Chasing Joy In The Crazy World

I became aware of the fact that I can’t just feel joy whenever I want to, last summer.  I was in Northern California, which I used to love and enjoy.  Doing what I used to love and enjoy.  And … the joy was not there! I panicked.

I tried gratitude, I tried to change my energy, my attitude… these things supposed to work! Nothing.  And the more I tried, the more desperate I was, because joy was not showing up.

I really believed, that if I change the way I look at things, the things I look at – change.  If I changed my perspective, it’d change how I feel.

But I tried and tried already!

My lesson: if you can’t change your mind – change the circumstances.  

We cut the trip short, and back home,  I the optimal environment, I started doing my joy experiment.

Maybe this is what made me look into creating joy.  Or maybe what I heard:

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation” – Andre Gide

Or maybe this:

“Life will bring you pain all by itself.  Your responsibility is to create joy.  You must first realize the prison of your mind before you can escape it.” – Milton Erickson

Or perhaps this convinced me:

On David Hawkins’ map of consciousness, Joy calibrates at 540 (between Love and Peace),  while the World is at this moment just above 200 (level of Courage). So Joy is something to aspire to.

What happened next surprised me:

When I did my joy experiment:  everything started going really well. I enjoyed life. Had more energy.  I had deeper appreciation for everyone around me, renewed connections with people, new clients showed up!   I loved it.  I had more ideas: positive state of mind expands possible solutions. Worry and fear limits them.  It felt like miracles! 

But this is hardly my second nature.  When I stopped, once or twice I slipped into negativity – this does not require effort. This is easy.  Getting on the level of Joy required some effort.  I had to make myself to elevate my energy  ( but as Ortega Y Gasset writes: effort is luxury – and I resonate with luxury!)

Here is a note from my journal from that time  

“I had an awful challenge to find the spark within… These past two weeks…. so I worked deliberately on finding joy. Today I reached a desired level of “I am so excited I can’t stay in my skin!”

It’s not about denying what we feel.  It is about transforming. Emotional mastery is feeling what you want to feel.

At different times I took different roads to joy.

Here is a note from vacations later last year:

“Rumi says ‘When you are born, a ladder is placed in front of you to escape this world’  Another translation of Rumi adds: ‘to escape, expand and evolve’ which feels better. There are many reasons to escape, but is escaping the best way to live?  The opposite of Escape?  Full engagement.  So… once the INNOCENCE is lost, FAITH calls to be reborn, HOPE is desperate… I’m down to this: Chasing JOY. Allowing GRACE.”  (I forgot why I felt desperate, since I was in beautiful Andalucia, but joy remained!)

And another note on “how to” from December:

“Now when I’m not “happy” I don’t go to gratitude. I go straight to joy.  

I’m sitting now in Cartel, Downtown Scottsdale… I could choose to be grateful for this place, my chai, good music, and the  christmas lights outside.  But it doesn’t  move me.  It ‘s got to move me.  It has to be extraordinary.

How can I demand a new reality for myself?  Changing my emotional state. Hmmm… funny, it becomes easier than changing gears in my bike…

When I simply decide to enjoy this moment – it makes a world of difference.

Full presence. To life.

I don’t know about “happiness.”  I forgot about euphoria. But I know where to find joy.  In full presence to life. Narrowing my focus to search for traces,  flying around pieces, and mountains of joy. It is there.”

Why does it work? 

If I had to explain it, it must have something to do with the energy vibrations – Esther Hicks talks about,  it must be the Third Hermetic Principle – the principle of vibration in practice. (Universal Law). 

How can you do it?

I wish I knew if what i did will work for everyone….

This was my way:

• Asking myself “HOW can I enjoy THIS experience?
• Being in nature – full presence.
• Feeling my upper chakras activate and open to joy (third eye, crown chakra, and heart) 
• Activating an inner radar that searches for joy. With focus on positives.
• Eliminating the thieves of joy.

It goes beyond gratitude.

They say gratitude minimizes our problems.

Joy takes us straight to a field of grace.