Joy as the Basis of Existence

Mar 5

One of the experiences I have had in my life is being a slave to the emotion of grief because of the losses with which I have dealt.

When I was very young, because the emotion of grief was repressed, I experienced depression and a deep sense of sadness. When I learned to express my grief and tears over the painful events of my life, I realized that I was addicted to the habit of seeing the world through the eyes of those losses. It was almost like an obligation to feel that way.

When I learned to see the losses through a different conceptual lens, I was able to see that because it was nothing more than habit and not truth, I was able to stop being the slave that I was. Now, I am not professing mastery but I can say that it is mastery that I seek. I feel that I’m down to only a couple of past situations to which I still apply the old habit because the event was so hard and so painful. It stuck to me like glue.

In being able to change your emotional response, you have 3 choices: pleasure, pain, indifference. If we go back to the existence element and we understand that all human beings seek joy, then it would be reasonable to state that the joy of existence was contained in the human being at birth. Your entire integrated system, from cardiac to digestive, from adrenals to respiratory, knows that pain is abnormal. Joy is normal. So, it doesn’t take much to consider that existence is joy, or least, it was meant to be that way.

We choose to exist, to continue to exist to experience that joy, that pleasure, that fulfillment. When that becomes impossible for the person because of the overwhelming habit of darkness or pain or loss, some people choose not to be here anymore. Joy, pleasure, deep satisfaction, fulfillment, prosperity…these conditions are the root conditions, the causes of human existence, the motivations of human existence. Not being able to see the essence of loss or pain or suffering, we live on the surface.

We must learn to live and function within, to be able to experience the good and the bad through joy. Can you consider this? Do you understand this? You have already learned that all events are relative in nature…right sometimes evolves into wrong…wrong sometimes evolves into right. Instead, of over-reacting and being satisfied with whatever can reduce the pain or fear or loss, instead of being a slave to the old habit, you learn to take a step within, you learn to be still, to start consciously changing your response patterns, to learn to approach grief and loss, pain and struggle through love, through joy, through embracing the event as part of your path, as part of your unique, individual evolution.

I like being real about these things and I remember the death experience I underwent when I was 39 years old. It would last until I was about 42 years old. My entire life disintegrated and I was overcome with what I saw as injustice, and remained in a state of shock. I had moments when I thought I would never make it out.

Of course, if the things I am saying are true, then there were no injustices at all, and that the path I had chosen was the training ground to prepare me for the next adventure. It took me to the very edge of what I was capable of enduring, it took me to the depths of my being. And it was in those depths that I saw how proud of myself I was for having had the courage to do what I did, the courage to stand up for what I knew was the right thing to do.

There’s superficial joy that dissipates after the event is over. Then, the joy of being that no one and no thing can ever take away from you. And so, we must begin to see that our reaction patterns and response mechanisms are nothing more than habit. They do not represent truth. They represent what you learned in the past to survive but you learn that you are not obligated to feel that pain or suffering any longer than you choose. Remember, the mind sees division and struggle. The soul sees harmony, purpose and unity…and that includes the experiences that your mind sees as painful, unjust and life-ending.

I’m not saying it’s easy. These are the dark nights not of the soul but the mind.

The soul sees the unfolding as an act of perfection, a movement of growth, an expansion of truth, separating what is real from what is false.

Suffering is a by-product of not understanding this, of not being able to meet the assaults of daily life from the perspective of the unified whole, from the perspective of perfection, from the perspective of total joy of the experience, understanding that everything that is happening to you is purposeful and of your own making…which, of course, the mind cannot conceive of much less accept.

The very first attempt I made to understand my mind and why I behaved the way I did was attending a self-hypnosis class for smokers. I was never a smoker but I wanted to understand more. I was 22 years old. I realized that hypnosis suspended the person’s mind and habitual patterns and reactions, so, I figured if that was true, then the new set of reactions and patterns that the individual clearly exhibited in a hypnotized state was just as real as the addictive, learned set of patterns. I found it amazing.

If you could somehow essentially hypnotize yourself, you could access a more productive, response to the events of your life…and the best way this can be achieved is in the act of detachment and developing an almost disinterest or indifference, then you could begin to neutralize the patterns in your mind and heart. And from that gap that has been created between the event and your response, you could choose otherwise, including joy, the joy of being you, the privilege of being alive, of having the opportunity to master the dynamics and forces of your life.

So, it begins with having the courage to face the pain or suffering, of having the resilience and fortitude to endure the suffering and trial in order to overcome it and come out on the other end as new and improved. You have got to understand that suffering is extra and not a requirement. You have got to understand that the true reality is always love: the joy of existence, the joy of just being alive, the dance.

But everything that is happening outside your life is a mirror image of what is happening inside of you. So, if there are negative response patterns, if you are a slave to any of your emotions, then do the best you can to understand that it’s you doing it to you. It’s not the world, it’s not life… it’s you.

Everything in your life is nothing but this manifestation of who you are.

Now, I want to be clear about something. You heard me invite you to embrace the event, the situation, the pain, the suffering. And then, you heard me invite you to detach from the event, from the suffering. They are not contradictory. Embracing is owning, being the author of…detaching is the strategy, the mechanism by which you untangle yourself from the addictive patterns associated with the event. It would be similar to say, “in order to get a lot done, be still.” Stillness is not inertia and working hard is not necessarily getting anything done. So, you have to work with you mind to change the conceptual lenses through which you are viewing the outer circumstance.

The force that you seek to conduct yourself, the will that you desire to be able to tap into to run your life is none other than you.

You’re not working on the world, you’re working on you. You start with you and you’re going to end with you because that’s where the work is until you can get to a point to be able to say with great satisfaction, “This is who I am.” Many of the great ones have gone to their deaths proclaiming, “This is who I am.”

There is nothing else that you truly desire but to know this, to have this experience, to, at last, become who you know you are capable of being, continuing to expand and enlarge your consciousness, your horizontal and vertical worlds, to realize the truth that always lay inside of you.

Now, understand that the mind is finite. The completion that you seek is not going to come from money, or travel, or food, or sex, or anything material because the physical world, the horizontal world, is finite. It is consciousness that is infinite, consciousness that allows you bring to life and physical realization the innate image that lives inside of you and then, and only then, will you be complete. It is then that you will experience the joy of being, merging the infinite into the finite, and transforming your life forever. The real you, the unthreatenable, eternal, joyful, wise you will be recovered by way of true knowledge, by way of consciousness and the power it has to impact the physical world in which you exist. It’s all your inner being wants, it’s what your soul yearns for…the merging of the finite with the infinite.

When you detach from your mind, from your troubles and go into the stillness, into the secret doorway of your being, that consciousness will make itself known to you. The true you, the real you, waits beyond the mental, physical and emotional layers of years gone by for your current life is just a mask that was learned out of the need to survive. The knowledge that was locked away will emerge in time and you will never, ever be willing to go to the old you. It’s just not worth it.

You will not just see but experience that you are not now nor have you ever been separated from the source, that you live within the source of life and the source of life lives inside of you.

Consciousness is real. Consciousness is power. Consciousness is infinite.

Remember in the dark moments, when you forget, when the troubles of life are pressing, only what is contained in matter, can evolve out of matter, pre-existent, pre-arranged, plug and play. Nothing is missing. Nothing is wrong. Everything resides in a state of perfection. And then, breathe in the joy of being here, of being born into the physical world, and manifesting as a human being. Freed from the slavery to old emotional patterns and ancient patterns of suffering, the joy of existence can now begin to cancel out suffering and emotional pain. One year of joy will annul 45 years of regret, loss, guilt, shame, depression or any negative state.