By Siri-Gian Khalsa

Yogi Bhajan promised us happiness when he named our premier Yoga and natural Lifestyle organization “3HO”, which stands for Healthy, Happy and Holy Organization.  We got the “Healthy” and we got the “Holy,” but what the heck is “Happy”?

Does Happy mean that a woman will have the husband, house and kids of her dreams by a certain age?  Who can promise anyone that?  Does Happy mean that one is well established in their career of choice while making plenty of income and being well recognized for their abilities by a certain age?

Oh, my Darling, what happens when you reach that “magic age” and your expectations have not been fulfilled?  Is that your do or die age?  Would you be looking for a bridge to leap off of, or crying your eyes out from despair, or being so depressed and dissociated that you can’t live your great potential in the life that is right in front of you?  Hmmm.

Here is the situation.  The preceding little storied are actually examples of expectations!  And over the years, I have found that “Expectations Will Kill You!”  No joke!

You can see here in these short scenarios that there is no way that anyone can actually control these outcomes, so what are you left with when they don’t materialize?  Only the very opposite of happiness, which is pure depression, feelings of being lost with no place left for you in this world and your life, consequently the only thing left for you to do may be to simply jump out of your body… permanently.

And so, just where would that take you?  How about to another lifetime where you have a similar setup to give you yet another chance to unravel your mind’s expectations, so that you may relax in your own true Self Love and Connection while in this world.  So, what a drag to not only have to face this situation over and over through lifetimes when you don’t solve your expectations and reactions, but when in a lifetime, you just waste your life by creating huge expectations with your mind.  And then when they don’t pan out according to YOUR plan, you drop into the blackest pit of self-non-acceptance and overwhelming feelings of non-worthiness to the point that you really can’t engage in your life.  You basically dump it!

Now, can you see that if this is your habit, you in fact are paving your own way to failure and doom?  I don’t care who told you that something would bring you great happiness-your family, your culture, school, friends, church, etc.  If you don’t hook up entirely with your own Soul, your own very precious state of being, your kindness, your true contentment, your very real love of yourself and others-no matter who they are, without judgment, then you have doomed yourself to true sadness and deep pain.

“But what about ‘The Secret’ you say?”

Well, from I have seen, as it is presented, my observation is that it is pretty bogus.  I have only seen people make themselves really sick!”  They deeply believe that if they keep repeating their expectations over and over, that it works like a mantra to make something happen.  But it only ties them in tighter and tighter knots.  When you repeat a mantra’s sacred sound, there is an energetic healing ability in that sound current to affect a situation.

You fully allow the change to occur with no strings attached.  But with only our mind or ego’s desire to cover our insecurities with the object of expectations, we have put ourselves on very, very thin ice where we may emotionally fall through at any moment.  And that approach messes up the Divine’s true creative process for us.  Yikes!

Here is Reality as I see it.

Happiness comes when we don’t try to force Adi Shakti or Divine Mother to do our bidding because she is always doing her best to lead us along the path of our growth and our destiny.  And when we finally RELAX into that growth is when we are truly happy!

I know that sounds picayune and overused, but don’t dare dismiss it if you are truly on the hunt for happiness.  Otherwise, my Dear, you will miss it entirely.

Each one of us has an extraordinary and most unique path through lifetimes in which we work with our karmas-those situations seen as both “good” and “bad.”  As we work with them to fully come to neutral, that is living from the Soul Space without being grabbed by our habitual mind sets and emotions so that we can truly deal with the reality that is facing us in the moment, that is when HAPPINESS begins to appear seemingly out of nowhere.  The simple trick is that we are taking responsibility to change those habits of expectations and insecurities that have incessantly dragged us down so that natural happiness can arise!

You can work to neutralize the palpable charges that come with those old habits.  For instance, you can first identify when your mind and emotions are in a snit, and determine that that difficulty is NOT caused by lack of that thing that you thought you needed to cover your insecurities, e.g. lots of money, someone to love you unconditionally-even though you don’t love yourself unconditionally, and so on.

Once you have made that awareness that this “thing” doesn’t result from the action of outside “stuff,” or people, or accolades, or put downs, or positions, or love from others to make up for your own habitual self-defeat, etc.-that is when you realize that the path to happiness is one of focused healing so that you may not be deterred by the smoke screen of habitual negative stuff.  But rather you let or you allow your own natural, kind, loving Soul energy and cozy Consciousness arise! That is, you work to let go of those “charges” in your mind and body.  “Let go and Let God”, eh?

