Success and happiness- Are they mutually exclusive?

I was watching the other night a documentary on the legendary broadcaster Anthony Bourdain on CNN. The show was focusing on his lifestyle, his relationships or absence of them, his difficulty achieving self-love and his reliance on opioids to fill his inner emptiness, choosing to escape from reality rather than confront the demons which led him to his suicide/alleged overdose from heroin; an addiction which he talked about openly if not reluctantly.

Addiction is a sensitive topic to discuss because it reveals our fragility, vulnerability, weaknesses of character, and choices we make to avoid life’s hardships and struggles.

There seems to a connection between addiction and creative expression, impulsive or compulsive behaviours, and Attention-deficit–hyper disorder. The penchant for continuous travel and working long hours lends itself to dependency on substances which then assist one in escaping the down time of being a celebrity.

Getting back to the title of this blog: is Happiness and Success mutually exclusive or can one be successful and happy?

I would think that happiness would automatically be a requisite for being successful or at least a major attribute to feeling one had accomplished or achieved some measure of self-fulfillment.

Being fulfilled: satisfied with one’s station in life may be considered as being the yardstick by which we measure success. Recognition of one’s achievements by others seems to be, for me, to be a measure of my success. Earlier this year I received an email advising me that I’d reached the milestone of 10,000 views of my blog: Spiritual enrichment-Ways to be Well.

I have to admit that at the moment in time that I received this accolade I thought it was pretty significant and that I could give myself credit for some measure of achievement as a writer(Broadly defined).

However one might say that success would be measured by the commercial or financial success which would be accompanying an achievement of publishing by the $$dollars attached to the achievement or even emotionally by the number of comments and replies to the blogs which gave some measure of substantial meaning to the enlightenment of spirit.

By my yardstick, I didn’t achieve success from this achievement. I didn’t make any money from it, directly or indirectly that I noticed; I didn’t get any illuminating comments or number of forwards which would make me think that others thought as I did about what I wrote and deemed the words or wisdom worthy of being shared and distributed.

Was I happy? Am I happy? Yes, of course. Happy is a state of being in the absence of doing.

Because I don’t measure my happiness by what I do or achieve. I measure my happiness by the absence of pain and suffering in my life. The opposite of pain and suffering, for me, is peacefulness and joy.

I feel that I have a modest amount of peace and joy in my soul. I am a recovered addict/substance overuser of tobacco and alcohol over a period of 22 years, and am now 32 years free of dependency.

This is a measure of personal success and inner celebrity-dom. I am pleased with who I am since starting on the journey of freeing myself from addiction when I was 37 years old. I promised myself that I would live life one day at at time, re-committing to myself every day and doing the best I could to maintain my sobriety. After 12 years of total abstinence from alcohol I came to a realization that I could indulge in consuming alcohol beverages with moderation and that I didn’t have to drink till I passed out or got drunk. I had the realization that I was no longer the man who was the addict 12 years before.

I am now celebrating 32 years of sobriety, as I call it, free of the need to consume alcohol, and aware that I am not dependent on it to be well.

yet also free to indulge or consume alcohol daily, if desired, to maintain health, inner peace, and joy.

Is alcohol necessary to be well…. of course not, it’s just been my path to keep it in my diet without judgment.

How I feel about myself at any moment in time is my measure of success. Whether I am happy is not a question I ask myself anymore because I’m living every moment in life as it occurs and feeling joy in its presence.

Peace and joy live in absolute absence of doing or achieving any act of performance for oneself or others. Yes I sometimes allow myself to feel joy in the assistance to someone else as an act of service. The joy comes from having the freedom to help someone else, not from the satisfaction of the ego, but of the heart. The heart is bigger when we help someone else through an act of service or donation of a part of our acquired wealth .

Successful as a musician, singer, songwriter and performer/recording engineer.

I decided in 2002 when I was 50 years old that I wanted to sing, compose songs with lyrics and melodies, record them and then share them with the public and friends. This year is my 20 year anniversary and it coincides with my 20th anniversary of being a self-employed registered massage therapist operating a private healing clinic. But I digress.

