Joy As a Spiritual Path

October 19, 2008

Pamela Mcintyre

First Universalist Society of Franklin

ÓPamela McIntyre, 2008. All rights reserved.

I begin with a poem by Derek Wolcott, entitled,

Love After Love by Derek Wolcott

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

In the Sealskin, Soulskin story we heard earlier in the service, the sealwoman without her soulskin pelt, has lost her sense of self, lost her intuition, her drive, her creativity, she is depleted and cannot even gather the energy to go look for her soul. It takes the child- possibly the child in us - to have the enthusiasm and the fearlessness to follow the call that leads to the soulskin pelt and to joy and renewal. To quote Clarissa Pinkola Estes: “we can live on land but not forever, not without trips to the water and to home…”

Last February, Carol spoke at a service entitled “Running on Empty” and asked us how do we renew ourselves? And we all shared some of our own ways of filling the well, of replenishing. The questions that came to my mind during that service were: first, how do you know what fills you up, what gives you joy? And secondly, how do you find the faith or courage to follow joy; in reference to our story, how do you pick up your soulskin pelt once you find it, hold on to it and step into the water? And finally, why does it matter?

Over the past few years I have developed a workbook and workshop for college age kids as well as others in transition entitled: What Matters to You: Exploring Your Purpose, Values, and Talents. A couple of years ago it became very clear to me that the secret to truly knowing what matters to you, what gives meaning to your life, is pretty simple. It is the sensation of joy; joy is the messenger and all we have to do is pay attention. “Joy lies at the heart of everything that really matters,” to quote life coach and counselor, Martha Beck.

There’s a lot of evidence right now that many of us are confused about what is joyful to us and struggling with how to let joy into our lives. There’s a phenomenon right now around life purpose and life coaches, everyone’s scurrying around trying to figure out why they’re here, and what they’re supposed to be doing. And I, of course, lead the pack and always have. That’s why we are talking about this today. I had a mother who was incredibly creative as a singer and dancer and probably an actor if she had ever gone in that direction- but once she got married and had children, like many women of her generation, she didn’t do any of it. As I watched her, from my perspective, my perception was that she was not doing her life. She lost the pelt and never tried to find it again- no matter how many times the little child- me – tried to bring it to her, place it on her, and lead her to the sea. So it is my obsession in this lifetime to be sure I am not missing my life. And I am working so hard at it, I am, of course, missing my life. I am searching so hard and trying so hard that I can’t see the beauty and the perfection that is right in front of me- in this present moment.

And I don’t think I am the only one. We are all so busy trying to make sure that our kids have the perfect life, that we are having the perfect life, that we become distracted from what matters- just like the sealwoman in the story, if we don’t pay attention, we lose ourselves, our souls. In some cases, we get so caught up in life that we don’t even know we lost anything. We have forgotten.

Right now in our world we are seeing the enormous consequence of not following joy, not reflecting on what matters to us and not finding meaning in our lives. When we turn our backs on the very things that replenish and enliven us – our soulskin- what matters to us at the core of who we are- we are miserable and restless and grab at whatever quick fix we can find to fill ourselves up. We become insatiable for things to soothe us or numb us up- we overeat, drink, over spend, go shopping for things we don’t need, get lost in television, gossip- other people’s stories, we get angry, start arguments just to feel something, and we are numb to our own story, we are numb to our feelings not just for ourselves but for others. We are disconnected from ourselves, our community and the creative world, so we are not doing our part in healing the planet, in service to others. According to myth, the Egyptians believed that at the end of their lives the fundamental questions asked by the God, Osiris, were: “First, did you find joy? And second, did you bring joy?” These two questions are brilliant and really get to the heart of what life is truly about. First, going in and reflecting on what is meaningful and joyful to us and second, going out in the world to use our talents to touch others.

The first question is crucial because joy lead us to an understanding of our purpose, a discovery of our gifts and an enthusiasm to go into the world and share with others. So how do we know joy? How do we hear the call of the singing seal women beckoning us to retrieve what we have lost? Joy is a sensation- it is experienced through the body. First, we have to be able to feel it and then we reflect on what the sensation means about what matters to us. It is a physical flow of energy, an aliveness, that lifts us up.

