When will the spiritual path make me happier?

Many spiritual seekers get embrace the path because the want to stop feeling badly - or to feel better. Because turning on the lights in a room reveals all the dirt - the path can increase one's suffering. But what happens if we stop trying to manage the moods. What if "good," "bad," "profane," and "holy" are seen to be just thoughts? They lose their power when you stop judging them constantly. If there is energy in the body associated with a thought or feeling, it's simply allowed to be.

Compassion literally means “feeling with.” How can you feel compassion until you are willing to feel what you feel? If it's sad, mad, glad or bad - what if we just feel it, open to it. Then we feel (if we don't contract or aim to condemn the thought) a raw tenderness. this is a willingness to be vulnerable, and for those who stake their identity to be on a spiritual path, very humbling. 

If we’ve been on a spiritual path for years, we feel we should not be feeling these fears, anxiety, anger, sorrow or helplessness. When we are able to acknowledge these feelings and surrender fully to them, we’re open to the full range of experiences of being a human.

This is not indulging or wallowing because it's not about the stories in the mind. In becoming open, accepting and present, we access without judgment the feeling - not our feelings about the feeling. We don't get stuck on an identity like “poor me,” - we relate directly to the feeling sadness beyond story. 

It is actually being willing to meet, include, welcome, allow, open to, and even surrender to whatever feeling or thought that is being experienced. It takes bravery to acknowledge, feel, and open to what your mind feels it needs to be happy. Inside of that, you find causeless joy. We open to the conditions the mind believes must be needed to love ourselves or others, and inside of that, we find unconditional love. Indulgence means fixating on the need and being run by it - but this is not about needing to act - this is merely to see.