The musical achievement has resulted in my purchasing two keyboards, and other miscellaneous recording equipment and accessories and perfecting the art. I have composed and recorded approx. 110 songs and shared them on various platforms: myspace, reverbnation, soundcloud, instagram, and facebook from 2007-2022. In 2013 I took my best 45 songs and built up three sets which i performed at a coffeehouse cafe in Transcona Winnipeg for friends and guests of l’Arche Tovacafé. I had a tip-hat on a stool and got $80.00 one night out of the three performances. I had the opportunity to be joined by Ross McCoomb, a friend of over 47 years who is a self-taught percussionist adept at the spoons. That to me was a successful event at the time and will always be one of fond memories.

I was able , in 2007, after taking a week workshop at Hollyhock Retreat Resort with Michael Waters, to get the assistance from new friends at Etched in Sound music studio to arrange and produce one of my songs °Tear the Barriers Down° with added drum track and background vocals .

Over the years I uploaded my compositions on http://www.soundcloud.com/RogerRFontaine

and on: https://soundcloud.com/pranicroger

Holy Presence

Holy Presence.

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Spreading the teachings of pranic healing

Spreading the teachings of pranic healing.

Re-discovering the child within is key to relinquishing our attachments to ideas and thoughts which restrain us from being free and unfettered from the chains of existence and cravings. To be witness to all that is, to feel through one’s essence the emptiness of all which is, to accept that this life is transparent and transient considering all the good we can create displacing the evil and self-centeredness which prevails around us.Discovering that a life of service liberates us from future lives of pain and suffering guarantees that we will carry our consciousness of our spiritual progress into our next incarnations. Trust and faith, hope and joy, light and power to all. Blessings, namaste.

Seeing the see-er

I’ve been reading Ken Wilber’s book: A brief history of everything.  In the later section of the book when talking about fulcrum 9 he mentions the cyclical nature of existence, of how we transcend birth and death and attain or reach ‘Emptiness’.  Although he does call it ‘full’ because it is ‘Source’ and ‘Essence’ of all creation.  It is ‘that’ from which all that is comes from.

He calls this ‘state’ precisely that, a ‘state’ because it is neither a place nor does it have a location inside or outside of our ‘selves’. He doesn’t go as far as calling this ‘Emptiness’: ‘Soul’ yet I am assuming that this is the ‘state-being’ which he refers to.

He speaks of rising above the stage of  subtle  ‘being’ to ascend into the ‘causal’ state.  It seems that when achieving this stage  of ‘Being’ one’s individual identity must meld with all which is ‘not’. Because at this level there is not ‘I’, there is no ‘we’, there is no ‘it’ or ‘its’; there is the state beyond matter, yet we intuit it to be a state of being nonetheless.  When we associate our causal state as being pre-matter, a constant of energy and emptiness and space. Can we give identity to -God- that is the totality of what is, what has been, and what will be eternally and infinitely, beyond time and space, containing energy, matter, dark or otherwise, imbued with a consciousness which contains all and which transcends all.

I am a being of divine love

I am a being of Divine Love and Intent formed into a Man/Woman body with an intelligent Mind capable of thoughts and emotions. I am Soul trapped within a Substance/Form from which I create my Heaven or my Hell. I am That I am.
I am Energy/Essence and Light able to express itself through the WORD.
My Soul evolves or devolves as I either spiral upwards and inwards towards my inner God or as I become distracted,outward and downward into lower Nature.
It is the idea of separateness and Self which removes us from Heaven. Hell is defined as having lost one’s way home. The parable of the Prodigal Son defines Hell.
His return defines the way to Heaven. The Buddha showed us the Middle Way, the path of moderation and non-excessiveness. The Christ showed us the meaning of the Word and the Heart. Remorse begets forgiveness and Love. Through Free Will there is a relinquishing of Self to the concept of Love of Others seen as The Path which reclaims Freedom and restores Heaven within.

How are we connected?

Do we sometimes find ourselves unconnected? Do we ask ourselves the question: How am I connected to a grain of sand on a beach in Belize? or how am I connected to a drop of water in the ocean off the coast of Japan? Or connected to a frog in the rainforests of the Amazon? The answer is in the perception of fluidity which water, fire, earth, and air bring to the movement of matter and energy on the planet and throughout the universe. Molecules are transmitted by those four elements throughout the globe over millions of years are are connected by the fifth element: space. And to think that through planetary collisions it is possible to perceive that our molecules could be floating throughout our solar system and beyond through meteor and asteroid encounters. But beyond matter, it is energetically that we are mostly connected being all part of the planetary energetic whole connected through consciousness and intent and thought.