Columnist Beverly Beckham makes the spiritual connection: “Good. God. Energy. Soul. Light. Whatever it’s name, we are born with it. But it fades or burns out or gets buried so deep that we forget it’s even there.” Joy is the spiritual wake up call, when god whispers in our ears to tell us what matters to us.

The joy wake up call comes in many forms – sometimes it’s simply sitting in stillness and breathing in the moment and other times it’s a creative force. You fall in love or hear a great piece of music or plant a garden or see the birds or work on a car engine or have an amazing conversation with someone at church- and you feel it, that uplifting joyous sensation. And you think it’s the music or the lover - but it’s you. The god in you- you have stepped into god, some kind of universal flow that’s always been there, deep within you. And it has been broken open by the simple joy of planting a bulb. This is the inseparable connection between creativity, spirituality, and joy. The image I think of is that I am busy doing my life and I have one big toe in the river of myself. I know it feels good but I’m scared to jump all the way in. And then a certain activity or experience or encounter or moment of stillness draws me into the water and I suddenly come alive.

And in that moment, we realize what we are pining for, yearning for. This is the homecoming. When we remember- oh, here I am- this is who I am. And in that moment of bliss or joy or full presence – we are awakened to the truth of who we are. As many of you know, I teach Nia- a movement/dance practice. And sometimes in the middle of dancing, I will look around at the faces of the dancers, and they are so joyful- smiling, beaming, sometimes crying at the joy of finding themselves or at the awareness of what they have been missing. It is my joy to witness their awakening.

We know this sensation through the body- when we are doing something we love and our body becomes alert and alive and everything is flowing. It is in that moment that the sensation of joy is telling us to pay attention, that there is something important here that truly matters to us. The example I used to give my students in college was the moment when they are sitting in class bored and suddenly they lean forward intently listening to the professor. This is an involuntary movement of the body telling us that something matters to us. Our job is to listen - to pay attention. As a friend of mine says, follow the chill- that energized uplifting sensation. Our task is simply to allow ourselves to be present to joy.

This sounds so simple but the mind can separate us from our bodies. The body makes it so easy to follow joy. The mind will talk you out of it- it will tell you you’re mistaken- you didn’t really feel that and you can’t really do that and that doesn’t make sense, blah, blah, blah. Your body knows where the soulskin pelt is and will go there if you don’t get in its way.

So let’s do a little experiment – take a little moment to connect to sensation.

Close your eyes and think of something you don’t like to do. Now open your eyes. Where did you feel that sensation? In the belly.

Now close your eyes and think of something you love to do, or someone you love, or a place you love. Now open your eyes. Where did you feel that sensation? In the heart.

When you thought of something you didn’t like or a place you didn’t want to be, you felt a contraction in the Belly, a pulling away.

When you thought of something you liked, you felt a rush at the heart.

So that’s the feeling to follow- that uplifting opening of the heart. And even if it is a small joy, it’s like a crack in the dam- it jumpstarts the flow of energy and enthusiasm that feeds other parts of your life. It brings you to be full presence.

So once we recognize the sensation, the second question and maybe the more difficult one is- why don’t we trust it? Why do we say no? Why don’t we choose joy? It seems so easy- follow the joy trail- do what gives you joy. Why would we possibly see our pelt, the joy of our soul, and walk away from it? This is unbearably perplexing to me in my life.

I love to ride my bike. It gives me great joy. I’ve ridden it twice since last May. Why? This is a small joy – it doesn’t take a lot of time. But there is always some sense of urgency about getting things done. That there’s something more important I should be doing. I can’t do something joyful until I clean my office or do my errands or take care of everybody else, any number of things that are on the endless to do list. It is as if joy is something I have to earn or suffer for. What are these things that are so pressing? Some of them are essential- no question- but if I really face the facts, many of them aren’t. Many of them can wait while I take my little moment of energizing myself, filling the well, taking my little dip in the ocean of joy.

