It’s the middle of August and Jeanine and I  just returned from Santa Barbara where we led the Secrets of Happiness Retreat.  It was a brand new retreat for Lucid Living, the fifth in the series, attended by many of the “Elders” in our community.   This is not an exclusive group by any means, but merely designated by the number of years we have been sharing Lucid Living workshops and retreats together.  Many in this group have been working with Jeanine and me for more than ten years, as students and private coaching clients.  There is an intimacy borne of repeated, courageous vulnerability shared in service of a burning hunger to grow.  It is stunning to witness.

One of our students remarked, “This group is amazing.  You tell us to spend thirty minutes imagining our worst fears and feeling them with intensity, and we actually go off and do it!”  We all had a good laugh at our willingness to plumb the depths of emotion in search of a higher truth.

Right about now, this happiness retreat may not be sounding so happy.  You may wonder, “What does conjuring and feeling my worst fears have to do with being happy?”  To which I say, “Plenty!”

There is a great misunderstanding perpetuated by some purveyors of personal growth.  It begins with the idea that by focusing only on high frequency emotions, you will attract more of what you want into your life.  It is based in the law of attraction, a sound, metaphysical principle that speaks to the fact that what you give attention tends to be what you manifest. Where the idea becomes simplistic and breaks down is in the belief that this means it is best to avoid “negative” or what we call “constricting” emotion.

It is true that dwelling in anger, fear, blame, pity, hurt and loneliness, to name a few, will attract negativity into your life.  But it is also true that the AVOIDANCE of these emotions is also a way of giving attention, and therefore attracting negativity.  I find such absurdity and sadness in so many people trying to find happiness by avoiding a portion of their life experience, as if the anger, pain and fear were toxic.  They only become toxic when they are repressed.

So much of the foundation of the Lucid Living work is to come into right relationship with your emotional body, to reclaim a full range of emotions and learn how to feel and release emotions appropriately.  A key distinction is that expressing emotion is not the same as communicating emotion.  I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard students say, “But if I express my anger, my husband will be upset/my boss will fire me/my mother will be hurt/people will reject me.”  Who said anything about sharing those emotions with others? Expressing your emotions is a private affair.  Your thoughts and feelings are nobody else’s business, unless you choose to make them so.  This is an entirely separate discussion, when to share emotions and getting squeaky clean about your motivations for doing so.

Expressing emotions is the act of honoring them simply because you have them and they are real.  It is an act of self-respect, a process of getting to know yourself and ultimately learning from the emotions you have so you can change the fundamental beliefs and choices that are generating your emotions.

Notice that I said it is your beliefs and choices that are generating your emotions.  I did not say your circumstances generate your emotions.  This one perspective shift can change your life, if you let it.  You see, if you believe that your emotions are created by your circumstances, you will spend your life trying to control your circumstances to feel better.  If instead, you understand that your emotions are generated by your beliefs and choices (and then triggered by the circumstances those beliefs and choices attract), you can stop controlling circumstances and instead spend your time feeling honestly to uncover the true root of your emotions.  No one but you has authority over your beliefs.  No one but you makes your choices.  As you take responsibility for your beliefs and choices, you shift your emotional landscape from the inside out, not by avoiding “unpleasant” emotion.  In fact, you will welcome those pockets of rage or sadness when they surface, because they are leading you to more of yourself.

So, yes, delving into the experience of your worst fears can be a path to happiness if you will feel and release those fears, moving beyond them to find the beliefs at their core.  If you believe you are unlovable, that belief will cause you pain and unhappiness.  No amount of avoiding unpleasant feelings will change the unhappiness caused by your very own (faulty) belief.  You can, however, take back your power from this fear, feel it and let it go, change your belief and stand firmly in the experience that you are endlessly lovable.  I promise you, this new belief will begin to generate greater happiness.

Sometimes in our year-long program when our students begin to get the full implication of this work, there is a moment of clarity.  They sometimes comment, “This Lucid Living work is not for (the faint of heart).”  They tend to use more colorful language.  It is one of the things I love best about getting to lead this work, witnessing acts of courage when the wimpy path calls so seductively. The beauty of people!  Breathtaking.

Which brings me back to happiness.  After spending the last seven months writing and delivering the happiness retreat, I’ve learned more than I thought I would about happiness. Generating happiness and bringing it to everything in my life is transforming my life. More than just the feeling of happiness, the resonance of happiness is a potent energy.  I’ve learned a lot about it from Lazaris, how it is created as we meet certain criteria.  The first step is to meet my own needs.  Well, we could just pause on that one for a while!

We spent a whole day looking deeply into what it means to meet your needs, what your needs are, how we confuse needs and preferences in order to manipulate, and the profound amount of personal suffering that is caused in the futile attempt to get others/the world to meet your needs.  The co-dependence is so widespread and part of our cultural sense of entitlement, it takes some time to sort it out and take power back.  This is a bigger discussion than we can fully honor in this post, but I can tell you that many people at the retreat had their world view turned on its ear.  In a good way.

Turns out, we’ve been sold a bill of goods to think our needs are something we don’t have and must go get from the world.  While all the time, our needs have been these reservoirs of internal resources available to us in abundance. Security, belonging, value, love, knowing, beauty, spirituality.  All of these are internal resources, but we’ve not been taught how to access them and let them be real.  We search instead for money to feel secure or valued, we get face lifts and go on diets to know a sense of beauty, we perform and hide our true selves to feel we belong.  It’s tragic.

Let me be very clear.  There’s nothing wrong with changing your circumstances to meet your preferences in life.  If you want to create more money or lose weight or change your appearance, do so.  But if you are doing it because you feel insecure or cannot see your own beauty, then, Houston, we have a problem.

It’s one thing to be told, “True happiness is found within.”  But how often have we been given good maps for finding that inner happiness?

A group of pioneers went to the Four Seasons Resort in Santa Barbara for five days and we made some thrilling new maps to happiness.  We made individual discoveries which we shared, helping each other to fill in our maps and find more of the buried treasure.  We had candle-lit dinners by the ocean and shared happy memories of the past.  We laughed and created games where we shared happy memories of the future.  We lifted each other to new heights of vision and relaxed into our successes.  We leaned on the substance of our  Souls and followed the light of our Spirits seeking greater freedom and self-determination.  We had a grand time.

In just a week since we’ve been back, my deeper foundation of happiness is rippling into my life in countless ways.  I am deeply grateful to our Lucid Living community for the tremendous gift and honor of working with you, each and all.  I invite all of us to continue to pioneer new frontiers of happiness.  As we change, so changes the world.