If you think reality is the sum of the range of your 5 senses, then why can't you see beyond the colors of the rainbow? A spider can see Ultraviolet—a “color” invisible to the human eye. Can you imagine that color?
Humans are completely blind to most of the brightness of reality. It wasn't until science came along that humanity was exposed to the vast bustle of the real Universe! For example, a lightning bolt is far more spectacular across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The next time a lightning storm happens along, tune an AM radio between stations. That crackle you hear coincident with the next flash is evidence of that bolt blazing all the way down to the lower end of the radio spectrum. That's a frequency many orders of magnitude lower than the frequencies of light available to your human vision!
If you poo-poo spirituality, then my question to you is, on what basis—that you haven't experienced it? Do you experience the WiFi that shines brightly all around and through you? Do you feel the microbes crawling in your body? Do you hear the multi-trillions of electrons whizzing around the atoms that compose you?! Do you experience the vast emptiness in those same atoms? Can you even see the atoms that compose you?!? Yet, you believe in all of that, right? Why? Isn't it because science made a credible case for all these things? There was a time when no one could listen to lightning on an AM radio because such devices didn't exist. And yet, radio waves were flying around—even when no one knew that they were there. How is the possibility of the mystical any different? I've had numerous mystical experiences, so I'm certain that it's merely something that science is yet to "discover".
But, Steve, what does any of that have to do with Happiness?!
The answer to that would fill a book—which, of course is what I did. I'll say this much: How can you make the choices that would lead to your greatest satisfaction in life if you're not able to see beyond your limitations? Or, said another way: What's the point of having a human retrofit, that Neocortex of yours, sitting atop your primitive, animal brain, if you only react from the primitive brain's animal logic?
- "She's trailer trash!"
- "They're a bunch of douches for not letting me join!"
- "You damn-well better respect the entitlements guaranteed to me by my white skin!!"
A common human mode is for a person to blame those around them for their woes, because said humans are unfamiliar with this notion of existential freedom. Are you a victim subject to manipulation, or are you a Being capable of agency? If you're capable of the high-watch described in my book, you can Notice Your Own Ridiculous, and laugh about it. I call that our Animal Superpower!—available to all humans—but, only if they're awake enough to use it.
But, to access true existential freedom, you'll likely need to access a whole other dimension. I'm talking about the dimension which guides animals to scurry to high ground before a tsunami decimates a shoreline. I'm talking about the weirdness of my wife speaking what I'm thinking. I'm talking about the mystical, an aspect of life that exists outside the spectrum of common awareness. I assert that we all have access to this aspect, but our noisy minds tend to drown it out. Or, when people do hear it, they second guess it away. My wife once heard it, and didn't get on the jet that didn't make it to its destination. She's quite happy about that.
Happy For No Damn Reason is stepping out of the animal codes that drive traditional values and conservative ways, to live a life of spontaneous wonder as the loving being you were meant to be.
BTW: Look up “doosh” in the online Urban Dictionary. I'm one of the Up Votes on the second definition.
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