There is something about which I am less than fully happy today. You too?
There always is, and there always will be. Life is imperfect, and humans are imperfect. However, you and I are steadily becoming better at conducting our emotional symphony, and we will keep improving. We don't expect to be perfectly happy, but we won't settle for less than very happy.
I feel pretty good, pretty happy, but there is usually some little thing nibbling away at my happiness. This perfectly normal phenomenon is quite OK, and, ironically, we need to accept the imperfection of our happiness in order to be more perfectly happy. I often say that I'm almost perfectly happy, because I accept that 95 per cent happiness 95 per cent of the time is a very high level of happiness in this miserable world, and 100 per cent is unattainable. (These day's I'm shooting for about 98 per cent, and doubt that I'll ever ask life for more.)
I liken that small bit of imperfection, that niggling part of my consciousness (or unconscious mind) to the sand in the oyster that makes the pearl. We will always have a bit of discomfort, some stresses and uncertainties. These can be the engine of our self-improvement. It helps to try to see our residual unhappiness in such terms.
However, we should look at this less-than-happy component of our emotional landscape, and, if we can, try to trim it down to proportions we feel relatively comfortable with. Our comfort equates with our happiness, and our goal is to feel as good (happy) as we can.
Here's one tool we can use to make that grain of sand in the oyster just that: not much bigger than a grain of sand
– not the boulder it may seem to be now.
The painful boulders of our minds
One of the most important concepts that we have to get our head around is that much of the time we are making ourselves unhappy by choice.
I know it sounds harsh, but in fact it's true, in my opinion, and once we become aware of it we have a powerful tool for our own feelgoods. When we start to identify our deep-down decisions to be unhappy, it's like we have been given the key to our own prison cells. Better than that: we discover that it was we ourselves who walked into the cell and closed the door, and that it never was locked at any time.
Now, let's start packing to walk out! Just right out the door! After all, our life should be about escaping our prisons, and it's not good enough just to describe the cell, nor to decorate the cell, nor to describe life outside the cell, nor yet to lament our imprisonment. As I always say, the one duty of the prisoner is escape. How exciting for us to discover the cell isn't locked at all! And guess what ... it never was!
When we looked at the Etch A Sketch model of our conditioning, and some quick and easy techniques to progressively shake up the sketches and gradually dissolve them, we saw one aspect of our self-imprisonment. Here's another. This model explains a great deal of the sand, pebbles, stones and boulders that make us uncomfortable. (At the time of my suicide attempt, the "pebbles in my shoe", as one language calls our little annoyances, felt like jagged rocks the size of Mt Everest. Gradually they shrank to boulders, then stones; now I have ever-diminishing pebbles and sand. The following precept has helped immeasurably.)
I strongly believe that it's essential that we recognise our own role in our unhappiness, for it's the main one. Let's look at how we do this
– at how we can follow Precept 9: I place no conditions on my happiness. Do we even know what this means?
Do we even know that we have decided to be unhappy? I assure you, we have. Please allow me to explain. Let's have a look at some of my own personal pebbles and grains of sand, that once were painful boulders and jagged mountains. Let's get a crowbar under those boulders and dislodge them once and for all. In a song about liberating our minds, John Lennon wrote,
So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, outta the now
You just can't beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
John Lennon Mind Games
Let's be mind guerrillas and start attacking those boulders. To liberty! Venceremos! Right on! Peace, man! 
My own boulders
One of my own boulders were that I was depressed because I was a writer who had trouble gaining a readership and income. Another was that my children didn't live with me and I felt ripped off, powerless and defeated. Yet another excuse to make myself feel bad was that for certain reasons I had to live in the city and I wanted to live in the country. Another reason: I was married to the wrong woman.
I had lots, lots more; oh, man, I had a whole truckload of great things to feel miserable about. (There was much more besides, but I won't go there
– like you, I have personal stuff.) I was an expert at making myself feel bad! I was the King of Pain, so much so that I nearly 'topped' myself to stop the pain. You might have your own such list.
Did living in the city make me depressed? Of course not. Lots of people feel fantastic living in the cities. In fact, some of them would feel depressed if they had to live in Hicksville. Emotional discomfort is obviously something that depends on the mind, personality and beliefs of the individual. We've already seen that we make ourselves depressed, and nobody does it to us! Only I can make my body (where my feelings reside) feel good or bad.
