I talk here about bliss in articles like 100x the Bliss, Life is Bliss, Nested Bliss, and so forth.
Joy is fundamental to our well-being and innate to life itself. When we experience pure life, it is pure bliss. And yet because bliss arises at a more subtle level, joy can be a difficult emotion to access. It requires openness and vulnerability. But opening can trigger fear of being hurt. Brené Brown calls this foreboding joy.
That’s the catch. Even though we crave joy, we can also fear it as it makes us vulnerable. Feeling happiness can seem like tempting fate, causing the mind to prepare for loss. We think about dark possibilities or the worst that could happen. If we prepare for tragedy, we may feel we can avoid pain.
Yet rehearsing “what might be” doesn’t prepare you for the future. It only insulates you from feeling now. “Perpetual disappointment” can feel like a familiar solution but we sacrifice joy in the process. We create a prison of our own making, afraid of what we might lose.
The solution is surprisingly simple. Gratitude. I’ve talked here several times about gratitude. I don’t mean making a mood of it. I mean here and there through the day, thinking of something different to be grateful for. And shifting to gratitude when we notice the mind is going to the dark side.
This can take a bit of practice to get the hang of it. This is changing what can be a long habit of avoidance. As such, we don’t want to resist or manipulate what is arising. We allow it. But when choice arises, we favour the light.
We may also wish to take this a stage further and learn how to be vulnerable in a safe way by culturing worthiness, safe boundaries, and engagement. Love, belonging, and connection require we feel worthy of them. Brené Brown explores this (YouTube link) in books like Daring Greatly.
She also explores the scientific research behind these points. Returning to happiness is possible but does take some new skills. Enduring happiness is not about getting the new house or car. It’s about a willingness to be present to what is here now. That includes a full range of emotions but if we can find our way to OK, they bring richness to life.
As we resolve our history, we can open up to life in its pure, blissful form.
Davidya
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This is helping to hear. I’m glad you’re back and grateful for you. Thanks
You’re welcome, Clarice. You may enjoy Brené Brown’s work.
For me, joy is a consistent, reverberating part of everyday life. There is not a choice to experience it. It is initiated by nature. I enjoy it, but it is always there, whether I am consciously aware of it or not.
Exactly, Jeff. This is true for everyone, under the mind and emotions. But most people do not find it consistently, just in rare moments. That can be changed. 🙂
Thank you so much for posting this timely and essential knowledge. It’s so easy to get lost in chapters of life that feel heavy and dark…and so easy to not look at deep habits of perceiving and interpreting that we have carried energetically for….Lord know how long! How many small moments of light are passed by or rejected out of fear… Much appreciation….
Yes, Carol. Long habits take time to shift, and a little awareness. Without awareness, we stay in the dark.
Hi David, when I was reading this blog, it reminded me for a time when I find myself to be joyous that I should stop and put up a serious face or look despondent, because I was afraid that with a joyful face that a bad thing will happen. So what you wrote here was true for me. However I think I had a gradual shift somewhere that I don’t feel or think this way anymore, and you just reinforced being appreciative and always be in gratitude do help at all times. Thank you for writing this blog. I also bought Our Natural Potential.
You’re welcome, Lynette. It’s good to recognize our progress. And thanks.
Thanks David – a good one.
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Whenever I experienced unwelcome results in life, even from a young age I recognized it was either something in my perception or in my action was off. Oftentimes I have aimed squarely at that which discomforts me in order to figure it out, no matter how momentarily uncomfortable it may make me.
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Getting at the truth of ourselves especially as we grow and have a tendency to work into familiar patterns is an ongoing dynamic that doesn’t seem to change much regardless of how spiritually active we may become; same old desires for a good life, to spread happiness and joy and have the same return to us.
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Going for joy will always result in a few disappointments, but they only last for a moment and by then we have learned one more thing to not do, or to adjust, or to reflect on in our quest for joy. Given the parameters each of us is given here; huge powers in the context of time and space, it behooves us to take full advantage of all of it, as rapidly as possible.
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Do we really have much of a choice; learn the lessons, or alternatively, come back and then learn the lessons? Endless possibilities for remediation. Life is a patient master, but a master nonetheless.
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Thank you!
