Deep Happy: How to Get There and Stay There: How to Get There and Always Find Your Way Back - Softcover

Peter Fairfield

Softcover

ISBN 10: 157863511X ISBN 13: 9781578635115

Publisher: Weiser Books, 2012

Synopsis

Everyone wants to be happy. But somehow our happiness is transient, depending on what's happening in our lives. There is a deeper happiness that can only be found in the present moment. DEEP HAPPY is based on quantum physics and the belief that we are intimately and infinitely connected to the larger universe. Spiritual and transformational healer, Peter Fairfield, distills more than 40 years of healing, transformational and spiritual research and personal experience, to show readers how to understand and communicate with a deeper intrinsic reality to achieve happiness: · The more singular our request, the easier it is for the universe to respond. · Positive and negative expectations can cancel each other out. · The universe hears the heart most easily. · Even the tiniest whisper from the deepest and most delicate places of our heart is heard with complete clarity. · Express what is in your heart and let it go. · The more we trust the process and the simpler the request, the clearer the response. Designed to begin where The Power of Now left off, DEEP HAPPY is a fascinating and provocative look at the deepest workings of the biological, quantum and sacred reality of who we are. Fairfield shows how anyone can drop beneath the normal noise of everyday life to experience deep and profound happiness

About this title

About the Author

Peter Fairfield is an acupuncturist, healer and medical intuitive with over 35 years of clinical experience. He did long retreats in China and the Himalayas researching the basis for an east/west model of psychophysiology that combines the energetic basis of Asian medical and spiritual traditions with modern neuro, bio and quantum-science. He also served as the personal physician to Pink Floyd during their 1989 tour.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

DEEP HAPPY

how to get there and always find your way back

By peter fairfield

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2012 Peter Fairfield
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-511-5

Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Beginning Deep Happy
Chapter 2: The Miracle That Is Us—the Big Picture
Chapter 3: Who We Are
Chapter 4: Getting Used to Happiness on Three Levels
Chapter 5: The Art of the Heart
Chapter 6: Asking for What You Want, Then Letting It In
Chapter 7: Suffering Is Optional
Chapter 8: Emotions, Feelings, and the Felt Sense
Chapter 9: Intuition
Chapter 10: Relationships and Sex
Chapter 11: Let's Play Doctor—the Intelligence of Disease
Chapter 12: Karma
Chapter 13: Breathing Nature
Chapter 14: Death and Beyond
Chapter 15: Deep Happy Full Circle

CHAPTER 1

Beginning Deep Happy

When a fool hears the Tao, he laughs ... the utter simplicity!

—Dao De Jing

Happiness is your nature, It is not wrong to desire it What's wrong is seekingit outside, When it is inside.

—Ramana Marharshi

Just like the great seas and oceans that are unaffected by huge and ragingstorms on the surface just a few feet above, we can experience the ebb and flowof conflicting and difficult events of the world outside of us, yet stillconnect to the stillness, peace, and happiness in the deep and essential partsof us. In other words, once you get used to it, you can exist in the crazy worldand still remain calm, connected, and aware inside. This is the essentialmessage of Deep Happy.

Everyone wants to be happy. It's what drives the good and the craziness of theworld. The quest for happiness is the basis in some way for everything we do.All forms of life want to be happy, even the tiniest of us. I remember in highschool looking at amoebas under a microscope. I put a very tiny particle of meaton the slide. All the amoebas rushed to get to it, like a big pre-holiday saleat Macy's. It was very clear that the particular amoeba that got the proteinexperienced something quite different than the other amoebas. The one who got itseemed happy, if you can say that about an amoeba. Its body expanded, while theothers seemed frustrated, their little bodies contracting and bumping into eachother as they moved away. Their patterns and movements were very different thanthey were before they went after and lost the food. All forms of life, evenmicroscopic organisms, experience transient happiness—if not on the emotionallevel, then at least on the chemical, neuronal, and survival level. Aspotentially conscious beings, we have the opportunity to experience the placeinside of us that is safe and connected: that is Deep Happy.