And how did it happen to me that I got to feel so dreadful? The crucial thing to understand here is quite simple: I decided (unconsciously) to be unhappy.
I know, I know, it sounds far-fetched, but I believe that this is precisely the way it works. Unconsciously, we say to ourselves, "I will not be happy until ..."
I (namely, my Etch A Sketch being) had put conditions on my own happiness. I refused to be happy until I owned a hundred acres of land. I refused to feel good until I had an income. I refused to feel good until I had a nice lover.
My conditioning gave a me a reward: by going through these painful feelings, I would finally arrive at one that felt good. We've already seen how this happens.
This state of being comfortable in our depression is called our 'comfort zone' and we all do it. On the first page of this manual I quoted from the mystic poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. I shall quote him again: Hopkins referred to "carrion comfort despair". Carrion is rotting meat
– what a graphic description of our despair. But notice that he uses the word 'comfort'. Mysticism is do-it-yourself psychology, and this poet's insight is decades ahead of psychological theories that say we become comfortable in our pain.
Do you see this as the ultimate stupidity? What silly creatures we must be to refuse to feel good. And how unkind we are to ourselves. Few of us would ever hurt a fly, but we whip ourselves with self-criticism, and we choose not to feel good until certain conditions are met.
Imagine how cruel you would think me if I kept a man in a cell and told him I would continue applying the electric shocks until he got a girlfriend. Is there anyone in the whole world that you would torture until they achieved certain goals? Of course not! Yet we human beings do exactly that to ourselves every day. The sand in my oyster and the pebbles in my shoe are mostly Pip refusing to be happy until Pip's list of demands is met. I am holding myself to ransom
– like a kidnapper!
Do you recognise this in yourself, or am I the only shmoe in town??
We need to switch from being kidnappers and jailers, to being mind guerrillas and liberation warriors. Wow, I can feel the rush of blood! LOL
Commit, and act
The only way out of imprisonment (while using the precepts and techniques in this manual, as well as any other tricks we have up our sleeves) is to commit
– right now – to putting an end to this process of self-torture.
To do so, we have to be very self-reflective and practise
– every day from now on – identifying the conditions we have placed on our feelgoods.
We are adult men and women! Should we be foolish children and hold our breath until we turn blue unless and until our demands are met? Should we decide to have a bad journey until we reach our destination? No, no, no, no!! Stop it, children, at once!! 
If we are to be happy, we have to progressively dismantle the edifice of stupidity that we have built in our bodies. We need to recognise conditions placed upon happiness as what they in fact are: signifiers of our foolishness.
Because we have foolishly made our happiness conditional on the attainment of certain events or possessions, should we then bash ourselves up for being such nongs? Again, a resounding "No!".
Please never forget that we are human beings. That everyone makes mistakes, and that's why they put erasers on pencils. Our attitude should be, "Hey, I'm so happy I've finally recognised how I've hurt and imprisoned myself. How good it feels to be free!" I don't have a minute to waste in self-recrimination, do you? I should think not. We've already wasted too much time at less than peak performance.
Walk out of the cell
– it's still unlocked
It's high time to walk out of the cell. Don't look back. Keep going forwards. You know that a bicycle can only be ridden forwards, and that if we stand still we fall off. So, let's keep walking forwards out of the cell.
Recognising our cell is not the same as escape. But to recognise that the cell door was never even locked is the first part of freedom, and the beginning of wisdom. The prisoner who discovers that he was in an unlocked cell the whole damn time, will not sit in the cell in misery complaining about his folly. If he has any brains at all he will apply them to directing his feet to step outside into to the fresh air and beautiful sunlight.
The journey forward will continue. Nothing is perfect, and the journey never ends. However, we can feel much better along our path than we ever imagined possible, and we no longer have to stupidly say, "When I get to the end, then I will give myself permission to feel great". The spiritual masters teach us that the wise and feelgood thing to do is always to enjoy the trip.
I sincerely hope that this chapter and the preceding ones have helped you to do just that. Practise feelgoods today, and I hope you'll remain enthusiastic for the crazy stuff I'll share next time. We're on the downhill run, and I hope you enjoy the last few chapters. Keep practising! And keep growing your list of feelgood words (Chapter 8). Before you go on to the next chapter, I hope you'll have collected a list of 100 words. Keep them in your wallet or bag.
Thank you, and bright blessings to all.
Abundance and gratitude,
Pip
The
FeelGood Manual is now
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