Eudaimonia

There's a wonderful little article on the Oprah web site about five traits of happy people. Here is a quote from the article:

Cobbled from the Greek eu ("good") and daimon ("spirit" or "deity"), eudaimonia means striving toward excellence based on one's unique talents and potential—Aristotle considered it to be the noblest goal in life. In his time, the Greeks believed that each child was blessed at birth with a personal daimon embodying the highest possible expression of his or her nature. One way they envisioned the daimon was as a golden figurine that would be revealed by cracking away an outer layer of cheap pottery (the person's baser exterior). The effort to know and realize one's most golden self—"personal growth," in today's lingo—is now the central concept of eudaimonia, which has also come to include continually taking on new challenges and fulfilling one's sense of purpose in life.

I think this is such a wonderful concept! I hadn't heard of eudaimonia before but it really resonates with me as encapsulating something I have been seeking since childhood. I think part of the path of becoming a fully conscious and enlightened human being involves this innate drive towards perfection and fulfillment; of striving towards the best that you can be and fulfilling your life's purpose.

The idea of the "baser exterior" that hides "one's most golden self" can also refer to the way in which our ego, desires, appetites, and attachments, can obscure and block us from getting to know our true inner self (part of the classic conflict between the animal nature versus the rational mind). It makes sense that if you begin to crack apart that false outer layer that you start to tune into that authenticity of knowing your true self, which in turns directs you toward following your life's purpose, which in turn brings real happiness. I am reminded again of Joseph Campbell's famous statement, "Follow your bliss."


Eudaimonia might also correspond to one of the major ideals in Freemasonry, represented by the metaphorical stone of one's self. Through inner work and right conduct the stone is transformed and perfected. What was raw, wild, and unfocused, given to us as a gift by God and nature to carve into being, becomes something beautiful, real, and perfected. The challenge and the path for all human beings is to recognize that this work needs to be done. To leave one's stone, one's self, undeveloped and unknown is to abandon the great potential that we have been given. To only see the "outer layer of cheap pottery" and to mistake it as our true self is to waste our potential and only live within a superficial experience of being.