As we put forward ‘being joyful’ as an intention, we put the experience of joy within reach.
The bestselling author and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, describes joy as “vibrantly alive peace” in his book, Stillness Speaks. Tolle explains this joy further : “It is the joy of knowing yourself as the very life essence before life takes on form. That is the joy of Being–of being who you truly are.”
How do we cultivate this joyful experience of our essential nature, this ‘joy of Being’?
One way: By breathing, relaxing and letting go, dropping below our thoughts and our identification with thought as who we are, and turning our focused attention to the quiet, eternal space within, a spaciousness that expands outward beyond the body identification. This is who we truly are—conscious awareness itself—our essential nature.
Those few words above describe the magnificent, transformative, dramatically impactful shift that changes everything.
It shifts who we experience ourselves to be. It shifts our experience we have of ourselves and the content of our lives and the world. These few words above point in the direction of a fundamental personal transformation, straightforward to write about, yet not necessarily easy to experience and live.
That’s why we have a spiritual practice. Our practice builds our skill in shifting our identity from a thought-generated ‘me’—to “who I am is conscious awareness.” So, a commitment to joy is a commitment to a spiritual practice and the experience of ‘spaciousness’. And that practice is as near as this moment. It’s not only a time and place (to meditate, for example), but available to us to shift into each moment. Each moment that we let go and experience ourselves as the presence, this conscious awareness, we are engaged in our spiritual practice of waking up to who we really are.
Once we experience that spaciousness within, the heaviness of life’s challenges lighten, the spirit is liberated from the prison of a thought-generated ‘me’ and joy arises!
So joy is here—just breathe and let go into the spacious, thoughtless consciousness we are. And joy is dear because once experienced, our own precious nature, who we really are, is revealed to us and that is foundation: sweet experience.
That shift in identity is sweeping the world and will eventually change everything. And the world will be healed. Indeed, our joy—the vibrantly alive peace within—our true nature—will heal the world.
I invite us to breathe, let go and ‘re-member ourselves’ in our essence—and let our joy bubble up now and now and now.
Joy is here. Joy is dear. Joy is who I am.