It might seem easy to be happy, but happiness can be elusive and paradoxical.Reading, driving a car, and even walking seem easy, but we had to learn how todo them by letting their processes become imprinted into our nervous systems anddaily patterns. If we want to excel, we can take advanced training to readfaster, drive better, and walk and exercise more efficiently. Learning toexperience Deep Happy is very similar.

You might be wondering, "Why do I need to learn to be happy? Shouldn't I justfix my problems? Wouldn't that make me happy?" That's a fair question, but youare reading this book, I assume, for a reason. Either you haven't been able tofix your problems or think you have already done so and you still feel likesomething is missing.

The odd thing is, it often happens that at just the moment when we finally feelhappy—when we get our new car, find the tax documents we have been looking forall day, or even just get a moment of peace—something else comes up and takes abite out of our happiness. This kind of happiness, although certainly welcomewhenever it comes, is transient. It is a kind of happiness that depends onsomething happening or not happening. It is not a happiness that we can counton; most of the time, we can't even predict what will bring it or how long itwill last.

So let's re-examine what happiness really is. On a superficial level we can sayit is a generalized experience of feeling and sensations caused by many thingsthat we usually lump together: satisfaction, resolution, safety, and reward. Weeat a good meal when we are hungry; buy a new espresso maker when our old onebreaks; feel the morning sun after a cold night; appreciate a good listener; winan argument; fall in love; end a bad relationship; start and finish a greatbook. This list could go on to fill a whole library. All of these things andprobably most that you can imagine involve some kind of change—some thing orsituation becoming better.

Much of our time involves seeking or refuting something to attain happiness.This is a never-ending process. As we grow and develop, it becomes more and moresubtle. For instance, feeling good about ourselves because we didn't want orneed something seems more developed than succumbing to the desire, but it isstill part of the process of cause and effect. We remain in this mode until wecome upon another way. For most of us, ending the cycle of "searching andgetting" usually means we have left our bodies.

The deeper happiness inside of us is a happiness that does not change. It has adifferent quality than the outer experiences of satisfaction and safety. It islike a wonderful tone that vibrates subtly and pervasively throughout our bodiesand within each cell, thought, and perception. As outer challenges and problemsabsorb our attention, a part of us always remains unchanged. Our core essence isalways in resonance with a deep and profound happiness. We just have to rememberthat it is there waiting for us.

Most of us have had at least some happiness in our lives. For many people thesemomentary peaks of happiness are what hold us together through the tedium androutine of everyday life. But I ask you: What happens to the experience of beinghappy all the rest of the time? It may surprise you to know that many of usresist deeper happiness without knowing it. We get very used to being andstaying just the way we are, often with great limits to our ability to feelpleasure, ease, joy, and especially personal satisfaction and even simple fun.These limitations are learned restrictions that either match with the patternsand tone of our birth families or are the result of overwhelming physical oremotional trauma, which then anchor themselves in the structures of our physicaland energetic body. These blockages can stay with us until we find a way to healand release them. As you read this book, you will be able to uncover and healthese blockages.

We grew up believing that certain basic attitudes and ways of being create innerhappiness: kindness, stillness, generosity, forgiveness, and being in the now.We are encouraged to be peaceful, still, and calm. However, when we do drop intothat moment of quiet and clarity, what often arises is everything inside us thatis not quiet and not clear: our worries, fears, memories, feelings, withheldexpressions, and doubts. These inner voices can have a wide polarity. Part ofDeep Happy is learning what to do when we notice this happening. On the goodside, they can range from easy thoughts that creatively inform and remind us ofthings we need to notice, remember, or think about. But they can also manifestas physical and emotional numbness or raging storms of confusion and intensefeelings that can overtake us, eventually filling all available space with innernoise and powerful diverting images. Most of us live somewhere in between,though the voices of guidance and wisdom are always there—even when they arehard to hear.

