“Those who have little interest in spirituality shouldn’t think that human inner values don’t apply to you. The inner peace of an alert and calm mind is the source of real happiness and good health. Our human intelligence tells us which of our emotions are positive and helpful and which are damaging and to be restrained or avoided.”
― Dalai Lama XIV
The Dalai Lama is spelling something out about emotional intelligence that has nothing to do in part with spirituality of any form, even a non-spiritual interest. Humans want to be happy. In my opinion, that is even why we choose one spiritual direction or another. It makes us happier than some of the other choices available; even the path of no spirituality can be a relief.
“The inner peace of an alert and calm mind, is the source of real happiness and good health”.
Alert to what?
We need to be alert to the contents of our experience, such as feelings, sensations (breath, tension, posture, etc), intuitions, thinking, dreams and visions.
Calm mind?
Calm mind comes from calm alertness to our various experiences throughout the day, and at night, calm alertness with our dreams. A calm that is not floaty and not stiff. It is a calmness that is ready for what may arise from the inner life or the outer life. A mind that is even ready for a floaty mind or stiff mind. It is not trying to block anything out.
For example, if a sensation or feeling arises, we can repeatedly make our best attempt to experience it fully, with an attempt to be calm with it, and then calm with the lack of calmness to gradually learn the way of emotions.
Longing for “real happiness and good health” is fundamental but how it is satisfied is a very personal task. The Dalai Lama said, “Our human intelligence tells us which of our emotions are positive and helpful and which are damaging and to be restrained or avoided.”
This statement is very true, but some of our “intelligence” has been manipulated to confuse “positive” and “damaging” emotions. This manipulation is from socialization, and unexamined hurt and confusion. Part of the socialization process is taking in bad intel about how to live emotionally and even physically.
What is one to do when we cannot trust our own “intelligence”?
Turn our attention toward the confusion and the unexamined hurt. If problems repeat, just as when a dream repeats, that means there is more to feel, more to clarify, and more to understand. Then our fundamental intelligence can return.
So as we become more “alert” to our inner life with all its activity and be less afraid of feeling it, enjoying it, suffering it, and regaining our fundamental intelligence, then gradually we can experience more of the natural happiness that arises out of “the inner peace of an alert and calm mind,” because we are gradually becoming more patient with our misguided intelligence and we gradually value our struggle and confusion as a part of evolution, both personally and with the greater culture.
