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
Lately I have been asking myself, “to live quietly, and in love - is that enough?” I think, for me, that it may be. The more I settle into living quietly and in love, and determine that indeed it is enough- the more happy, content, peaceful I feel. Living quietly and in love I may be a poet, wife, mother, artist, lover of the spiritual life, gardener, tinkerer, sheet changer, dish washer, errander, generous friend - “Living quietly and in Love” seems to create an envelope of grace around all I do, feel, and am throughout the day. It is like finding permission to breathe, and to give one’s heart to every moment. - less striving, less argument. 