We learn from our families and society to "protect" ourselves with theseinternal thoughts and voices so that we stay away from the feelings and emotionsthat are locked away deep in our bodies. To do this we either make ourselvesnumb or we use the excessive stimulation of all the "things" of the world.Though we unconsciously put them there to protect us, in reality they keep usfrom ourselves. This is the great confusion of our current world. The setup isthis:

We have our natural inner clarity and guidance. It gets covered up by confusedthoughts, conflicting emotions, and uncomfortable physical sensations. On top ofthat we surround ourselves with the frenzy of our busy lives or the dullness ofbeing stuck without knowing what we really want. When we can begin to turn ourattention back in and finally notice the comfortable place inside of us, we canrelease the "goop" and find our way to a life that gets easier—much easier.

Our world supports the drama of our continuing misery with all the diversions wecould ever need, all the enabling mythology and for many of us a political,economic and social milieu that holds us in a perpetual state of unease andconcern and clouds over the many positive things that are also occurring. Manyof us are able to deal with the intensity of modern life by finding some quiettime now and then. This is a good thing—it is the only way that we can calm ourovertaxed nervous systems. But sometimes the apparent experience of stillnessand inner reflection can in reality be dullness, numbness, and disconnectionmasquerading as peace and calm. Closing off from the craziness of the world is ahealthy tack in the short term. But to emerge from the craziness whole and clearwith our wits about us takes a different strategy. We may not initially be ableto remove ourselves from our daily challenges, but we can learn to listen toourselves again, even in the midst of the fray, and in so doing, reawaken thereal peaceful and happy place that is always within us. With a little practice,this sacred place can be a reliable source we can find our way back to again andagain, until we finally get it that we never have to leave.

To accomplish this we must begin by discovering who we really are and living inthe world as it really is. The merging of these creates a synergy that is bothpragmatic and creative; it eliminates the effects of most of the things thattrouble us.

One of the important stages in developing this personal coherence comes as weunite the voices inside of us. We have all experienced "I should, I shouldn't"conversations with ourselves. We have all done or said one thing while thinkingor feeling something quite different. These mixed voices can counterbalance theeffect of our initial good actions and overshadow or shift the wisdom, energy,and tone of our original good idea. These shifts in outcome can also come fromtrying to do the "right thing" or listening to our head without taking the timeto sense the deeper wisdom of what our heart is telling us. A famous story fromNepal illustrates this very well.

In the 1970s, a U.S. Peace Corps worker in Nepal decided that the several-thousand-year-oldtradition of terracing the hillside rice fields so that theyslanted downward could be improved upon. He figured that slanting the fieldsinward toward the hills could conserve water. His Peace Corps team spent a hugeamount of time and energy restructuring all the ancient rice fields, encouragingthe local villagers to restructure their way of doing things that had worked forthousands of years. It seemed to work at first, but as the first rainy seasonwore on, the water that had pooled up in the area where the field met the hillbegan to seep underground. Eventually the ground underneath the fields eroded.All the rich earth that had been developed for centuries slid down the hill,ruining the local economy and leaving many previously prosperous villageswithout food or livelihood.

Obviously, the Peace Corps worker had a good intent. But his desire to "do good"and his lack of appreciation for the knowledge and practical experience of theNepalese farmers kept him from seeing that he was making a bad decision. Thesepatterns of personality that cause us to act and react are often very hard forus to see in ourselves. They have probably been with us since the womb, and arewhat hold us so firmly because we are so used to them. They are primarilypatterns in the body and nervous system, but they are also the accumulation ofcertain conceptual ideas that we hold as sacrosanct. We call the accumulation ofthese influences our outer personality. The good news is that we can change.

I do much of my work over the phone with people from all over the world. I wasworking with a physician and acupuncturist in Chicago who was questioning whyher practice was not growing as she wanted it to. I had her take a moment andimagine her practice becoming very busy, with many new and interesting clients.As she did this, her voice tightened a little and I could tell that a part ofher was resisting the idea. As with many of us, her head wanted one thing, butthe rest of her perceived the idea of more clients and greater success in adifferent way.

