Hey A B,
So you have had a few opportunities to see how happiness really depends on what's happening inside, hun?
I have also noticed that when I am happy inside, whatever happens around me turns out a lot better. Have you noticed that, too?
I am really convinced that being happy isn't about some "achievement trip." More than that, I have spend hours analysing my own achievement trips, and have understood, through meditative introspection, the phenomenological components that formed such trips in myself.
I myself once was an "achiever," and I was doing it to chase the energetic high caused by reinforcing a psychological identity --- one likes to see oneself as "good/successful/intelligent/seductive/beautiful/whatever," and each event in one's life which is seen as a confirmation of that self-image causes somatic pleasure, --- and of course each shred of evidence against such self-image causes mental pain --- and it is this pleasure that was chased after, and this pain which was avoided. In my case the self-image was "I am intelligent." This was basically addictive behavior, and I'm glad to slowly be getting rid of that.
While there was enough stuff happening to support my own self-image, I was indeed "happy." However I was also completely unsensitive to what was happening inside me, and I couldn't see my own self-image-of-intelligent-person-addiction pulling the strings. This self-image made me say and do silly things, act defensively and aggressively, it made me feel superior to others, it made me feel somehow "apart from the world." To get you an idea of things that I felt at the time, I will use this
theatrical dramatic voice: Oh! How lonely it is to be so intelligent! What a stupid world full of stupid people so-unlike-me! How can so many people not see the obvious! Oh, I am so right! (etc). Maybe other super-achievers feel this sort of things also? Maybe my happiness was tainted by delusion?
Not to mention that, after my own achievement-trip crashed (it turns out I wasn't as intelligent as I'd like to think after all!), I suffered a great deal. Furthermore, when I got the nerve to look at it for what it really was (a silly fantasy), I found it best to do away with this achievement trip as soon as I possibly could. And I'm happier since.
Of course, I don't know if the super-achievers CCC has come in contact with act with similar motivations, or engage in similar silly self-engrandising fantasies --- unlike CCC claims, I can not "out-analyse the best of them", and over time I have come to prefer analysing myself, letting others analyse themselves. Maybe you would prefer to do that too?
A B:
What I've been doing is finding that fear through a variety of means and then simply observing it. it usually starts in the pit of my stomach and when it peaks it has me by the throat pretty good. When it's really bad my teeth actually rattle a bit.
You seem to be investigating a specific piece of your psychology, and you seem to be doing it well. I suspect that whatever you have to learn from this specific aspect will eventually be learned, and you'll be able to deal with fear a whole lot better because of having done this. Then you will move on, and there will be more stuff, different stuff. (but maybe it'll be something else entirely!)
Take care,
Bruno