Everything we do is only for the sake of happiness?
A human being isn't a singularity but a plurality. Thus our emotions, feelings, aspirations and actions do not derive from the same place. In our mind there is a great variety of qualities and tendencies which have a different level of vibration. Our ego also has not an individual nature although appears to be atomic. Our ego is an aggregation of small egos; each one of them has its own will and preferences.
Our actions and our goals derive from different places. There are the instictive needs which compel us find food, shelter and clothes. Then there is the diserous part of the mind which impel us find pleasure, power, fame, money, etc. Our actions can also spring from desires that are related with our intellectual level (desire for knowledge, science etc.) and can also derive from our Soul. Our Soul impels us seek wisdom, love, freedom, peace and bliss.
The desirous part according the gunic constitution of the mind can be very brutal and animalistic or very refine. According the guna (sattva, rajas, tamas) that predominates in our mind our deires and emotions assume a very gross and brutal form or a very subtle and fine one. Between these two poles there is a great degradation of the quality of our emotional expressions and desires.
The desirous ego wants satisafaction and pleasure instead of happiness.. When for example the ego of gluttony wants to eat chocolate, doesn't seek happiness but pleasure and satisfaction. And obviously we cannot equate pleasure with happiness. At least this is my experience. Pleasure and happiness are two experiences of an altogether different quality and vibration. Altough a pleasurable experience can be accompanied by happiness (read here why: The two ways we experience happiness), happiness doesn't derive from the pleasureble experience.
Another example is smoking Cigarettes. Smoking can give some kind of pleasure, or to relieve a little our tension and anxiety. In this case we also see that this habit is utilized not to feel happy but to get pleasure or to overcome a sence of uneasiness and dicontentment. For the same reason many times we eat some sweet or a snack. You can say that this emotional relieve helps somehow our well being; I cannot say no but is this happiness? Just feel relieved from uneasiness is happiness?
The desirous part according the gunic constitution of the mind can be very brutal and animalistic or very refine. According the guna (sattva, rajas, tamas) that predominates in our mind our deires and emotions assume a very gross and brutal form or a very subtle and fine one. Between these two poles there is a great degradation of the quality of our emotional expressions and desires.
The desirous ego wants satisafaction and pleasure instead of happiness.. When for example the ego of gluttony wants to eat chocolate, doesn't seek happiness but pleasure and satisfaction. And obviously we cannot equate pleasure with happiness. At least this is my experience. Pleasure and happiness are two experiences of an altogether different quality and vibration. Altough a pleasurable experience can be accompanied by happiness (read here why: The two ways we experience happiness), happiness doesn't derive from the pleasureble experience.
Another example is smoking Cigarettes. Smoking can give some kind of pleasure, or to relieve a little our tension and anxiety. In this case we also see that this habit is utilized not to feel happy but to get pleasure or to overcome a sence of uneasiness and dicontentment. For the same reason many times we eat some sweet or a snack. You can say that this emotional relieve helps somehow our well being; I cannot say no but is this happiness? Just feel relieved from uneasiness is happiness?
Our aspiration for higher knowledge or wisdom (our aspiration to find the truth), for happines, love and freedom don't derive from our ego or the lower mind but from our Soul becasuse these higher qualities are the innate nature of our Soul.
We must explore more deeply the subconscious levels of mind to realize that the desirous ego doesn't want happiness but only to satisfy its own imaginery compulsive need for pleasurable experience.
Moreover a part of our ego is so perverted that wants to be unhappy and miserable; it wants to create suffering fot itself and others also.
So, the individual is not a singularity but a plurrality; our lower egoic self, desirous ego wants pleasure and our higher Self seeks happiness, freedom and wisdom. Our Soul wants to experience consciously Its Ananda (Bliss) quallity through an individual self (a human being).
The great battle of life is to conquer the lower egoic self which wants sensual pleasures and turn our mind and attention in our heart where resides eternal peace, ananda and freedom.
Love and light