‘The harder you search for happiness turning the world upside down for a legendary treasure that was never there the more you lose touch with the shining source of peace and joy inside you’ (from The Calm Center: Reflections and Meditations for Spiritual Awakening by Steve Taylor)
Go for the sense of inner joy, of inner peace, of inner vision first and then all the other things from the outside appear’ Marci Shimoff
Every so often I come across ideas that resonate with me, and books that seem interesting and valuable, and I often jot down titles (and quotes) hoping that I will eventually find the time and energy to read some of them at least. One such book that I have not yet read, but whose title left a lasting impression on me is Happy For No Reason by Marci Shimoff. Rick Hanson perhaps refers to the same kind of experience of happiness when he talks about an ‘unconditional, disengaged, wistful happiness’. Maybe it was a sense of wistful joy that arose within us in childhood and that we somehow lost touch with along the way. Whereas most of us feel happy when good things happen to us or when things are more or less running smoothly, which is a good thing, it seems that being happy for no reason and tapping into it is more elusive, at least in our western cultures. Through meditating I am now aware that there is unconditional love, serenity and a sense of more expansiveness deep within us and that no matter what may be happening on the rim, to use Dan Siegel’s wheel of awareness metaphor, there is always equanimity and peace deep inside where we can reside and which we can access. Another metaphor is that of the sea – the ocean bed is always relatively still and quiet no matter how choppy the surface of the sea may be. So, even during an emotional upheaval there is a peaceful sanctuary inside waiting for us, a hub of resilience and equilibrium that we can return to or abide in. All our emotional experiences of anxiety, frustration and hurt are waves that rise and fall. So, I could at a cognitive level understand that likewise there may be an uncorrupted by experience and traumas place within all of us of unconditional happiness, but I had not felt that I had tapped into this source within me in adulthood, at least not that I could remember of.
And then more recently, while meditating I felt it clearly. It felt like a seemingly out of the blue internal smile and a sense of ‘I am happy just for being here’ irrespectively of external circumstances, and I understood what others had been describing. I realised that this was something one could tap into during stillness and meditation practices, but what about when one is off the cushion or the chair. So, a few days ago I was walking along a quiet countryside road. It was dusk, but it felt like afternoon even though the sun had set. The road was in a hilly area and as I looked at the sea in the distance I saw the moon emerging from a cloud and it was like a big crimson-orange ball of fire, as if the world had turned upside down and the sun was rising at dusk. As I continued to walk the moon took on different shades of pink and orange and yellow until it eventually turned a milky white as the sky grew darker. It was within movement and nature that this experience of unconditional happiness twinkled inside me again and I realised that maybe it was an inner potential that could also occur spontaneously through presence. And then I thought maybe this unconditional sense of happiness was joy and had to do with merely existing, was part of the essence of living that we somehow lose on the way, but had access to when we were very young, and that perhaps what we refer to as happiness depended more on good things coming our way and absence of suffering, and was therefore, more fleeting or transitory. Maybe this source of wistful joy had always been there from the very beginning and we could through our tears, presence, meditation or other practices recover it. Steve Taylor writes that ‘childhood is a time of heightened spiritual sensibility, intense awareness, and natural joy. William Wordsworth certainly portrays childhood in this way in his poem “Intimations of Immortality,” describing how “heaven lies about us in our infancy!” and how, as we grow into adulthood, “Shades of the prison-house begin to close” and the world begins to “fade into the light of common day’ (from The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening, 2017)
Later when I got back home from my walk I came across something Danielle La Porte had written on joy and happiness at: http://www.daniellelaporte.com/definition-of-happiness-and-why-its-different-from-joy/
‘Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting. Joy is the oxygen — ever present. Happiness is always passing through. It can claim your full attention for the ten seconds it takes to swallow a sip of incredible coffee. Or it can stream through your being for weeks on end. But happiness can’t hold the same space as sadness, or anger, or the range of so-called “negative” emotions for very long. This is why it’s transitory.
Joy is the fibre of your Soul. It’s the stuff of your essence. And since you, your Soul, can never be annihilated…… your access to joy never vanishes. Because joy is so foundational to your true being, every other state or emotion can rest on top of joy, it can accommodate everything (my underlining). This means that it’s possible to grieve with your whole heart, and still sense your joy. You can feel rage, and be aware of joy waiting patiently for you to return, and take deep comfort in that’ (extract from a larger post).
This brief post today is written in response to my viewing several videos on the internet of children been separated from their parents at the US-Mexico borders, which after the intense initial emotional response and tears left a haunting lingering in my mind and heart. It breaks one’s heart to realise that after thousands of years of war fare and divide and conquer tactics, and all the human suffering and depletion of the planet this has brought about, and despite our technological advances and knowledge and our literally touching the stars, we humans are still creating contexts of strife, massacre and pain in so many places on the planet. There are probably more people than ever today fleeing their homes for lack of food, work and safety. A constant river of people around the world moving in uncertainty in search of work and better living conditions for their families. During wartime families have been torn apart not only through death, but as a result of strategies implemented at times to save the children and at other times as a means of aggression and enculturation or deculturation. In his book The Children of the Civil War : From Franco’s Social Welfare to Queen Frederica’s Fundraiser (1936-1950) Loukianos Chasiotis, who adopts a comparative approach, writes ‘in both cases, the weaker military branch was carrying children abroad, while the strongest military group was gathering them in centers within the territory’/ (Ο Λουκιανός Χασιώτης στο βιβλίο του Τα Παιδιά Του Εμφυλίου: Από Την Κοινωνική Πρόνοια Του Φράνκο Στον Έρανο Της Φρειδερίκης (1936-1950) γράφει ‘σε αμφότερες τις περιπτώσεις η πιο αδύναμη στρατιωτική παράταξη μετέφερε παιδιά στο εξωτερικό, ενώ η πιο ισχυρή τα συγκέντρωνε σε κέντρα εντός της επικράτειας’. During WWII children were separated from their parents and siblings were torn apart in concentration camps. Indigenous people around the world have also often suffered policies of enculturation or rather deculturation, a process of divesting people of their indigenous traits. For many native peoples this meant being brought involuntarily and reluctantly into contact with western civilization or worse being robbed of their young ones with devastating long term effects and soul wounding.