The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is: Beyond Belief to Love, Fulfillment, and Spiritual Awakening

by Jon Bernie, Adyashanti (Foreword by)

Overview

What do you really want—isn’t it happiness? And what keeps you from being happy? Could it be that your need to cling so tightly to what you believe—about yourself and life, about how things should be—is what’s holding you back? In The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, a contemporary spiritual teacher in the non-duality tradition reveals how confronting and letting go of our negative beliefs about ourselves and the world ultimately sets us on the path toward an awakened life of profound joy, meaning, and purpose.

We all want peace and freedom and love and happiness, we all want to be fulfilled, but so many of us fail to reach the level of contentment we’ve built up in our minds, often believing there’s something wrong with us and blaming ourselves, others, or circumstances for our perceived lack of accomplishment or satisfaction. But the truth is, happiness is not something you have to get or achieve, because it’s something you already have—in fact, it’s what you already are.

With this book, author Jon Bernie—counselor, healer, and teacher in the lineage of Adyashanti—sheds light on the struggle to find happiness, showing how our unexamined beliefs distort our identities and make us suffer by creating unconscious tension in our bodies and minds. You’ll learn how to bring awareness to these patterns and begin to unravel the tightly held, negative beliefs that have overshadowed your existence, finally moving through them and into a brightening of experience and the realization of true happiness, liberation, peace, and fulfillment.

Using this compassionate, heart-centered approach, you’ll work with your feelings rather than resist them, and find guidance and support in surrendering to the relief of not knowing. You’ll also learn to relax into and live as awareness in your day-to-day life. Most importantly, you’ll discover that which you’ve been seeking but has never really been out of reach—something that is, indeed, beyond belief: the unbelievable happiness of accepting what is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626258730
Publisher:	New Harbinger Publications
Publication date:	05/01/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	978 KB

About the Author

Jon Bernie is a contemporary spiritual teacher whose teaching focuses on returning attention to the already enlightened state that lies at the core of our human experience. He has four decades of experience in the Zen, Theravada Buddhist, and Advaita traditions, and was formally asked to teach by Adyashanti in 2002. Jon is also an experienced healer and teacher of somatic embodiment, with training in the Alexander Technique, Zero Balancing, and Qigong. He leads classes and retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and does intensive, one-on-one work with individuals to facilitate consciousness development and deep emotional healing. To find out more about Jon and his teachings, please visit www.jonbernie.org.

Foreword writer Adyashanti is an American-born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence. Adyashanti is author of The Way of Liberation, Falling into Grace, Emptiness Dancing, True Meditation, and The End of Your World. Based in California, he lives with his wife, Mukti, and teaches throughout North America and Europe, offering satsangs, weekend intensives, silent retreats, and a live Internet radio broadcast.
Jon Bernie is a contemporary spiritual teacher whose teaching focuses on returning attention to the already enlightened state that lies at the core of our human experience. He has four decades of experience in the Zen, Theravada Buddhist, and Advaita traditions, and was formally asked to teach by Adyashanti in 2002. Bernie is also an experienced healer and teacher of somatic embodiment, with training in the Alexander Technique, Zero Balancing, and Qigong. He leads classes and retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and does intensive, one-on-one work with individuals to facilitate consciousness development and deep emotional healing.
Adyashanti is an American-born spiritual teacher devoted to serving the awakening of all beings. His teachings are an open invitation to stop, inquire, and recognize what is true and liberating at the core of all existence. Adyashanti is author of The Way of Liberation, Falling into Grace, Emptiness Dancing, True Meditation, and The End of Your World.

