A Dream About Happiness

Some time ago I had a dream one night. It doesn’t really matter that this time it was a dream — the feeling and the plot were so real that it could just as well have happened “for real”.

In the dream I stood in front of an audience. I was giving a lecture on happiness. Then one of the listeners asked a question: “Teacher — you talk about happiness — and it all makes so much sense, it is so logical, so obvious, so believable. And yet — why aren’t you/don’t you look happy yourself?”

I looked at myself — I sensed how I was moving, how I was feeling, what my facial expression was. And indeed — I was businesslike, academically serious, focused on the talk — unsmiling. At the same time I wasn’t gloomy or sad, but I certainly wasn’t visibly happy either. Just neutrally, everyday serious. Realizing this, I answered the questioner: “Thank you, one moment please, I’ll just…”.

I closed my eyes, turned my attention to my body, my thoughts, my feelings — and began to change them. (Those who have been to my classes will know how to change them and what exactly to do.) I felt my chest fill with joy, a smile appear on my face, the wrinkles on my forehead smooth out, my face relax, and myself becoming happier and happier. After ~20 seconds I opened my eyes and turned to the audience again:

“Thank you. Thank you for the reminder. As you saw, this is exactly how it happens. Even when we know how to be happy, and we also know that we can be happy whenever we want, we can forget it. I had forgotten. I had put all my attention on the talk and had forgotten how I myself was feeling. I was telling you the theory instead of demonstrating it in action. Now, thanks to this question, this reminder, I can demonstrate in practice what I am talking about. Changing my state to a happy one. Thank you.

We all need reminders like this. And if we don’t remember it ourselves, it is good when someone reminds us from the outside. Thank you.”

After this episode the dream ended. I woke up in my bed. But my heart was still full of a sweet feeling of happiness. The same as it is now, as I remember this dream and write this text.

You could say that the dream demonstrated to me the very technique I had talked about so often in my classes — and although I had practiced it before, since the dream I have been doing it more and more often. Happiness is a skill, and like any other skill, it develops through practice — repeating it again and again and again.

We can be happy whenever we choose to be. Always.