Much of the time, happiness doesn’t seem like a choice but something that happens to us that we don’t have a lot of control over. Sometimes we’re happy and sometimes we aren’t. Happiness is usually experienced as a feeling that is the result of getting what we want—life finally lines up with our desires, and we feel happy. The kind of happiness that is a feeling, or emotion, comes and goes like every other emotion. It’s dependent on whether life is meeting our desires or not. The feeling of happiness or unhappiness is tied to desires and, therefore, to the egoic state of consciousness. We feel up or down, depending on whether life is going our way or not, according to our egoic desires.

That kind of soaring, giddy, top-of-the-world happiness feels great; the ego lives for it and wishes life would always feel that way. And it resents the fact that it doesn’t. To the ego, anything less than that happiness feels dull, uninteresting—and wrong. The ego’s desire for life to bring constant happiness, when it doesn’t, is actually the cause of unhappiness. Underlying that, is anger at life—anger at not getting our way.

Depression is very much related to this. When we feel that life is treating us badly and not bringing us what we want, we feel angry and sad, and if these feelings go on long enough, we experience depression. Life feels like it isn’t good enough, and what we have seems to be not enough, and the possibility of getting what we want seems hopeless. Depression is a mental disorder (and can also have a biological component). It is what happens when we believe the ego’s version of reality: Life isn’t good enough, I’m not good enough, and life and I will never be. It is an incomplete view of life. It is seeing the glass as half empty and overlooking everything that is worth celebrating.

When we are lost in the ego’s point of view, it is easy to overlook the other point of view that exists simultaneously, which is a more complete and, therefore, truer point of view—the view of our true Self, or Essence. We are free to identify with the incomplete view of reality (the ego) or with the complete view of reality (Essence). Life supports our identifying with the truth, and shows us the falseness of the incomplete view when we believe it. We relax and feel content, peaceful, and loving when we see through the eyes of Essence, and we feel the opposite when we see life through the eyes of the ego.

We are free to choose which way we will perceive life once we realize that there is a choice. This choice isn’t so easy to recognize when we are giving our attention completely to the egoic mind (the voice in our head) and the thoughts about “me,” or the false self. But once we turn our attention to this very simple moment, we can begin to experience the truth—that life is good and this moment is precious.

When we choose to see life through the eyes of Essence, we experience happiness, but it isn’t the giddy high that the ego experiences when it gets its way. Rather, it is a subtle contentment with life as it is and a willingness to respond to life naturally, to flow along with it and enjoy where it is taking us, to welcome the adventure that it is. The ego doesn’t really experience life as flowing and moving. To it, life is more like a battle to be won. But life is going somewhere, and we are part of its movement. We are co-creating with life and affecting that movement to some extent, but we aren’t determining its entire course.

The beauty is that goodness underlies life, so Life’s way is good and wise and can be trusted. Knowing this allows us to relax and enjoy life even when it isn’t delivering what we want. When we learn to trust Life and want what Life wants for us, we experience true happiness, which only disappears if we identify with the ego again and its belief that happiness comes from getting certain desires met, from having its way.

Once we see that there are two possible perspectives in every moment, not just one—the ego’s or Essence’s—then it is possible to become free of the ego. We are given a choice, and when we realize that we have a choice, then freedom from the suffering caused by the ego’s limited perspective is possible. Happiness is a choice, and it is really a very simple choice: Choose the perspective that doesn’t cause you to be tense, stressed, unloving, or unhappy. Choose the point of view that allows you to relax and be content and that allows love to flow. How funny it is that we are programmed to choose the opposite, when what feels right and good, what brings contentment and peace, is the choice that leads to happiness.