“Earthly things must be known to be loved;
Divine things must be loved to be known.”
~Blaise Pascal
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From the category archives:
Joy Practices
First we receive the light;
Then we impart the light.
Thus we repair the world.
~Kabbalah
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Life, oh Wondrous Life,
Come fill me up with gladness.
I feast on your generosity;
I bask in your loving light.
Luminous Holy Essence,
Come fill me up with gladness.
Dark Flowering Infinite Universe,
Let me sing your eternal praise.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
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To wander on Wednesdays;
To sit quietly
by the shoreline of stillness;
To drop my mind down
below the surface chatter -
The radio waves of thought
and their compulsive agitations:
The insult channel; the gossip channel;
the channel of panic and confusion.
To drop down into the
deep quiet from which
all wisdom comes.
To rest in awareness
of all that is here.
I do not long for more projects
or lists,
No more doing
or ideas for doing.
I only want this.
This.
The holy embrace of the day.
~Ingrid
(Special thanks to my dear friend Lori, who helped me take out my schedule and block out this time. Tell me friends, how do you make time and space for stillness, contentment, for belonging and for love?)
~
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The very purpose of our lives
is happiness and joyfulness.
That is very clear.
~Dalai Lama
On Tuesday, June 2nd, I will be a guest at Jan Lundy’s blog, Awake Is Good. I will be there all day to explore joy- to have a conversation with you. Please stop by. At the end of the day, Jan will give away a copy of my Joy Book, as well as a bunch of my other inspirational offerings. I will open our conversation Tuesday with this article.
Exploring Joy
I love words. I love to get down into them, coaxing them from a tight bud into an open flower, revealing multiple petals fragrant with meaning. And I love to make connections between wisdom traditions, listening for what others have said throughout time and around the world. This has become a kind of path for me, and it is the way in which I have been exploring Joy for many years. While I don’t know everything there is to know about Joy, I have sought the world’s wisdom, sat with it fondly, and welcomed Joy to take up residence in my thoughts and in my heart. For me, Joy will always be a kind of personal opening, or a journey - an intimate exploration into life and a sense of love and belonging.
In my exploration of Joy, I found that we all have various ideas about what it means. Some of us have even developed an aversion for the word, so I was eager to move beyond a bud-like understanding and open it up to a fuller flower. I also discovered that many dictionaries offer a rather superficial definition: the anticipation of something one wants or desires. Yet I had a strong inkling that Joy was not merely the result of something as fleeting as wants and desires, accomplishment or acquisition, (and not even simply the exuberant rush of good feelings) but more to do with a sustained intimacy with the eternal, spiritual dimension of our lives -a dimension which is sometimes forgotten or ignored in the fret and hurry of our culture today.
In fact, the more I explored Joy, unfolded and opened joy, the more it dawned on me, and I had to ask: what if Joy was this spiritual dimension as well as our relationship to it? What if joy was our essence: joy, love, innocence, harmony and wisdom? What if joyfulness came from this spiritual understanding? And what if we have forgotten this and are instead living with a mistaken and impoverished identity?
I soon began collecting a mass of quotes to support my theory. Here are just a few of my favorites:
Joy is the realization
of the truth of our oneness,
The oneness of our soul with the world,
and of the world-soul
with supreme Love.
~Rabindranath Tagore
From Joy I came.
For Joy I live.
And in Sacred Joy
I shall melt again.
~Yogananda
You are seeking joy and peace
in far off places,
but the spring of joy is in your heart.
The haven of peace is in yourself.
~Sai Baba
I have spoken these things to you
That my joy may remain in you,
And that your joy may remain full.
~John 15:11
As essential and ubiquitous as air,
the presence of Joy is boundless, eternal,
without beginning, without end, spacious, ever-new,
ever-flowing, growth, the expanding universe,
infinite energy, bliss emptiness,
the fragrance of a marigold,
the free fluttering of wings…
(ok- I wrote that one.)
This exploration alone landed me in a profound state of Joy. I found that Joy emanates and is in fact suffused with a much deeper meaning than the one in my dictionary. Eventually I, with humility and boldness, penned a new definition for Joy.
