Want To Be Joyful?
(Practice This One Thing & You Will
Be Joyful)
I will tell
you in just a couple paragraphs from now, the one thing we all need to practice,
to be joyful. And it is so simple, a
child can do it! But it is not easy, just
simple. But let’s define joy first.
Happiness is
when we run into a dear friend or observe a child playing with a puppy. We can be happy in those situations, but can
still be discontented inside ourselves.
Often happiness
and joy are confused, because they are both positive by nature. But happiness is fleeting. All emotions are fleeting. We are not always happy, we are not always
sad, we are not always angry, we are not always content, edgy, bored or
awkward. All of these are emotions and
emotions are fleeting.
But joy is
not a fleeting state, joy is a constant state.
A state of being able to observe the happiness and the sadness and still
experience the calm. Joy is the peaceful river that runs through us all the
time.
We allow the world to steal our joy. Our joy is a constant, it is an inherent
gift, but we give it up so easily. A
person doesn’t smile at us, our friend doesn’t call us, or our team loses the
game. And instantly we give away our
joy.
So, the
first thing we need to understand about joy, is that it is a constant present
and presence that lives inside of us. It
is always there; it is not fleeting. It
is our natural state. It is just that
we choose to ignore it, as we focus on the seeming calamities of the world.
So what is
this one simple practice we should use to stay in our joyous state? Watch our pain.
All growth
comes from awareness. As we watch our
pain, as we turn our awareness toward our pain, we begin to observe all the
false beliefs we have about life. It
is always our false beliefs about life that causes us pain. When we bump into a big rock, the rock
doesn’t have pain, we have pain. When
we project onto the world the way we think life should unfold and then that
belief goes unfulfilled, we cause ourselves pain.
So, the
simple trick is: every time we have pain we observe the
pain. No judgement, no I wish this
didn’t happen, no I should have, no they should have. We just look at our pain with awareness. Then our desires, our false beliefs, our
preferences will come into focus.
And in this
awareness of how we think the world should work, our pain will begin to
dissolve. As our pain dissolves, our
awareness of our inherent joy will increase.
And our natural joy will come to the surface.
The practice
is this: Throughout the day, observe
every time you have pain. Watch it. What did I want to happen that didn’t. And as we let go of our false expectations
of how life should be and observe how life is, our true joyful nature becomes
our norm.
If you
practice this daily, for an extended period of time, the pains will get smaller
and our joy becomes larger.
It’s a very
simple process, it just takes focus and awareness. We are ‘re-minding’ ourselves. Making our minds new again. ‘Re-membering’ our natural state of joy.
Soon our
joyous state becomes unflappable, because we have returned to our natural
selves.
We have to
take the thorn out of our own hand.
Written by
Bill Pautler
November 26,
2024
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