[quoteYes I've often wondered 'why happiness'.
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Because you have a choice. You don't have a choice to be have an identity or not but you do have a choice as to which mood you identify with. (you have a choice to start a process that ultimately extinguishes the identity but you have no control over when that will actually happen.)
My current understanding is that the aim is actually to cease 'being', to minimise the presence of the 'me' being in your conscious experience. Doing that - having a minimal 'me' being in your consciousness - inevitably results in felicity. Felicity and having a minimal 'me' go together.
So the aim is to keep your brain operating in a condition where 'I' am almost non-existent - which happens to result in happiness - until the brain finally clicks over into either a PCE or AF.
That said: I don't know how to be happy at will, or how to minimise 'being' at will. It still only works for me half the time at best.
Do what works but this isn't how I do it. I suspect every process is different and I suspect that different people will need to approach it from different angles. For example, I began the journey by relentlessly analyzing the psyche and the primal instincts. That may have been totally unnecessary but it may have also primed the brain so that it could accept future truths. Somehow, I discovered how to choose happiness. A few days later, I discovered what happiness is and why one can choose it. For me, happiness is not wanting anything. Happiness leads to felicity and felicity leads to happiness. Both are optional. If you are feeling bad, you can choose felicity and that will take you towards happiness. When you are feeling good, your mind will often (though not even close to always) turn towards felicity which will help sustain your good mood.
Felicity is generated with the identity fully intact: It is a conscious decision to appreciate the minutiae of the world. Seeing a piece of gum on the sidewalk, noticing it's shape and color, remarking on the history of its existence is felicty. HAIETMOBA is observing mood: When you are feeling bad about, say, being chewed out by your boss in front of the whole office ask yourself, "Why does that make me feel bad? What would make me feel good?" The answer is often: "That makes me feel bad because I keep thinking about it. Do I want to feel bad? No! Is it productive to feel bad? No! So I'll try to stop thinking about it. What should I think about instead? I can conjure up a pleasant memory, fantasy, go over my to do list or practice felicity." And any of those options are perfectly fine so if you judge yourself harshly for not choosing felicity then ask yourself, "Why does that make me feel bad?" And re-start the whole process. This is clearing the trail. Eventually the trail will be wide open, paved and with signs!!! Also Trent likes to say that 'i am my feelings, my feelings are me' and I think that applies to your situation. The "presence of the 'me' being in your conscious experience" is a feeling in and of itself. That feeling and all other feelings like sadness and the like are You. To deny any of those feelings is a great waste of effort. Eventually the inmates will overtake the prison. And more the point, you can't understand something if you are busy denying them. This includes the feeling of being.
I hope that helps. I know I enjoyed writing it.