Thursday, October 07, 2004
Ramble #15
by White Feather
Copyright © 2004, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Books by White Feather
How many reasons can you think of NOT to experience joy? How many guilts are awakened by the thought of experiencing true joy? Does joy awaken a fear of what might come next? Will joy take us out of our comfort? Are we worthy of joy? Will we be able to handle it? Will our expression of it alienate us from those around us? Will joy keep us from fulfilling our obligations to the future or some plan? Will joy break our routine? Will joy remind us of past sorrow? Could we possible explode from too much joy?
There are ten thousand excuses for not experiencing joy. Unfortunately, they all work.
Joy, however, needs no rationalization, no reason, no excuse. To experience it is a natural expression of our true self. The only things keeping us from realizing and understanding and being our true selves are all those reasons we come up with NOT to experience joy.
There are ten thousand excuses for not experiencing joy. Unfortunately, they all work.
Joy, however, needs no rationalization, no reason, no excuse. To experience it is a natural expression of our true self. The only things keeping us from realizing and understanding and being our true selves are all those reasons we come up with NOT to experience joy.
Copyright © 2004, by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Books by White Feather
Comments:
Joy is natural, and most of us desire it, long for it, would do just about anything for a moment of it or even a graceful memory ot it. Yet, joy often dances like a trickster spirit just out of reach.
One day my teacher asked me if I was satisfied with my progress on the path of transformation and, more specifically, with a particular sub-goal that had been on my mind. I said that I meditated on that sub-goal with great certainty and directed focus during three or four 15-minute periods per day but had yet to attain my objective.
He congratulated me on my intent, my certainty, and the 45-60 minutes of time I was applying to the work. Then he said, you will approach your goal much faster when the spirit and attitude of the rest of your day is brought more in line with your meditations.
I suspect that we will not experience as much joy as we desire until the sum of our lives are in tune with joy.
Our meditations and our dreams and our visions have great power, but so do the ways we think and speak and act as we go about our daily lives.
If we are not always the person we are when we meditate upon joy, then the greatest amount of our day may, in fact, be spent running from it, feeling undeserving of it, thinking we'll work a little on our reactive egos next week after the yard has been mowed.
Joy is our natural state, the homeplace many of us see little of while attending to other things.
--Malcolm
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One day my teacher asked me if I was satisfied with my progress on the path of transformation and, more specifically, with a particular sub-goal that had been on my mind. I said that I meditated on that sub-goal with great certainty and directed focus during three or four 15-minute periods per day but had yet to attain my objective.
He congratulated me on my intent, my certainty, and the 45-60 minutes of time I was applying to the work. Then he said, you will approach your goal much faster when the spirit and attitude of the rest of your day is brought more in line with your meditations.
I suspect that we will not experience as much joy as we desire until the sum of our lives are in tune with joy.
Our meditations and our dreams and our visions have great power, but so do the ways we think and speak and act as we go about our daily lives.
If we are not always the person we are when we meditate upon joy, then the greatest amount of our day may, in fact, be spent running from it, feeling undeserving of it, thinking we'll work a little on our reactive egos next week after the yard has been mowed.
Joy is our natural state, the homeplace many of us see little of while attending to other things.
--Malcolm