My client's professional training had taught her that to be a good physician onehas to be very serious and professional. She did not allow flowing energy andphysical renewal to be part of her personal experience while performing herclinical duties. The more clients she worked with, the more worn out andresistant she became.

My client had not learned to nourish herself while working. She expended energy,but she was not used to taking it in at the same time. She failed to create areciprocal loop—A process of putting out energy through action and intent andsimultaneously allowing energy to flow back. Again, this is a common cause ofburnout and work dissatisfaction.

I worked to help her shift both her energetic patterns and her learned conceptsabout what success looks like. I showed her how to reprogram her physicalpatterns of subtly tightening various parts of her body, so that by the end ofthe session when she pictured herself with more clients, her physical andenergetic body opened and she felt a deep ease and happiness. Pretty mucheveryone has patterns like my client's, and they are easy to change. It justtakes a little bit of time, study, openness, and honest curiosity.

One of the basic truths that Buddha taught is that "life is suffering." Thismight sound a little pessimistic for a cool guy like the Buddha. But what Ithink he meant was that life is suffering only if we live and find our meaningin the outer world of cause and effect, ebb and flow—a life where we only payattention to material things and don't discover the deeper unchanging realitythat dissolves suffering. This inner connection is the source of the solutionsthat our world so desperately needs.

Buddha taught that all suffering comes from only three sources: desire,aversion, and ignorance. In other words, wanting something we don't have; notwanting something we already have or are afraid we will get; or misperceiving orignoring what is right in front of us. In other words, suffering is caused byfeeling that we cannot be happy unless the reality around us meets ourexpectations.

Here is something to think about:

All of the things you can think of that make you happy are relative! All of thethings that make us happy tend to change. When they change, so can thepossibility of our happiness.

Deep Happy is just what is left when everything else disappears.

Most of us live in what my wife Conde calls a "Hamster Nation"—we endlessly runthrough our lives, rarely getting off the wheel of outer experience and activityto touch the intrinsic deeper reality. We are often so busy or "tuned out" thatwe miss the full experience of living in our miraculous physical body thatanchors us to our multifaceted world and to the experience of simply being.

For some, this endless "Hamster Nation" activity can even involve sitting on thecouch, closing off from the activities of outer life through dullness and habit.Please don't get me wrong here. We all have a right to sit on the couch and vegout. I personally love my couch. It is a joy to come home and find my safe placeto sit, away from the intensity or boredom of life, and feel like things areokay again, at least for a little while.

A few years ago, after an agonizing divorce, I rented a house on a mountain bythe sea just north of San Francisco. I spent my first month there sitting on mycouch, staring out at the changing colors of the vast ocean, not even thinking,just being. It was all I could do. This was a conscious choice and a strategyfor beginning the process of healing and discovering where to take my life next.But if sitting on the couch (or wherever our "soft place" is) is all that we doevery night—pushing the world away rather than to creatively and consciouslyopening up to it—then we are still running on that hamster wheel. Of course, itcan be a very good thing to "find our cave" and hang out there until the stormpasses, but when the storm is over we get to go outside again. It can also be aninteresting process to bundle up and go for a walk in the storm, enjoying thepower and beauty of it.

We all have a right to our own version of the hamster wheel. However, it willnot bring us lasting fulfillment or Deep Happy until we begin to acceptourselves as we are and open our senses to the events that engulf us. As webegin to accept, we find a level of living that is not dependent on thetransient events of the world. Before long, the fleeting interest and excitementof the good meal or new shoes will, rather than wearing off, connect us viathese wonderful sensory experiences to the intrinsic biological happiness thatis within each of us. This is when our constant search for the "unknownsomething" begins to quiet and our hamster wheel begins to slow down. Pleasedon't misunderstand me. I love the outer things of the world: shopping, travel,sex, food, even football. But the deepest part of my experience does not dependon any of those things.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from DEEP HAPPY by peter fairfield. Copyright © 2012 Peter Fairfield. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Weiser Books
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 157863511X
• ISBN 13: 9781578635115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256