Happiness Is a Mirage. Truth Is a River.

Why good vibes can’t carry the weight they promise

This essay grows out of work I’ve been doing with Cynthia Bourgeault’s course Practicing Living Presence: Discovering the Mind of Christ Within, which itself is a sustained engagement with Kabir Helminski’s book Living Presence. In particular, it draws from the chapter titled “The Power of Being.” What follows is not a theoretical argument about happiness or joy. It emerged the way these insights usually do, not from ideal conditions or well-managed spiritual practice, but from friction. From noticing how often the pursuit of feeling good quietly substitutes for depth, and how easily we mistake pleasant states for something solid enough to live from.

Virgin Monk Boy writes across several collections, including Satire (Christian Nationalism and spiritual humor), Mary Magdalene, and Wisdom Jesus (Sufi Jesus).
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The Mirage We Keep Walking Toward

Happiness is not an illusion in the crude sense. It is real enough to convince us. That is precisely the problem.

It arrives when things improve. It blooms when desires are met. It rewards us when life briefly cooperates. And because it feels warm, affirming, and alive, we quietly assume it must be what spiritual life is meant to deliver.

But happiness is structurally dependent. It exists because something happened, because something aligned, because something satisfied a want. When the condition changes, the state dissolves. Nothing went wrong. That is simply how happiness works.

And yet we treat it as if it were a foundation.

This is how a mirage functions. It is not imaginary. It reflects light accurately. It even appears where water might reasonably be expected. But it cannot quench thirst. The closer you walk toward it, the more exhausted you become.

The tragedy is not wanting happiness. The tragedy is organizing a life around it.

The Quiet Violence of the Pain–Pleasure Cycle

When happiness becomes the aim, life collapses into a subtle but relentless loop.

Desire promises relief. Relief fades. Desire returns. The object changes. The hunger does not.

At first this looks like normal ambition, normal growth, normal striving. Over time it becomes something else. A nervous system trained to scan constantly for improvement. A self defined by its current emotional weather. A spirituality that quietly turns into mood management.

Nothing is ever wrong enough to justify stopping. Nothing is ever good enough to justify resting.

This is not a moral failure. It is not a lack of discipline. It is the inevitable outcome of placing identity in states that cannot stay.

As long as happiness is treated as the measure of a good life, dissatisfaction remains baked into the system.

Why Serenity Is Not Emotional Sweetness

Every serious spiritual tradition eventually draws a line here.

Not by rejecting happiness, but by relativizing it.

What emerges instead is often called serenity, peace, or equanimity. These words are frequently misunderstood. They are not emotional anesthesia. They do not mean feeling calm all the time. They do not mean grief disappears or anger evaporates.

Serenity means the center holds.

It means you can be unhappy without being undone. You can grieve without losing your footing. You can experience fear without being swallowed by it.

This is why serenity feels unimpressive to the modern spiritual imagination. It does not sparkle. It does not peak. It does not trend well on social media.

But it endures.

And even serenity, in these teachings, is not the final depth.

From Serenity to Being

Serenity arises when attention sinks below emotional states into something more elemental.

This is what the chapter names being.

Being is not a feeling. It does not come and go. It does not improve when life improves or deteriorate when life becomes difficult. Being is what allows happiness and unhappiness to arise in the first place.

When identity shifts from emotional conditions to being itself, a strange loosening occurs.

Happiness no longer needs to be clung to.
Unhappiness no longer needs to be resisted.

Neither is rejected. Neither is privileged. They are no longer asked to carry the weight of meaning.

They pass through.

Truth Is Not a Concept You Agree With

This is where the central claim becomes visible.

Truth, in this teaching, is not an idea you assent to. It is alignment with reality as it is, beneath preference and resistance. Seeking truth means relinquishing the demand that life feel a certain way in order to be acceptable.

This is why seeking truth yields joy, while seeking joy yields mirages.

Joy here is not excitement. It is not cheerfulness. It is not perpetual uplift. It is the quiet, grounded recognition that nothing essential is missing, even when something hurts.

Joy flows because it is no longer demanded.

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The River Does Not Promise Comfort

A river does not guarantee calm waters. It guarantees continuity.

You can step into it while grieving. You can remain in it while afraid. You can act from it without panic, righteousness, or self-importance.

This is why mature spirituality eventually stops selling happiness and starts cultivating truth. Not because happiness is bad, but because it is too small to carry a human life.

The mirage keeps you walking.
The river invites you to enter.

And once you do, something becomes clear in a way no argument could ever prove:

Joy was never something to chase.
It was something that followed when the chase ended.

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Recommended Reading

(As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. These recommendations support the scrolls at no extra cost to you.)

• Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness & the Essential Self by Kabir Helminski

• The Meaning of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Bourgeault

• The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault

• The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Jean-Yves Leloup

• The Gospel of Thomas by Jean-Yves Leloup