notice the happiness that coexists within emotions often viewed as being on the negative end of the spectrum, like sadness or loneliness. The equanimity we cultivate in our practice serves to release us from value judgments such as good and bad, instead guiding us to recognize clarity over confusion. Over time, we unearth a diverse inner landscape wherein we can feel awake, and perhaps even happy, during some of our most challenging times. We come to learn how just about any emotion experienced with clarity has the potential to enrich us and deepen our perspective, while any emotion experienced with confusion — including happiness — has the potential to generate suffering.

The holistic process of leaning back into awareness and touching into joy from that place leads us to a happiness that's realer and much stabler than the short-term solutions that we sometimes understandably seek. It takes a lot of patience, discipline, and letting go, but it is there for all of us to find.