Real happiness in an ordinary toe...

Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes but simply is...
                                                                                               ~ Ram Dass

For several years this thought that happiness must come in layers has pushed to be written. After many happiness parties and life situations, I still felt something was missing. However, what is tricky --  is to know when I am happy, am I happy, really? And is there more to happy than happy situations which seem to end or become the proverbial carrot for the next chase.

Surface happiness, things are going well and life feels great and fun. However, at times, these glad events are like watching a scene that is perfect yet, views like a phantom, tableaux vivant. And as happy and grateful as I am for this human, worldly, wonderfulness I still detected a surface happiness.

The real happiness I am discovering (after some years) is more than being ok with self and those around one. Real happiness feels larger, deeper, more home, more ultimate, more right down to hard rock. Even when things go all wrong, it holds and stays the winds of the ordinary and is balm for the wound. Here, happy cells heal. Here, one catches the light in the littlest detail*, the least breath, and the farthest star. Here, is a glow, an iridescence, different than wonderful worldliness -- now most real, most perfect.

The Secret is simple -- real happiness flourishes in my chest, in this Me in me, this Be in being that comes in velvet breath... And as Ram Dass has observed, real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes but simply is...


* When writing "light in the littlest detail" above, I came across this journal entry written a few decades ago, and a day or two after a visit with the Cottage Woman...

"I love the earthiness of living. Right now the light is playing on my toe. Sounds funny, yet this exquisite moment is counterpoint to such an ordinary toe! I wonder if there is any ordinary in ordinariness because there is nothing more ordinary than this toe. Maybe if I could see like the Cottage Woman, it would all be diffused with light, even the kitchen pot there, sitting on the stove."