What is this thing called Joy?
When is the last time you truly felt JOY? Can you arrive, in your life experience, at a place where you feel Ecstasy? Joy and ecstasy, top of the charts for feelings. How do you attain that over the top JOY experience? Is it even possible today with the world condition? Let us explore ways to attain Joy and Ecstasy. Ways to bring Love and feelings that are “over the top” for you. Robert A. Johnson wrote ECSTASY and in his book he states, “It is a great tragedy of contemporary Western society that we have virtually lost the ability to experience the transformative power of ecstasy and joy.” Is he right?
What is Joy? Is it just a feeling or a state of being? Everyone has a different interpretation of their joy. Joy for one could be a small feeling and for another a bursting out of themselves. Or maybe Joy can run the gamet of small to bursting for any of us.
How do we know if we are feeling joy? Personal and individual...IF LIFE GIVE YOU LEMONS MAKE LEMONADE. When life gives us a lot of lemons...joy may be a day without the lemonade it brings. Or joy may be an absence of trouble. That kind of day may feels joyous. If we begin to notice our feeling and pay attention to those small joy feeling the theory is they will grow, expand and become more frequent. Easily said. Sometimes not so easily done. When the lemons are coming at us thick and fast it is hard to notice any joy. We are too busy dealing with dodging the lemons or making our life lemonade to notice positive. Life has ups and downs to say the least. Our choices definitely have and effect on what happens. The problem with that is hindsight is 20/20. While we are going through the process sometimes we choose the best we know how at the time. Learn from past mistakes may be the positive when we make bad choices for ourselves.
Do you wait for falling in love to feel JOY? Do we wait for someone else to bring us joy...no one can MAKE you feel. Only you can allow your feelings. I know, others can know you and push the right or wrong buttons. We choose to feel and we choose the people pushing the wrong buttons. Honoring ourselves and our own needs is sometimes difficult. We are usually taught to be unselfish. What the heck....who takes care of self then. I believe we need to BE selfish and take care of every aspect of ourselves. That way WE will be there to take care of the ones we care about.
We are here NOW. WE are to this point, this moment, right now is what we may have longed for. We can notice the joy, maybe it is tiny. In this moment is the reality. NOT past, it is done, not future- it is unknown and will evolve from this moment. NOW is where we notice ourselves, our feelings.
So, when we do feel real joy, joy we can definitely identify as real joy...why do we sometimes cry. Is our body so unused to feeling joy it is painful for our soul. Is it so foreign to our body it create a fear in us and we cry. I don’t have that answer. For me joy can be elusive and I may have days, or weeks that I do not notice any joy. Sometimes life gives us so many lemons we are buried in them. I try, and suggest for others, to look at the small joys at that time. The wonderful hue of yellow this lemon possesses. The fresh smell lemons bring with them. I know, silly, but what I mean is to notice, lets say the way this one cloud glows and appreciate and enjoy. Warm water of our shower, new leaves or autumn leaves or stillness or favorite music, that sort of things and be in this moment the now, aware of that tiny piece of joy. Let it sooth the other parts that are not so joyous.
Meditation may help learning to notice. Being quiet and within ourselves. A good story to guide my thoughts helps me. Guided imagery that can take you away from the lemonade or increase your calm and ability to notice your joy. Letting go of the chaos of the world for a time and go within, quietly and peacefully, with a scene or story you choose.
One of my friends on Facebook, Gilles posted this. When you finally allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it, you will find you dance with everything. So Open your arms and welcome the joy of today. True happiness arises in the first place from this enjoyment. Life is to live and to live means to be aware - joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. Everyone is responsible for their own joy. Again back to, no one can make you feel.
Sometimes it is the quiet times that feel the best. Acceptance by another human even ourself. Acceptance of being the real us. No need for walls and masks. Just quietly me.
Here is an invitation from Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I love this one, Hope you Enjoy too.
THE INVITATION
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disppoint another to be true to yourself, if you can bear the accusations of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money hou have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company that you keep in the empty moments.
Be yourself. The inner beauty shines much brighter than any outer shell we could imagine. FEEL GOOD inside. Be real. Open yourself emotionally. Love and care for yourself. You will shine and others will be attracted to the glow of feeling good. You are loved.
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