Let's Make Song

"The most important thing we can do for ourselves and the world is to let ourselves be happy."
– Domano and Chea Hetaka

Not five minutes after I published the last post "On Happiness" I received an issue of a newsletter I'm subscribed to titled: "The Problem With Happiness".

If I believed in coincidence, this would certainly qualify.

Since I don't, I feel it's just another way for the Spirits to express their sense of humor, and a (not so subtle) hint to explore the monumental contrast between the Hetakas' understanding of happiness and the (blindly held) beliefs which define happiness in our modern world.

For example, in the newsletter Tennessee Williams is quoted answering the question as to what happiness is for him with:

"Insensitivity I guess!"

Consider what the man is saying here: if you're happy you're insensitive or you're considered insensitive by others, by your peers, by your community.

If you show any signs of happiness, you're insensitive, ignorant to the reality of life.

WOW!

Actually, it shouldn't come as such a surprise and the effect of this attitude in our culture towards happiness shows.

Who, of all the people you know, is really happy? No, I don't mean showing a happy face, I mean really happy.

The contrast between the Hetakas' way of life, their teachings of Ka Ta See, and our modern western world couldn't be more stark or expressed more succinctly.

Think about it, if you're happy at your place of work, or if you see somebody else happy, you're met, or you meet the person in question, with suspicion, at the least. More likely with enormous judgment and condemnation depending on the degree of happiness expressed.

Why is that?

It's because we can't even imagine anymore that a person could be this happy, especially when they are at work and are supposed to be serious and productive and we can't imagine that any one could possibly do either while being this happy.

If you show signs of great happiness at work others will suspect you of being on drugs.

Reading the newsletter made me realize just how giant a mountain of blind beliefs we have to move within ourselves to understand and realize happiness for ourselves and the world.

So, what blind beliefs do we hold when it comes to happiness?

I think the newsletter about the problem with happiness is a perfect guide to look at a few of the main one's and compare them to a Song perspective.

Going through the list of blind beliefs expressed in the newsletter would make for a piece far too long for one post, so I'll divide it into several posts.

Here's another little example from the newsletter:

"Our nation has a happiness fetish.

Each year, publishers print thousands of books on the subject. Talk show hosts offer advice from psychologists and therapists. Magazine covers promise “The Short-Cut to Happiness” or “The 7 Secrets of Wedded Bliss."

You might reasonably wonder why the market is so large. A Pew Research Center poll reports that "almost 85 percent of Americans say they are happy or very happy."

I had a friend in high school who, every time a research study was quoted said, the man doesn't just lie, he also practices statistics.

Domano's and Chea's observations on the issue as to how happy people are in our modern western society differs considerably from the Pew research poll.

Here is one of their many conversations during which they told Kay how unhappy most people are in our society and Kay tried to come to the peoples defense:

"But I know plenty of people who are happy and fulfilled." I looked over to Domano.

He said softly, "This is just a picture of their masks. I assure you, what looks like happiness is just a picture for themselves and all to see that describes their distractions from the real condition beneath of love confused by pain and fear. And also, there is a whisper of something else, out of reach. Something more than what they know, something grand and exquisite. You know of this.

"Most of them do not pursue this mysterious thing. They are too lazy and fearful. They try to ignore it. But that just makes much confusion and pain for them. You are one who pursues it."

"Is that what your tradition is going to teach me? To pursue this unknown?"

"One can pursue forever and never catch," Chea said, imitating running with two fingers going round and round in front of her. "We teach you how to catch."

In the next post we'll look at another "core problem" with happiness, actually, this one is a problem with the search for happiness.

It says:

"The search for happiness, it turns out, is one of the chief sources of unhappiness."

Thou shalt not seek happiness, it'll make you unhappy!

I learned from Kay not to curse to make a point. In fact, most of the time it only diminishes the point you are trying to make. So I'll refrain from using curse words in response to this particular blind belief. But, I want you to know, we're talking some serious refraining here.

Until the next post, nourish your Song and pursue it's feeling of happiness, because in reality, happiness isn't just the natural state of your being, it's your birthright.

And, remember, the most important thing you can do for yourself and the world is to let yourselves be happy.

Love and Song,

Helmut

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"No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy."
– Ayn Rand

We've just completed 3 weekend classes in a little over one month, that's a record, even for us.

Which is also the main reason you haven't heard from us in a while. No we didn't fall of the planet, we were just really busy working and teaching and having a lot of fun in the process.

But we did not forget about you, quite the opposite. All those teachings and ceremonies and healing and fun made us think about all of you and how we can share more of the gifts of Ka Ta See with you even more.

During one of these weekend classes we did a ceremony so enormous it takes your breath away. Like experiencing the most beautiful moment of your life, kind of taking your breath away.

A ceremony which takes apart everything your life is based on, all blind beliefs, all judgments, all expectations, molecule  by molecule and then puts it back together again in ways you've never thought possible.

A healing in it's most fundamental, rejuvenating, revitalizing form.

It is said, healing only takes place when we truly allow it to take place.

I find this to be true only to an extent.

I've seen healing take place no matter what the person's belief, but, it's likely not going to last if we are not ready for the gifts the healing offered.

We will recreate the state prior to healing because our beliefs are so fundamentally overwhelming that our being has no choice but to go back to the state which conforms to those beliefs and in so doing erases all which was offered by the healing process.