JOY:
1: An abiding and profound sense
of love and belonging.
2: A deep passionate awareness
of the very act and art of living.
3: A sacred happiness. 4: An intimate trust.
5: A vibration. 6: An inner smile.
7:A Divine Current flowing through us
and into the world.
My next question was: How do we return to the presence and practice of joy? What I am learning is this: To arrive at this Joy, we each find our own personal ways to tune into it, tend to it, and infuse our lives with it. When we live from a place of intimacy with life, we live with an awareness of love and belonging; we feel held, energized, and at home in the world. There are as many ways to cultivate this intimacy as there are people - some of us practice meditation, yoga, walking in nature; some attend churches, temples and synagogues; some write, some cook, some play the kazoo, some run, others hold each other. I say it isn’t either this or that- it’s all of it, all of it. Lighting a candle, enjoying the fragrance of a flower, contemplative reading, creating art, listening to birdsong or music, singing - even just breathing deeply - there are tens of thousands of ways to land ourselves in Joy.
What are some of yours?
Take this
fanciful Joy.
Let it bloom
Inside you
like an orchid.
Let it open you
like a window.
Let it lift you up
to ride the wind.
Oh, Beautiful Soul,
pitch your tent
in this field of joy
and adventure out
from there…
~Ingrid
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Wherever you are, find a trail.
The sky is not falling for the cedar tree.
The Heron’s infinite blue world has not changed.
The marsh shows no signs
of Wall Street volatility.
Trees and grasses
are golden with the sun.
The ocean and sky still join
like lovers
here, now, and
on the horizon too.
The swan, content,
faces a gentle breeze.
The cormorant dives, resurfaces,
belly once again filled.
Follow that trail.
Find the bench, or stone
that waits for you there.
We must learn to walk away sometimes
from the carnival of the world
to sit still and remember
what it is that holds us;
what, in us, is held.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
(pictures are from the Nauset Marsh Trail in Eastham, MA near Brewster, where I went on retreat this weekend.)
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I Love:
Walking along the wooded trail…
The slant of golden light across the farmer’s field…
How birds in the bare branches of a distant tree look like musical notes…
This world of form, of ten thousand things.
As a joy practice, I have kept lists of simple pleasures and counted blessings for a very long time. Over the years,the subscribers to my newsletter have added to it. Reading the list often brings me to a renewed sense of gratitude. Here is a link to our list so far. Send me a comment if you would like to add to it! 
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One day when I was feeling agitated, my mind restless with worry and complaints, I went for a walk and asked, in a walking prayer, for guidance. The much needed suggestion that came to me was:
Listen
Admire
Give Thanks
& Bless
Each of these words offers a practice that helps bring us back into the full graciousness of the present moment.
To listen is to get quiet, give your weary mind a rest from all the nagging thoughts, be open for guidance and deeper wisdom, and to become spacious. I find that a solitary walk is one of the best ways for me to do this. Meditation and contemplative reading also help.
To admire is to focus on and rejoice in all that is good and beautiful and abundant and true. Imagine that you are looking through a camera- look for colors, textures and loving details, action shots, smiling portraits, expressions of humor, passion, tenderness and joy.
To give thanks is to channel the flowing energy of gratitude and prosperity back into your life. Give thanks for all you admire. Give thanks for the gifts you so often take for granted. Give thanks for the people in your life and all that they have to teach you. Give thanks for your socks - just give thanks. A lot.
And to Bless is to become an active, loving, unselfish, generous, caring, compassionate, and Joyful participant in the big world. Through blessings we invoke light and love and goodness. We bless through our work, our art, our words, and our intentions. This is a million times more useful than complaining, helping us to reclaim joy and restore a balance of peace and love to the world.
Try it for yourself. Listen. Admire. Give Thanks, and Bless.
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This is such a beautiful respite, and balancing wisdom. Enjoy!
(Thank you Ivan from Poetry Chaikhana.)
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When Winter drains the summer from our lawn,
my eye turns to within the house, seeking the cheer of color and light.
Here a geranium leans into the sun…
I supplement with candle light, party streamers & store-bought bouquets….
and I am thankful for the color on the walls….
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