Table of Contents

Foreword vii

Introduction: Unbelievable Happiness 1

Author's Note: How to Read This Book 8

1 Taking the First Step 10

2 Path of the Heart 14

3 Path of Least Resistance 18

4 Simply Bringing Attention 21

5 The Positive Side of Belief 25

6 What Is Awakening? 29

7 The Essence of Meditation 33

8 Here to Be Here 38

9 Being, Not Doing 42

10 So What Can I Do? 45

11 Accepting What Is 48

12 Finding the Guidance System 51

13 Surrender 54

14 Meditation: Stillness and Balance 56

15 The Natural Force of Awakening 59

16 Questions That Release You 63

17 The Hallmark of Intimacy 67

18 Suggestions for Transformation 70

19 Just Listening 74

20 The Quality of Awareness 78

21 Transmission of the Flame 81

22 Mirror of Truth 85

23 Beyond Understanding 89

24 Working with Belief 92

25 If It Feels Good, Be It! 96

26 Clearing, Grounding, Integrating, and Expanding: A Seven-Step Protocol 100

27 Offering into Awareness 110

28 Expression and Inspiration 113

21 Mirror of Reality 116

30 "Hell Is Other People" 119

31 Relationship and the Spiritual Process 123

32 Love and Connection: Intimate Relationships 127

33 Looking in the Mirror 131

34 The Freedom Equation 133

35 Transmission: The Deepest Inheritance 138

36 Connected in the Big Heart 142

37 The Healer's Path 145

38 The Light That You Are 149

39 The Deepest Embrace 153

40 Lighten Your Load 156

41 Meditation: Going Deeper 160

42 The Rude Awakening 165

43 Being Is the Fullness of Life 169

44 Releasing the Struggle 172

45 Turn Toward What's Difficult 176

46 Change, Loss, and Tenderness 179

47 Be Right Here 182

48 Life Begins with Awakening 186

49 You Can't Follow Anyone Else 189

50 Living from the Heart 192

51 Planting Seeds of Intention 195

52 The Meaning and Purpose of Our Lives 198

Afterword: The Beginning of-Life 200

Interviews

Bernie resides in San Francisco, CA.

Editorial Reviews

This is a marvelous book—simple, clear, direct, full of light. What I love about Jon is that he doesn’t give us philosophy, metaphysics, or non-dual dogmatism. Instead, he points in plain language to the non-conceptual, embodied experiencing of this moment. He invites us to drop out of our busy minds and beliefs into the openness and immediacy of awareness and presence, not with the idea of attaining some result or crossing a finish line, but in a spirit of never-ending discovery, and always with complete acceptance of what is, just as it is. I love the spaciousness and the simplicity I feel in his words, and his gentle and loving approach to our human struggles. If I could recommend only one book on the subject of being awake here and now, this might well be it.”
—Joan Tollifson, teacher and author of Nothing to Grasp, Awake in the Heartland, Painting the Sidewalk with Water, and Bare-Bones Meditation


“In this wise collection of short teachings, Jon Bernie delivers the only news that’s fit to print—that happiness is not something you acquire or create, but what you are fundamentally, your birthright, your natural state. Just let go of your attachment to having life be a certain way and open to the ineffable perfection of what is!”
—Stephan Bodian, author of Wake Up Now and Beyond Mindfulness


“There is a plethora of spiritual teachers these days. Very few actually have the gift of transmission and deep freedom. Jon has both. In person, Jon is a force of presence. I was happy to experience that coming through in this book. His words could be spoken by anyone, but they have a power in them because of where they are spoken from.”
—Megan Cowan, cofounder of Mindful Schools



“The mark of Jon Bernie’s teaching is intimacy—with his students as human beings in all their complexity, and with the Truth itself. Behind the hundreds of books and YouTube lectures on non-duality, what most of us long for is to make contact with a teacher that can directly point out the Truth as well as the very specific ways our conditioned patterns are keeping us from embodying it. Jon is such a teacher, and in The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is, the flavor of his work comes through crystal clear.”
—Chris McKenna, guiding teacher of Mindful Schools



“A must-read for those on the spiritual path! I’ve been a devoted student of Jon Bernie’s for thirty years now, and continue to attend his workshops to gain insight into the depths of the spiritual teachings he represents. I’ve also witnessed Jon’s intense focus on studying various traditions with the greatest spiritual leaders of our time, and have seen how he has come to his own essential understandings that are so well represented in this book.”
—Daniel Kalish, DC, founder of the Kalish Institute of Functional Medicine



“I highly recommend this book to others. It is a stimulating read that simplifies the life process. Bernie argues successfully that one key to Unbelievable Happiness is awakening to the moment by continually dismantling one’s beliefs, routines, and any fundamental resistance to what actually is. This seemingly simple key is one of many treasures I found in Jon’s book.”
—Fritz Frederick Smith, MD, author of Inner Bridges and The Alchemy of Touch, and founder of the body-mind therapy, Zero Balancing



“Jon Bernie’s The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is reminds me of Ram Dass and Be Here Now, the epochal, consciousness-shifting book of 1971. Like that earlier opus, Jon’s work is both a restatement of ancient spiritual wisdom and a delightfully frank and open guide to modern meditative truth. Part of Jon’s focus is on the core inner-growth issues of identity, identification, interpretation, integration, and belief. In Hinduism, they note that ‘the first teaching is also the last teaching.’ These teachings may be simple, complex, or contradictory, but they must work. And in order for them to work, they must be understandable. Jon has the gift, as teacher and as writer, of getting to the root of things in a lucid, direct way. Yet he is also able to discuss the fluid trickery of monkey mind in such a way that the monkey becomes lovable and understandable. And when we thoroughly understand something, fear and inner conflict leave, and the deeper spiritual journey can begin.”
—Hugh Milne, author of The Heart of Listening



“Another book on how to find happiness? How do you choose among thousands of similar ones jostling for attention? My personal trick: a few paragraphs suffice to get a feel for the author. Can I trust that person as teacher and guide? I suggest you test this method on The Unbelievable Happiness of What Is. I’ve known Jon Bernie for a long time; I love and deeply respect him. But even if I didn’t know who the author was, a page or two would suffice to make me trust someone who manages so skillfully to disappear in the process of helping me find happiness in my own way.”
—Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk, author, and lecturer

From the Publisher