And I have seen people do the same thing with this ceremony.

When we are given the chance to shed everything and create it anew, we often take it. Also, this is not a requirement, but If we are in enough pain, we take it.

In the moment, if we can allow ourselves, we feel absolutely convinced this is the way we want to live, this is the way we can live, this is the way we want to be in the world.

Once the moment has passed we have a strong pull to move back to the state of being prior to the experience and opportunity of change (old habit tugging at our heals).

Often we forget the gifts we were given and go back to the old structures of belief and, to the way of being which is familiar and diminish, or even deny that change was ever offered or took place.

Sometimes our experience of a healing is so enormous, or we've repeated it often enough, our old, dysfunctional structures are so fundamentally dismantled in such a way that we are never again able to put them back together again as they were, ever.

When that happens lasting healing takes place and we are given the opportunity to not only experience happiness on a scale we've not known before, but we are also able to hold it and integrate it into our daily lives.

In the process we realize, that no one's happiness but our own is in our power to create or to destroy.

It seems part of the human experience of our time, or maybe of all time of human history, is to make ourselves so insignificantly small that we can't even imagine having any influence on or power over our fate let alone the fate of the world.

Our life experiences shape our perception of our reality. We carry blind beliefs about everything, and add more almost every day and we are willing to defend those beliefs to the death regardless whether or not those beliefs have anything to do with reality or not.

We, usually, don't question widely held ideas and step in line with the latest gospel, if enough people have adopted it before us.

They call it "social proof" in marketing.

It's when you can show that enough people do the same thing, others accept it as a good thing and want to be part of it, and that thing isn't questioned anymore, if it ever was, as to whether or not it really is a "good" thing.

The pursuit of happiness motivates so many of us to do so many strange things. So many of us equate happiness with wealth and power, so the pursuit of wealth and power has become an obsession in our culture.

I have no idea what happiness means for you. You may believe true happiness exists. You may think life is suffering and we're all doomed. You may believe that happy people are all fake.

The prospect of happiness, or seeing happy people, may frighten you so much, it scares the bejesus out of you, and you have to invalidate and diminish it, or even try to destroy it.

Whatever your beliefs in and response to happiness, once you have had a chance to encounter and allowed yourself to truly experience the experience, you'll have true knowingness of it, and nothing can take that away from you.

It's like touching creation with your blind belief visors and your gloves off, and you realize, nothing, I mean nothing, can even come close to the experience.

And you realize the word love is unbelievably inadequate to describe what you were just gifted with.

I used to do drugs. The reasons for doing drugs are often varied and complex. There certainly was the aspect of wanting to escape in there for me somewhere.

I've also recently read that people, especially young people, who do drugs have a deep deep desire for spiritual experience.

I'm not glorifying drugs, I do know how devastating they are to individuals, families, entire communities and cultures. Just look at the drug wars in Mexico.

My point is, the level of happiness I was able to reach while using drugs, as enormous as they seemed at the time, are nothing compared to the experience of Song happiness and knowingness we are able to experience within ourselves, without drugs of any kind.

If I were to make a comparison, drug happy is like watching a silent movie on a small black and white kitchen TV with bad reception, and Song grounded happiness is like watching Avatar in an IMAX 3D movie theater.

It's more than that, it's like watching Avatar on steroids in IMAX.

This is what we were allowed to be part of this weekend and I am eternally grateful for the long line of our ancestors who have dedicated their lives to carry these teachings forward and make this possible.

I am eternally grateful to my wife Kay, who has with such integrity, commitment and skill carried these ceremonies forward so that today we have the opportunity for such lasting healing to take place and such enormous gifts of true happiness.

You don't need to be able to carry this level of happiness all the time but the experience will provide you with true knowingness of who you are and what is real and what isn't.

Carrying that knowingness becomes effortless and will shift your focus from your trials and tribulations and the trials of others to the reality of how precious life, all life really is and it will change your perception, your focus, your reality, your entire life forever.

That change to living Song centered awareness and happiness will bring about Song centered change in your life, but it will ripple out into the world, you will leave traces of this vibration, wherever you go.

It is a fundamental reality that the waking up of humanity is going to happen. We can go through the process kicking and screaming, or we can know Song on this scale and make the journey to waking up as smooth as we possibly can.

The choice is ours, and ultimately it comes down to just that, simple choice.

No matter in which places you look for happiness, real true happiness only comes from knowing self, knowing who you really are or as we call it, knowing your Song.

And that's what's so amazing about this ceremony, it heals the blind beliefs of ourselves and, when we're ready, allows us to not only get a glimpse of who we truly are, but own that knowingness for the rest of our lives.

I challenge all of us to find a gift of greater value for ourselves and the world.

In the meantime, let's pursue happiness, in honor of all those that went before and all those yet to come.

This reality of Song happiness is much much closer than most of us believe.

The key concept is choosing.

We can choose to focus our attention on struggle and conflict, or we can choose to focus on an awaken humanity.

The effort is the same; the effects and results are worlds apart, literally.

To all of those living in the US, we wish you a very Happy Thanksgiving.

A perfect opportunity to focus on what you can be grateful for and the things which bring happiness to your life and the world.

May the joy in your hearts be as plentiful as the foods on your tables.

Love and Song,

Helmut

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