{"id":190,"date":"2008-05-22T15:46:38","date_gmt":"2008-05-22T15:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/?p=190"},"modified":"2020-11-23T09:06:32","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:06:32","slug":"looking-for-patterns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/looking-for-patterns\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking For Patterns Of Happiness And Unhappiness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/fe208289-00a1-4554-b222-25f3c8d52de2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-191 size-full\" title=\"Lightning Strike\" src=\"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/fe208289-00a1-4554-b222-25f3c8d52de2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"291\" srcset=\"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/fe208289-00a1-4554-b222-25f3c8d52de2.jpg 450w, https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/fe208289-00a1-4554-b222-25f3c8d52de2-300x194.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nRecently I did some thinking and writing about the texture of the time that I have been an adult, the ebb and flow of happiness in the twenty-five years since I graduated high school. I started listing, what were all the months and years of greatest growth, expansion, opening, and generally good things; in other words, what activities, experiences, and factors seemed to correlate with my life coming more alive. What I came up with were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Intensive personal growth practice &#8211; meditation, yoga, men&#8217;s circles, therapy group, twelve-steps group<\/li>\n<li>Being at the heart of and connected with a community of people doing interesting, creative, emotionally intimate growth-y alive things<\/li>\n<li>Being in relationship with (and, often, living with) one woman who I respected and was in love with<\/li>\n<li>Living with great housemates, forming close relationship with them, having great conversations and general fun with them<\/li>\n<li>Being successful and solid at work, career, and\/or school, and having that success take me to the next level<\/li>\n<li>Doing fun party things that I had never done before, having new adventures<\/li>\n<li>Having fun and being more bold than I ever had before about dating (including, to be honest, initiating breakups where I was choosing the breakup)<\/li>\n<li>Stopping addictions and not doing them any more, spending time in environments of renunciation (like monasteries) that create a sense of moral cleanliness in my life<\/li>\n<li>Traveling places that I have never been before<\/li>\n<li>Creativity, expressing myself (for me, this usually means musically), and sharing the fruits of my creativity with people<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also looked at what factors or events seem to happen right before and during my getting off track for a while or going into a dark space:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Extended time spent not doing much with myself, mired in stuck energy or addictions<\/li>\n<li>Breakups with women I&#8217;ve been close with, specifically the time it drags out before it ends, especially if I was less choosing the breakup<\/li>\n<li>Time spent living in the same house as people with mean, bad energy<\/li>\n<li>Spending time getting angry and bitter about things that I can\u2019t do that much about, like huge political issues<\/li>\n<li>A few negative party experiences<\/li>\n<li>Car crashes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I suppose that none of this is really so surprising, it&#8217;s about what I would expect.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-2711\" src=\"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/0bddf228d4afc4434b25c1775b0ace2e.jpg\" alt=\"0bddf228d4afc4434b25c1775b0ace2e\" width=\"371\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/0bddf228d4afc4434b25c1775b0ace2e.jpg 554w, https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/0bddf228d4afc4434b25c1775b0ace2e-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/0bddf228d4afc4434b25c1775b0ace2e-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 371px) 100vw, 371px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">[&#8220;Siren Song&#8221;, by Lia Melia]<\/p>\n<p>What I do find interesting is that all of the growth-creating factors involve sustained engagement, effort, and transformation over time, while some of the setback-creating factors have happened in a flash, or at least within one day. I suppose that what can also happen in an instant to move a life in a positive direction is that we can make a commitment or a public declaration to do something new and good, a commitment that we then stick with and follow through on. And I supposed at times being bold and asking for what we want &#8211; a collaboration, a job, a raise, a date &#8211; can improve our life in an instant.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if there is a way to live a life with just the first list of growth-y things, without any of the things from the second bummer list ever popping up. I like imagining it, but I somehow doubt it. I think that the Tao rising and falling, rising and falling, expanding and contracting, again and again, is just part of real-world existence here on Earth &#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I did some thinking and writing about the texture of the time that I have been an adult, the ebb and flow of happiness in the twenty-five years since I graduated high school. I started listing, what were all the months and years of greatest growth, expansion, opening, and generally good things; in other words, what activities, experiences, and factors seemed to correlate with my life coming more alive. What I came up with were:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,12],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coaching-and-effectiveness","tag-mental-health","category-1","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3734,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/3734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intromeditation.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}