Yogi Bhajan would call these habitual ways of thinking and feeling “Trances.”  They are like repeating virtual reality, and when triggered, they just take over our whole mental and emotional state with their own scenario, which usually includes blaming ourselves or others with all of the associated drama.  Trances are like digitized information that is not stored on a DVD, but rather in your own energy system.  And when triggered, that digitized movie totally, subconsciously plays through you.  And reliving that same crappy scenario over and over again as in the movie “Groundhog Day” is what really makes you unhappy!  The effects may be that you stop breathing or breathe shallowly, or your whole body tenses up giving you very real physical pain-even heart attacks and strokes.  And it opens the way for any number of diseases by weakening your resistance.  And since it happens over and over again, it makes you believe that this drama is really, really the Truth!

On the contrary, true creativity and happiness appears when it is allowed to arise naturally from your Source.  It is so subtle!  This happiness is not like birthday giddiness. It is not feeling better than others or superior to them to hide your own insecurity.  But when you relax into the Soul Space, you do feel the real flow that comes.

And even though difficult challenges are being thrown at you right and left, they are coming for the sake of your very progress through lifetimes as you come to this great flow of neutral to deal with those challenges in the most appropriate way.  And you do that with the simple partnership between your most humble mind gleaning information from positive and negative mind, and then as they finally give it all up to neutral mind sourced in Soul.  And that, my Friends is called Rising Spirit, or more precisely “Cherdi Kala”!

And guess what?  This Cherdi Kala is true Happiness.

Yogi Bhajan clarified happiness as contentment.  It is when your mind and emotions are not perturbed, your energetic flow and your natural love are moving faster than the speed of visual light in your Being, but it feels so kind, graceful, full and unperturbed.  And this is actually our quest of lifetimes.  What do you think of that?

Now, to neutralize those powerful Trances, Yogi Bhajan gave us thousands of mantras, kriyas, meditations, banis, the Siri Guru Granth Sahib, guidelines for conscious living and more so that we wouldn’t go off our rocker, and so that we can heal or neutralize that which has kept us chained to destructive thinking and emotional replays. That is the very real life that we are now living here on Earth and that we call our spiritual quest.

When we truly do follow Soul and relax into It’s guidance and flow in that neutral space, that is when we experience kindness, support, strength, even-temper, ability, and so much more. That is a most surprising occurrence!  This is when we live in the most subtle, but most powerful condition of Cherdi Kala. This is when we train ourselves to be totally present and do our best to realize that Mother, Adi Shakti is giving us material that we can process so that She help us weave our own true Destiny.  And we can trust that whatever happens is given to us as situations or challenges in this video game of life where we can let go of those binding energetic charges called Trances.  That is the real path to Union, you know.  And as you TRUST that what is being given to you in the instant is according to the will of God, Mother, Soul, then you can just let your mind be silent and watch that amazing play of events unfold for your benefit.  It is such an amazing magic show!  And being grateful for this astonishing flow keeps it coming.

But this is a condition that you train yourself to move over to. You consciously educate yourself over and over again to not react to circumstances, but to relax into the condition of neutrality-not numbness, so that you can truly see the reality of the situation and deal with it in the best way all ’round, rather than screwing it up by giving into your Trance being triggered and taking you down with others along with you.

Of course, in the spiritual lexicon, you have heard that having intention is all important to manifesting what you truly believe you want.  And it is.  You just tell God, Soul, Divine Mother what you really desire and then let Them weave together that vision in such an amazing way that you could never ever have thought of.  Now perhaps the first thing that will happen is that you feel that you get hit up the side of the head with a 2 x 4.  That incident is actually your first challenge in healing or transforming your old Trances so that the Divine Once can actually work with you to manifest what you would like to see or have.  Otherwise you tie up the “creation lines” with your own squirrely Trances and demands that things happen YOUR way, rather than by giving up to discover the Divine Way, which is way better than anything that we could ever think of.  So, please trust, let go and keep up.  This is the path of true success to fulfill your Destiny in this life, which I assure you is tons more satisfying than any other quest that your mind or your culture could ever provide you.

Now, if you have never tried this approach-right from your very roots, you may judge that this is a fluffy, space cadet, Pollyanna life practice.  But I assure you that if you are serious about being happy, you will give this a try, or better yet, you will commit to it.  Or perhaps you may have to face something totally hurtful and off the wall before you actually give up what you thought you knew and try this approach, because after all it does go against everything that our culture teaches us and judges us for.

So, Dear One, I am wishing and praying for your own happiness and for you to ease through the walls of self-hatred, self-neglect, loss of connection, and so much more.  Transform the hurt and pain at it roots as you relax those heavy duty trances to BE that precious Flow with Soul to experience a life of true contentment.  That, Friends, is real HAPPINESS!