A smile can go a really long way. I always smile at people I don’t know, for you can never know when someone is having a really bad day. Really, I’m convinced that if everyone smiled and made eye contact with others instead of looking glum, then the world would be transformed and all these icky things humanity is doing would lessen in about six months. It’s just a hunch, but I feel it is true. A smile changes not only your brain chemistry, but there’s a ripple effect from this latter change too.
Now, I don’t believe that happiness is the complete end goal. Happiness is not success, for if we only felt happiness we wouldn’t (or maybe couldn’t) understand we were feeling happy at all. I find emotional success to be present for each and every emotion we encounter. Sometimes this means observing the emotion, and sometimes this means feeling the emotion. Usually when I am feeling an emotion there’s a chance for an egoic emotional release. When we feel emotions it’s always to be attached to our most primal memory of that emotional form.
Emotions as forms- Raina, what do you mean? So if you were to take a slime or putty, and put it with a color, give it and mold it’s shape- now imagine that putty or slime is inside your head and heart, instead of your hands. When we put a form inside our head it’s so we can understand it, visualization and spacial relation show us this. When you put a puzzle piece in it’s place, first the brain scans the puzzle piece and the puzzle so that you can comprehend. Okay, so back to emotional form. We put emotions in our head so we can understand what they do, how they serve us, and if they serve you (to understand others perception within that emotional form).
An emotional form serves for empathetic understanding and sympathetic projection so that others can understand you. It’s like our brains are playing “pass the ball” with these emotional slime forms we’ve created. The origin of these slime forms comes from the first time we experienced them as a kid. To understand these emotional forms in so much depth that we no longer need them to communicate is a possibility, even if only in glimpses. This state of tranquility, of not allowing other forms to come into the form you call you- this is called dhyana, a held one pointed focus, one of the eight limbs in the school of Yoga.
A lot of pain is transferred from human to human, this is why most people I smile at never smile back. They either look to their phone, look to the trees, or just ignore me completely and stare at nothing blankly. This used to upset me, until I realized I was projecting that feeling of upset to other people too. So, now I’ll smile at you no matter what you do. When we genuinely smile at others we share something sacred, cherished, true. When I smile at you it’s the simplest way I know how to say that I love you. SO, today, go and share some love with others. Share a smile, or maybe share two. Pay attention to others reactions, and pay attention to your reaction too. Then, remember to smile back at you.
