This morning, someone asked me what unhappiness means in your life. Here's my reply.
There is somewhere inside of you that is pure unadulterated happiness. It is quiet, it is still, and it is soft. BUT YOU KNOW that it is there. It's being there is not conditional at all. It can never be damaged or stolen or drained. However, it can be hidden or almost forgotten.
Even when it is forgotten, true happiness is always there, and it walks with you in all of your trials and tribulations. When we choose to identify with the trials and tribulations more than this soft, still, quiet happiness, we "feel" unhappy.
The best way to call forth this happiness (to remember it) is to truly BE with that "unhappiness", feel it, observe it, and notice the transitory nature of this unhappiness. The part of you that is noticing it is the part of you that is intransitory, it is the part where true unconditional joy resides.
The more you can USE this observant part of you to notice the pain, the more you begin to identify with your inherent JOY. Pretty soon things start to affect you less, and one day you will wake up with a strange realization that you are "happy" because you are finally identifying with "YOU the real YOU." It doesn't mean the shit stops being thrown at you, only that the shit doesn't seem to stink as much, and less of it sticks to you.
Now, as far as being unhappy in your present CIRCUMSTANCE, the yoga answer is this -- if you are clinging to a different "future" or if you keep clinging to your memories of the past and how unhappy they made you, then YES that is attachment.
HOWEVER, if your SOUL is yearning to be heard and your circumstances keep shutting your soul down, then it means you are ready to let a lot of attachments GO. Does that make sense?
There is an angst that we all feel when we find ourselves imprisoned by our attachments; when we realize that we HAVE been so attached to things/feelings/memories/plans. That realization/angst/yearning is the SOUL waking up and calling for more "space."
Of course it feels uncomfortable because you just realized that you put yourself in a box and now that you've grown this box is too small for you. The soul wants OUT, the ego wants the soul to stay IN, and this translates into a war of the inner worlds.
I am not sure what you are feeling, but the way out is to see the box, notice the box, observe the box of your own creation. You can't really see the box when you are inside of it, now can you?
I hope that helps.

Comments

[Maureen Kilgour]

I thought I was unhappy being involved in the day to dayness of a horrendous lawsuit ... people stuff .. things that really didn't matter in the long run and looking back I see that now. I let it get the better of me so many times. I figured out in February after my dog Sam died that I hadn't really been unhappy ... unhappy was what I experinced with his loss ... that feeling of being so completely human that no matter what you did you couldn't alter the outcome. That feeling about what really matters and what really mattered (I know I knew this it was just hard to see it through the fog)was relationships, real relationships the things that make you smile in spite of yourself. That is what Sam did for me every day -- made me smile in spite of myself. Really taught me about living in the moment -- how great are dogs at that? They don't have to go to work though do they ... I mean really we can't be like dogs but boy can they help teach us things.