I began reading Robert Scheinfeld’s latest book, “The Ultimate Key to Happiness.” One of Robert’s previous books, “Busting Loose from the Money Game,” came to my awareness at a critical point in my life, when I was recovering from a serious ailment. His words resonated deeply, and a very active period of expansion was accelerated during that time. That was about four-and-a-half years ago, and I was looking forward to his latest offering.

Let me say first that I am about two-thirds of the way through the book, and am enjoying it greatly. However, I got a very unexpected surprise when I first began to read it.

In the first part of the book, Robert began explaining that it isn’t really things, or money or other material objects or situations that we really want; we just think we want them because we have the belief that they will make us happy. In other words, it is the happiness that we really want. This is not a new concept to me, and I don’t disagree with it at all. When I’ve come across this idea previously, I always resonated with it. This time, I simply felt no connection with the word, “happy.”

I found this shocking at first, and a bit disconcerting. How could this be? Of course everyone wants to be happy, and I am no exception. But again, this was not a reasoned response; it simply was. In that moment, it just didn’t seem as if happiness was what I was searching for.

Perhaps this is because I am now very aware that the mind is constantly searching, not in the hope of ever finding, but for the purpose of continuing the search. Maybe it’s not that I don’t feel connected to finding happiness, but maybe it’s that I am simply disconnected from the searching. Or it could be that there is something else that I want more than happiness, although I realize that what the book is talking about is something very deep and profound, not your garden variety happiness. (Garden variety? What does that mean, exactly?)

Maybe what I really want is something I already have. Some time ago, I began relaxing into the emotions, as opposed to resisting them. I have experienced them as simply an energy, not necessarily connected to a specific word, or my story at the time, and have also experienced that it is the resistance to these emotions that is often more challenging than the emotions themselves.

I have also experienced that once the emotion is faced, head-on, it begins to change. I have also seen that at that point, the mind can kick in with a barrage of thoughts, suggestions and persuasive rationalizations, all designed to persuade me to revert to the previous patterns that produced those emotions in the first place.

The way the mind and the emotions work together on this is nothing short of pure genius. It is hard to imagine anything more intricately creative and inventive than that.

This will be continued.