satchitananda- enjoying blissful recognition of one’s essence(being) and existence (form). How to describe to someone the colour blue to someone who is blind?
The being present to our essence is a state, not an appearance; thus only someone who has been in that state can understand another who is there; spiritual blindness exists in all those who’ve forgotten their essence as being spirit; thus their physical existence becomes dominated by ego and mind, by self and attainment and becoming;
‘being’ becomes a difficult challenge and for many a daunting questing which is not undertaken because of fear and resistance to surrendering control; ‘mind’ wants to control and ‘fear’ takes over when mind loses control over outcomes.
We must remain empathetic towards these persons and continue to speak to the need for ending pain and suffering delusions of ego and mind.
The path of overcoming fear and of choosing courage and vulnerability is spoken and chosen; the proper perception of Humanity being one with all other living beings, of the disintegration of mind’s habit of discrimination, prejudice, and all non-virtuous behaviours which separate one from other by creating other.

there are many opportunities to share one’s inner world with facebook, twitter, vimeo, youtube, google, yahoo, hotmail, gmail, and the list is endless, it seems. There are so many avenues for blogging and putting oneself out there to indicate differences and similarities of opinion and values or beliefs of reality. What helps us find out about each other is the ‘tags’ which we place on our writings and blogs to indicate the emphasis of thought. I welcome feedback.

Addictive tendencies begin when we consume our first…

Addictive tendencies begin when we consume our first soother. The result of instant gratification sets the stage for future attempts to reduce stress in one’s internal environment.

The soother is a substitute for the thumb as a self-controllable method of managing stress.

As our psyche evolves we discover other alternatives to our thumb, namely sugar and candy and playing with toys. Some children discover that they can manage their stress through destructive behaviour, and if uncorrected in early children, become our adult deviants.

Adults still resort to using sweets to soothe anxiety as demonstrated by the presence of ‘mints’ in dentists’ and lawyers’ offices.

There was a televised study which tested children by leaving a bowl of candy on the table and monitoring how long children would take to consume a candy once the adult left the room.

This was a good case in point to measure how many children were able to resist the tendency towards ‘instant gratification’ to relieve stress in an unknown or unfriendly environment.

The result is that most children took the candy within various amounts of time after the adult left the room.

Those who didn’t take the candy were in the minority and were probably resisting to take the candy because of prior socialization of being told to ‘ask before taking’ as a principle of behaviour.

Some may have resisted taking the candy out of a deeper instilled ‘fear motive’ somehow knowing that some adult was watching even when left alone.

The invisible ‘God’ principle may have been active in deterring some children from taking the candy.

Would you have resisted taking the candy or would you have been quick to indulge once left alone?

I would definitely fall into the second category.

Fortunately, for most of us, as we develop cognitively our ability to resist urges and tendencies to self-gratify becomes more selective and we do develop some resistance to instant gratification urges.

However some of us, because of poor cognitive conditioning, never develop the ability to resist urges and tendencies to self-gratify.

So those of us in this category constantly take advantage of opportunities to self-gratify, perhaps at first with sugar, candy, food (sweet, salty,caffeine,chocolate), masturbation, alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling,work, etc.

The likelihood of succumbing to addictive tendencies behaviour is dependent on repetition and access to gratifying substances. Take the candy and alcohol away and the psyche will have to find something else with which to self-gratify. The psyche will want to find a substitute to self-gratify.

I believe that it’s important to differentiate between addictive substances depending on their physiological and psychological addictive qualities which reinforce the frequency of urges.

The occurrence of increasing obesity in our society highlights the increase in over-eating as the method of choice to relieve stress in our societies, manifested as response to fear or anxiety.

This increase in insecurity about the future is causing the increase in obesity and over-eating, alcoholism, and self-medicating with pharmaceutical drugs and illegal drugs.

The relatively steady rate of smoking in society varies modestly depending on the frequency of smoking-cessation promotion by the health authorities and is at around 30%. However the rate of smoking has been relatively gender-constant in the past at 50/50, there is a current shift towards more young girls smoking than boys indicating that they handle stress less well than boys, and/or they are exposed to more peer pressure to smoke than boys because they are generally more interactive socially than boys. The modern incidence of predominantly male use of virtual video war games may contribute to explain its use as a substitute of gratification replacing cigarettes.