Imagine the experience of your day is a kind of stew—complex, messy, flavorful, sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet. Now, suppose you take that stew and run it backward through a meat grinder, not to destroy it, but to separate it, to break it down into its elemental ingredients. You’re not erasing experience, you’re studying it, filtering it. You’re asking: What made this moment what it was? What emotions, thoughts, sensations, and conditions composed it?
Among the many flavors—frustration, beauty, confusion, joy—you begin to notice something subtle: the salt of the experience. The tiny trace of happiness that may have gone unnoticed, like salt baked into a cake. It wasn’t the whole experience, but it was there.
So, how do you isolate it?
Step One: Slow the grinder. Slow the mind.
To run the meat grinder backward means to pause, reflect, and deconstruct. This might look like journaling at the end of the day, sitting quietly and reviewing a moment in slow motion. What were the sounds, smells, textures, and feelings? What made you smile inside, even if only for a second?
Step Two: Sift gently, don’t dig.
If you try to extract happiness by force, it tends to vanish. But if you approach experience with a soft, curious eye—like a gold panner swirling water in a dish—you might notice tiny gleams: the feeling of sunlight on your hand, the warmth in someone’s glance, the relief after a task is done.
Step Three: Name it. Catch it. Save it.
Once you see it—name it. Even silently. “That was ease.” “That was connection.” “That was delight.” In naming it, you’re gathering the grains of salt. You’re putting them in your happiness shaker. You’re saying: This belongs to me. I see it now.
Step Four: Refine.
Not every trace of happiness is pure. Sometimes it’s mixed with longing or ego or habit. Refining means seeing what actually felt good—not just what fed the identity or soothed the nervous system for a moment. Real happiness has a stillness in it, a lightness, a warmth that doesn’t depend on being right or getting more.
Step Five: Sprinkle.
Now that you’ve refined it, you can carry it with you. Like a chef who knows how much salt to add by instinct, you begin to notice where happiness can be added—not manufactured, but remembered, awakened. A quiet breath. A kind word. The sky through a window. You sprinkle it not to cover up other flavors, but to enhance them—to bring depth, balance, and subtle joy.
This practice becomes a kind of alchemy. You’re not seeking only “happy” experiences, but recognizing that within all experience—like within all earth—there’s something precious. And once you learn how to find it, even muddy moments can yield gold.
So yes: the happiness shaker is real.
And we refine it not from what we wish would happen,
but from what already has.
Spiritual Gravity 