Choosing joy relies on me setting aside all the things I think I should do or accomplish or be and simply be present to an inner knowing. I want to ride my bike. There are great teachers who have different words for what we must let go of in order to be present and know joy: self-importance, ego. Tara Brach in the book Radical Acceptance calls it a “trance of unworthiness-”- the nagging sense that we are not enough and so we have to be more and do more and get more in order to convince ourselves and everyone else that we are enough. But of course we can never be, do or get enough to feel okay, so we are constantly scrambling- moving farther and farther away from the pelt, our little soulskin. Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth says, “ we are never fully here because we are always trying to get elsewhere,” and Dzigar Kongtrul explains in the book It’s Up to You: “We love our strategies and goals and our cunning way of looking at the world- as a ripe tangerine just waiting to be squeezed. We love the drive and speed with which we get things done, even though we may not enjoy doing them. We even love all the negative emotions . . . and the complex levels of our pain. If we get rid of them, will we still be a human being, or just a lifeless piece of wood? …Because we ‘re afraid of losing our spark, we resist change. We want to be who we want to be, which is who we’ve always been.”

These teachers are all saying the same thing. To choose joy is to choose change. To challenge our belief system about ourselves. It is to choose Presence, stillness, acceptance of the moment, a kind of ease that we don’t recognize as ourselves. We don’t know who we would be if we made these choices. So the fear of who we would become – discovering who we truly are- holds us back from the fullness of our lives.

In her book, LovingKindness: the Revolutionary Art of Happiness, Sharon Salzberg says, “an awakened life demands a fundamental revisioning of the limited views we hold of our own potential. . . To be truly happy in this world is a revolutionary act because true happiness depends upon a revolution in ourselves.”

So today, be a revolutionary – take this opportunity to begin to identify and choose joy. Just like little Ooruk in our story, children know joy and are fearless about following it. So we are going to do a little exercise- make a little Joy to do list. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, connect to earth. Now imagine yourself at 8 or ten years old. Now remember 5 things you loved to do when you were that age. Or five things you love to do now that you don’t make time for. Okay, so all of you have two or three things on your joy list. This week challenge your values, your beliefs about what is important, your priorities, and honor your self by choosing to do one of the joyful things on your list. I would also suggest that you begin to keep a log or journal about the things that bring you joy- because the joy moments are fleeting and the art of recording them means you are paying attention.

I’d like to leave you with a poem written by a friend I met at a movement training at Kripalu Yoga center. On the fourth day of dancing, Jacqueline and I shared a silent lunch together that was so sumptuous that afterwards she ran off and wrote this poem that brings us right back to the connection between joy and spirituality.

What If

By Jacqueline Chan

What if you got so wild

Yelled, jumped, stomped

Slapped the ground

Burned up all the

Shoulds and shouldn’ts

What if you got so crazy

You thought

If you moved any more intensely

Any more fast

With any more energy

You would rip out of your skin

And THAT allowed you to be still

What if in the stillness

Your cells lit loose

And became

ALIVE again

What if heaven isn’t out there

Infinity not in the galaxy

But right here on your vibrating lips

What if in the chewing and swallowing of good food

In the chewing and swallowing

In the chewing and swallowing

You digest God’s feast

What if the food is so delicious

You think you could burst

Yet God gives you another bite more sumptuous than the one before

What if you finally understand – YES

THIS is how God loves me

What if your greatest gift to God is to meet him right here

In the cells of your body

What if you don’t have to get a medical degree

To heal a soul

What if all you need to do

Is look someone in the eye

And see them.

What if harmony in the moment isn’t something

You have to create

But a creation that IS you

What if the only blockage to Heaven is

That you forgot to remember how to BE

Right here

At God’s Altar.

ÓJacqueline Chan

A Blessing of Solitude

By John O’Donohue

May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light

Of your soul.

May you realize that you are never alone,

That your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you

Intimately with the rhythm of the universe.

May you have respect for your own individuality and

Difference.

May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that

You have a special destiny here,

That behind the façade of your life there is something

Beautiful, good, and eternal happening.

May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride,

And expectation with which God sees you in every moment.