Hi Jim
Yep – life has all the time in the world for us to clue in. But it’s a lot easier for us if we get the message and learn a few things. Easy things really, but it can take time to learn some of them. 🙂
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Good advice. Unwelcome results can come from prior consequences too, but yeah – if we can recognize the associated contraction, we can resolve the source of the event. As you mention, that can be briefly uncomfortable but it stops it from coming around again. Thus, quality of life gradually improves.
“Easy things really, but it can take time to learn some of them. :-)”
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Yes, I feel quite dumb and slow much of the time. In the nicest possible way. 🙂
Yep, I often notice what a slow learner I am. 🙂
I read another gem today, by ananta kranti, ….it left me with some deep questions about why i often choose the more limiting way….when experience has shown me bliss and joy is highly accessible. Thanks so much for your writing David.
‘ Remember that you are the one who gives meaning to everything… What you hear and what you read is then interpreted by YOU
You are either open and resting as Awareness in which case you Hear it direct from where it comes from…
Or else, it gets filtered through your conditioned view… In which case you have the opportunity if you are aware enough… To see how your conditioned view creates your world in all your relationships, how you keep alive the structure of a separate self identity and how you would rather hold on to that than be truly Free as pure Awareness’
Hi Deborah
Yeah – it’s kinda that slow learner thing I was chatting about with Jim above. As it gets more obvious, we start to see through the stories and drives running that and it fades out more. But it takes experience and time, with the occasional grand insight that cuts through it.
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These patterns have been running through lifetimes or handed down from ancestors. It’s like turning a cruise ship – you turn the wheel but it takes a bit before the momentum changes direction…
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But eventually it does turn… 🙂
Hi Davidya
I’ve been reading a lot of your articles about gratitude. Gratitude is something that’s really showing its importance now. A long time ago I thought that all this talk about gratitude goes with the rest of new agey stuff – something that isn’t really that important when it comes to spirituality. Turns out that I was very ignorant and arrogant, I wasn’t yet mature enough to understand the value that gratitude has.
I’ve been clearing out a lot of emotional baggage and old patterns and came to the point where there’s some spaciousness inside, yet it didn’t feel like it was filling up with anything positive. That’s when the realization came that those emotions need to be cultivated.
It seems that it takes some practice to know where to place my gratitude so that it’s not an intellectual exercise but a real heartfelt feeling. I think that it’s much more natural to be grateful for subtler aspects. Like thinking about having a car – I can look at my car and think intellectually that “Yes it’s great to have this car”, but that doesn’t really fill the heart. But if I think how it enables me to move from place to place with little effort and expands my life in many ways, that’s when the real gratitude comes.
Also feeling gratitude for the life I’ve already build for myself, even if much of it has manifested from unconscious patterns and desires. It’s still pretty good. It’s a new attitude that I never realized I could even have.
There’s some tests though.
Today I had a bunch of old triggers come at the same time, dealing with money, purpose and life direction. After the initial emotional upheaval I thought “what it would feel like to be grateful for even this situation? Would the outcome of this situation be different than usual now that my own emotional attitude is different?”
That’s yet to be seen but even then this is a much healthier state to be in instead of anxiety or despair.
Thanks, your blog is full of super valuable information and insights.
Hi Olli
Great! Emotions are seen as problematic or of little importance to the mind. And yet this is the minds way of being self-important because the heart actually plays a larger role in our well-being. But we have to come to that to see it.
In my own journey, gratitude played a role in letting go and opening up to allow awakening to happen. Further, favouring emotional tones like gratitude help shift energy habits we often have. The media and people around us are often full of ‘what’s wrong and who’s to blame.’ They set a bad example. (laughs)
The trick though is favouring. If we get into trying to control the emotions, it won’t be helpful. We want to shift habit patterns but still allow what is unresolved to arise and be experienced.
You describe the process well. We have to learn aspects, like allowing, and not falling back to the mind to deal with emotions (not its territory). Subtler in the sense that feelings are more subtle than thoughts. Feelings are more abstract and general. (Some emotions are more gross than thoughts but the quality, life-affirming ones are more subtle and get lost under the mind’s noise.)
We don’t want to push gratitude against sadness or fear, for example. But we can feel gratitude that those old triggers arose as they give us a chance to heal them, at least to a degree.
Yes, even those in the west floating around the poverty line can live a life better than much of the world.
And yes, outcomes can change as well as quality of life as we heal and shift the overall tone.
It’s a process. Sometimes we stumble. But sometimes, the light can shine in and clear away the shadows…