We all share a desire to be happy, but most people believe that the circumstances or the people in their lives have to change before they can finally be happy. From the time we’re small children, most of us are taught to seek happiness, fulfilment, and approval in external sources. From very early on, we start to identify happiness with our accomplishments, our positions or titles, and our possessions. This is known as “happiness for a reason.” We say, “I’m happy because I have a family and friends. I’m happy because I got a promotion. I’m happy because I’m going on vacation,” and so on. There are many problems inherent in this approach. The first is that no amount of status, power, money, or worldly belongings is capable of satisfying our deepest longing for inner peace. The second problem is that even if we do derive some temporary pleasure from these external sources, they’re sure to fade over time, causing us to experience feelings of sadness and disappointment.
The second kind of happiness—true joy—is an internal state of awareness that allows us to be happy for no reason at all. It’s independent of the circumstances, events, people, and things in our lives. This happiness comes from the realization that our true self isn’t our body, thoughts, emotions, personality, possessions, accomplishments, relationships, or any other time-bound attribute. Our true self is pure, unbounded consciousness, also known as the field of all possibilities. The attributes of this field include happiness, love, timelessness, compassion, creativity, wisdom, silence, and grace. The practices of Ayurveda, including meditation and yoga, help us to experience this field of consciousness and the happiness that already exists within us.
Finding our identity―and happiness―in our relationships, work, accomplishments, possessions, personality, and body is known as object referral. This means that we identify with objects outside of ourselves. By their very nature, these objects are always changing, and long as we tie our identity to them, we’ll never know our true unlimited self. We may feel happy when things go our way, but we’ll always feel an underlying current of instability or insecurity because part of us knows that the source of our good feelings can disappear at any moment.
The opposite of object referral is self-referral, which means that we identify with our inner self, the unchanging essence of our soul. Self-referral is an internal state of well-being that doesn’t depend on external circumstances.