How to Be Happy When Your Joy Depends on Other People

The SPH gives a simple answer. Center your energy. When your energy rests in your own center, you will be happy. And you will radiate that happiness to the people around you.

Most of us do the opposite. We spread our energy across many people. We feel good only if they smile at us, recognize us and support us. If someone does not give us their "certificate", we feel something has been taken away.

The SPH describes this as running behind other people's attention. We change our lives, even torture our lives, to get it. All that energy left in other people locks the heart center.

The way out is to bring all your energy back to your center. When you can move from your own center, without waiting for anyone's certificate, the heart center opens. Then joy is not something you beg for. It is something you share. You simply flow with others.

Think about how many people you have invested your energy in. If your happiness depends on them, then all of them must be happy first. Only then can you be happy.

The SPH points out how impossible that is. If you wait for everyone to be happy before you are happy, it will not happen. At least not in this birth.

So the question is not how to make everyone around you happy. The question is where you have placed your energy. As long as it sits in others, your happiness is out of your hands. When you bring it back to yourself, it is yours again.

The SPH uses a clear image for relationships built on need. Picture a husband and wife. He depends on her for his happiness. She depends on him for hers. Each one is holding out a begging bowl to the other.

What happens when two begging bowls hit each other? Only noise. Nothing else comes out of them.

The SPH says that noise is the sound many people hear in their homes from morning till night. It is the clash of two begging bowls. You expect your happiness from her. She expects her happiness from you. You have invested your energy in her, and she has invested hers in you. In that setup, neither of you can have joy.

The SPH says to become the center of your own life. Then you will radiate your joy, and you will share it.

The SPH gives a small homework for this. It is simple, and it is honest.

1. Make a list of everyone who can depress you or upset you.
2. Include anyone whose words can make you feel low.
3. Write all their names down clearly.
4. Paste the list in your bedroom, or keep it in a private file.
5. Read it once every day.

Be very clear about what the list means. You are a psychological slave of those people. Your mood, your excitement and your joy are not in your control. They are in their control.

The SPH says you become like a doll. If they pull, you are pulled. If they push, you are pushed.

He adds a light touch here. In a husband's list, the wife's name will likely be first. In the wife's list, the husband's name will be first. Why bother hiding it? Just paste it up and remember it every day.

This is the heart of the homework. The very remembrance, the very understanding, lifts you up. It makes you mature.

Here is how it plays out. Someone tries to give you their approval, or take it away. Suddenly you remember: I am a psychological slave of this person. In that moment, you simply come out of it.

The SPH explains why. As long as you do not know you are a slave, you can be a slave. The moment you understand you are a slave, you can never be one. Your nature is freedom.

Should you avoid the people on your list? The SPH says there is no need to avoid them. Do not go for avoiding, and do not go for reconciling either. Do not add any other process. Only allow the understanding to happen. The rest will be taken care of by itself.

Every situation and every person is different. Your own intelligence will guide you on what to do. His work, The SPH says, is only to give that intelligence.

The SPH teaches a technique called Maha Mantra to collect your energy and center it in the heart. It is very simple.

1. Sit straight, on the floor if you can. Older people may use a chair. Keep your head, neck and back in one line.
2. Close your eyes fully. Even with eyelids closed, an inside TV keeps playing. The SPH asks you to switch off even that inside TV.
3. Close your mouth and hum from deep in the stomach. Hum as loudly and as long as you can, with your whole effort.
4. Keep humming for 20 minutes.
5. For the last 10 minutes, rest your attention on the heart center. As music plays, feel it coming from inside that area. Feel a ball of light, an energy ball, there.

Your own mind. After two or three minutes of humming, it will say, that is enough, let us rest. It will tell you that nobody can tell whether you are doing it or not.

The SPH uses a funny image for this. Mind and meditation are like a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law. Each one is good on its own. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot make them live in one place. Both try to possess the same person.

So the mind will try its best to cheat you. It will give all sorts of reasons. Enough. I will do it next time.

Put your whole effort in for the full time. Half effort wastes your time. Full effort makes the time count.