When confronted with turbulent times and an uncertain world, never forget YOU can make a difference when you stand in the deep wholeness of your Being. Each week, we will offer you an exercise to help you focus the Light within you that is always your gift to the world.
In the subtle worlds, joy is more than just a feeling of happiness. It is a heightening agent. When we can hold joy in our hearts and minds, letting it permeate our energy fields, it acts like heat, getting things moving and flowing. But can we summon joy into and out of our energy fields when we want to? For many people, joy is a result of something good happening. Absent that good event, where does the joy come from?
This is a simple practice that I call "joy mining." Think of yourself as deliberately looking for "nuggets" of joy in your daily affairs and drawing them into your field, depositing them in an inner "bank account." To do this, you need to realize that joy doesn't have to be a dramatic experience of ecstasy and pleasure. It can be very simple.
What you are looking for are moments that hold the potential of heightening you and your energy. The trick is to make a habit of noticing and acknowledging them so that we begin to realize that truly joy abounds and is all around us and within us for us to draw upon.
What might constitute of "nugget" of joy? It could be anything that in the moment gives you a happy feeling. It could be the pleasure of a good cup of coffee on a cold morning. It could be a smile from a friend. It could be seeing the blue of a clear sky or hearing the soothing sound of rain on the roof. It could be a song you hear, a funny remark, a bite of something delicious. Our senses are designed to connect us with pleasure in the world around us; when we acknowledge a moment of pleasure, we are in that moment lifted into joy. It may not be the joy of winning a lottery of thousands of dollars or the joy of getting married, but it's a nugget of joy nonetheless. The more we acknowledge and collect them, the "warmer" our subtle energy becomes, a warmth we can then send out into the world around us.
The challenge is that we mentally establish a threshold of delight that has to be crossed before we will recognize the presence of joy. This is like saying that bits of gold dust are beneath my notice; all I'll mine are fist-size nuggets of gold. Yet as many a wealthy miner has discovered, those little bits of gold dust can add up to a fortune.
So the heart of Joy Mining is paying attention to moments of happiness, lightness, pleasure, and all-around OK-ness when they happen to us, even if they seem like small pleasures indeed. By paying attention, you are sensitizing yourself to this heightening energy. Further, it helps you realize that for you to pass on joy into the world, you don't have to be in a crazy state of ecstatic happiness yourself. Though I can say from my own experience, as you practice this, the sense of being in the midst of joy gets progressively stronger until it can truly lead to moments of bliss and ecstasy in the midst of ordinary life.
This exercise is simplicity enough. The moment you feel pleased by something or have a sense of happiness about something you experience, pause for a moment and "collect" it. You do this by acknowledging the moment and honoring its felt sense. Say to yourself something like, "This is a nugget of joy. In this moment, I am touching joy. Let it become part of me that I may radiate it onward and outward in my life." Then give a silent thanks for the moment. Gratitude and joy go hand in hand.
Do this throughout a day and see what develops for you.