Today I want to talk about joy. How can you define joy? We perhaps each have our own definition of what joy is, but we all know what it is when we experience it. Moments of joy can be fleeting and many people can go a long time without feeling any joy.
Joy is important, because it connects us with who we truly are. It facilitates love, because in joy there is only love. Joy can make the darkest hour bearable. Joy can re-invigorate. It might be the smile of a baby. It might be a spectacular rainbow. It might be seeing a loved one pull through from a difficult operation. Small moments of joy and huge moments of joy. But nonetheless, joy.
We can all cultivate joy so that we experience more of it. Joy is all around waiting to be discovered. It’s difficult to discover it when you’re pre-occupied or when you’re stressed. But taking time out to decompress, to look at nature, to engage in silent prayer, whatever ‘time out’ looks like to you, is a very good opportunity to reconnect with your joy.
Taking time out like this isn’t unproductive time. Whilst the purpose isn’t to re-charge your batteries or kick start your enthusiasm, that can often be the end result of it. Time out can be five minutes, it can be a vacation, it can be a gap year. But it’s best not to measure it in linear time. Rather measure it using your internal gauge.
Time out doesn’t mean isolating oneself from the world. In fact, the converse is true. By taking time out you will discover yourself. You will discover what the world means to you. And you will open up the ability to recognise joy and to feel joy more often.
As a practical help, you can try to find joy in the smallest things. It might be a flower, it might be watching a bird eat a berry. It might be listening to your animal breathe as they sleep ability to experience such joy is easier the calmer your mind is and the less it is racing.
So I encourage you all to cultivate your joy. Make joy one of your ‘five-a-day’ along with your fruit and vegetables, your minimum walking distances, or your minimum steps. Along with your power shakes or your herbal teas. Set some time aside to recognise joy and to recognise the moments that can give you joy.
At first you might not succeed. It might feel like a waste of time. You might think nothing is happening. Stick at it and you will begin to notice things that you have perhaps never noticed before, and get joy from things you have not got joy from before.
If you really stick at it, what you might find happening, is that even when you’re not consciously taking time out, even when you’re not consciously looking for moments or situations that might bring you joy, you might find in fact, that as you’re getting on with your everyday life, moments of joy keep appearing out of nowhere!
It is so important to take our foot off the accelerator from time-to-time, and to decompress. So many of you are running from one thing to another. Worrying about one thing, stressing about another. Wondering how it’s all going to fit together. Wondering if you’ll manage. Feeling it’s a rat race. Feeling as if things are getting on top of you.
This message is particularly for those of you who feel in such a trap at the moment. That is why I don’t suggest starting with a huge commitment of time. Five minutes, twice a day, if you can do it. And I can promise you the amount of valuable time you get back from giving up those five minutes will more thuan compensate. Because joy is crucial to our success and to our enjoyment as humans. We must therefore cultivate it, just as we cultivate and harvest our food.
Greetings, this is Alcazar, Light Being.