We are now in the second week of our 32 day Facebook
joy practice.
Joy may feel like a radical act of self affirmation, especially when deliberately chosen regardless of what our circumstances reflect to us. Choosing joy whatever our sense us tells us is unfolding requires strong inner mastery, a willingness to wear joy filters looking for gladness in unexpected places. Delight hides in the tiniest crevices sometimes, hidden by the more apparent suffering and chaos. To seek out joy deliberately requires commitment. To be a love revolutionary in these times may feel like a subversive act.
Two years ago, I first became interested in FB through doing a month long practice focused on love. We would do something loving daily which I throughly appreciated. There I sought out things to do that felt loving. With the joy practice now I am taking the tiniest action, the most mundane experience and seeing how to bring joy to it. I had a major opportunity to practice in the first hours of the new year. I remembered my intent while praying to the toilet gods as a violent stomach flu swept my body clean. I asked myself as my head spun with dizziness, as my stomach heaved and other unmentionables, how can I experience this joyfully? Just the question shifted the experience, no suffering was involved, intense discomfort and pain, yes, no suffering, no resistance, no saying NO to what was. Non resistance is the doorway to unstoppable freedom. It has to be felt to be believed.
Know that every act of courage feeling whatever is arising in the body in response to external circumstances without repressing or externally expressing it inappropriate is a profound act of liberation. Strung together these pearls added up to an expansion that is now more widely available on the planet. I wrote in the joy group today that the inner freedom I am experiencing surpasses the pleasure gained from two world journeys. This joy has no opposite, no attachment, no down side, it cannot be taken from me nor can I possess it. Yes, I sense there is a season for joy, a time where joy flows naturally from the inner spaciousness that arises ffrom ego integration. It is not something we command yet it is something we can notice, even it is most delicate form. It flies on its own wings resting lightly wherever it chooses.
I recently read of a book suggesting depression is not caused by brain chemistry or even hereditary, rather by living in a sick society. Knowing how much craziness, chaos, violence surrounds us and still finding joy from the most infinitesimal to the grandest requires courage and intent. I salute you dear joy jumpers, you are revolutionaries indeed.
image Maxfield Parrish- Ecstasy
