By Nancy Rynes, author of Awakenings from the Light*Note: this article is written for folks whose mental and emotional health is relatively "healthy". In other words, you're not struggling with depression, anxiety, cognitive challenges, brain injuries, etc. For those who are, you may find some words of wisdom here but this post and my training is not deep enough to address your very real challenges. Please seek the advice of an appropriate professional.
How do you define joy and happiness? Do you see a difference, or do you feel they're the same thing?
I've been thinking about this quite a lot in the last few weeks because so many people have asked me how they can achieve happiness, or at least a sense of contentment, while struggling with the reality of life here on Earth.*
To me, happiness is fleeting, a temporary emotion or mental state that's tied to external events. Someone gives you a gift or a compliment, you feel a little burst of happiness. But that feeling of happiness may not last very long because its source is dependent on someone or something else, not on you.
I view joy in a very different way.
Joy is deeper, sometimes quieter, and much longer-lasting. Joy comes as a result of the positive choices you make, how you live your life, who you choose to spend time with, your attitude about events that happen, and from focusing on the good things in your life (i.e., feeling grateful). It's not dependent on someone or something else but rather it's a natural result of taking a more conscious, grateful, and awakened approach to living your life.
Joy is a conscious choice and may even take effort on your part. While it may take you time and practice to achieve joy, being tuned in with who you truly are as a spiritual being, living the life that is yours, cultivating peace and gratitude, being creative, and focusing on living in a meaningful way can help you increase that sense of inner joy.
With joy, the storms of life come and go but your essence, your core self, remains relatively unfazed because it's focused on deeper, more meaningful things.
Is joy dependent on being happy in each moment? No, at least not for me. As weird as it might sound, it is possible to live in joy even when you're not very happy in a given moment. For example, you might not be very excited about your job because it's not really in line with who you really are or what you want in life. But because you do many other things that are in line with who you really are (belong to a spiritual community, volunteer, spend time at the beach or at the park, knit beautiful sweaters, play the harp, etc.), you can strengthen your inner joy anyway, regardless of what's happening in your job.
Many years ago I did some volunteer work in refugee camps in the Middle East. The folks in these camps were financially very poor with essentially nothing to their names except perhaps some clothing, the basic tools of life, and a government-provided hut in which the whole family lived. They did not have autos, computers, internet, cell phones, 60 inch TVs, or season tickets the local sports arena. They really only had each other, but they were some of the most joy-filled people I had met to that point in my life.
In the USA we're good at externals: our belongings, the media, entertainment, high-profile careers, and anything else money can buy might serve to give us a fleeting sense of being happy -- at least until the novelty wears off. Then we're off looking for the next thing that will "make us happy." We even hope other people might wave a magic wand and by their very presence, bring unbounded happiness into our lives.
Don't get me wrong, "stuff" in and of itself is neither bad nor good. It's perfectly fine to own a Mustang sports car, just don't expect it to fill up every emptiness in your soul. And while money can "buy" us a certain level of comfort and happiness, and true friends are a blessing, real joy is an inside job. It cannot be bought. It cannot be given to us by someone else. I've met some incredibly wealthy Americans who had everything money could buy, but they were miserable because they had not yet learned how to cultivate joy in their hearts.
Cultivating joy is a bit like growing an incredibly rare and beautiful orchid from the smallest of seeds. Have you ever seen an orchid seed? They're about the size of a speck of dust yet from that tiny bit of matter an incredibly beautiful flower can grow if given the right care and attention. That little seed must be placed in the appropriate environment and nurtured, sometimes for years, until it grows to a plant that can finally bloom. Once it blooms, if you continue to care for it that plant will deliver glorious flowers to you for years.
Orchids need the right light, food, water, and time to thrive, but what does joy need?
Joy needs both attention and intention.
If you want to strengthen your inner sense of joy, start by figuring out more about yourself. What's your inner truth? Yes, this can be a fairly complicated question so let's start with something easy. For example, if you are one of those many people who are deeply in tuned with, and energized by, spending time in nature, depriving yourself of that connection for any length of time may cause you to feel anxious or out-of-sorts. One of your truths is that nature energizes you and you need regular doses of it in order to feel alive. If you have the soul of an artist but don't practice your creativity in some way, you might feel irritable or mildly cranky. One of your core truths is that you function best if you practice your creativity every day. If you're extroverted but have gone a week without spending serious time with your main group of friends, you might not feel like yourself. One of your core truths is that you are energized by being around other people.
Take a moment now and consider: what are a some of my personal truths?
For me, even a "bad" day at the easel fills up my inner reserve of joy. Granted, I would rather the product of my time be "good" but even if it's not, just the act of creating a painting helps me feel that all is right in my world. Spending time with my family does it too. So does gardening, hiking, volunteering, public speaking, and helping those struggling with a terminal diagnosis.
Cultivating joy demands that you take time to get to know and honor yourself in a deeper, more meaningful way. As a start, you can do that by paying attention to how something makes you feel inside. Are you energized by spending time with large groups of people, or does that drain you? Are you excited at the prospect of a challenging problem at your current job, or is the only reason you go into work simply to collect a paycheck? What's your favorite color or movie or song? Do you feel better after having attended religious or spiritual services, even if the messages at those services challenge you to do bigger things with your life? Does helping others give you a good feeling in your heart?
Helping my friend Douglas during the last months of his terminal illness certainly didn't feel like a happy experience at the time. But it was an honor to help this man who was like a big brother to me. Being there for him enhanced my own sense that I was on my right path, that what I was doing truly mattered, and in a way I felt joy in being helpful to him during that difficult time.
Cultivating joy means we follow those deep, love-based callings of our hearts even when (or especially when) those callings challenge our human egos. One physician I knew a few years ago left his lucrative medical practice and has spent several years donating his time to the organization Doctors Without Borders. It isn't easy work, and it doesn't add to his bank account, but it has helped him attain a sense of inner contentment and joy that he hadn't felt for many years.
I also think that what strengthens someone's sense of joy the most is when she engages in activities that minimize the ego's identification of "I" as separate from everything and everyone else. Meditation, some forms of prayer, volunteering, being creative, spending truly quality time with our families, or helping others in some way can force our awareness past "I" to an understanding of "We" that's more fulfilling to our souls.
Take a moment to think about what you do now, or what you'd like to try, in order to strengthen your inner sense of joy. A few ideas are:
- spiritual practice and/or attending services
- spending dedicated time with loved ones
- helping others
- being creative
- spending quiet time in nature
- singing, dancing, or playing music
Contrary to popular belief, not all near-death experiencers live in a perpetual state of joy. As a percentage, though, more of us have achieved joy in our lives than the non-NDE population. Maybe this is because many of us experienced overwhelming joy, love, and peace in Heaven and will do practically anything to recreate that in our earthly lives. That level of heavenly peace and joy is intoxicating and once experienced, we want to live in it as much as possible.
Let's continue this discussion of joy next month.
I wish you heavenly (and earthly) love and joy.
Blessings,
Nancy
*Note: this article is written for folks whose mental and emotional health is relatively "normal". In other words, you're not struggling with depression, anxiety, cognitive challenges, brain injuries, etc. For those who are, you may find some words of wisdom here but this post and my training is deep enough to address your very real challenges. Please seek the advice of an appropriate professional.
Upcoming FREE, LIVE Webinar
June 19 at 5PM Pacific (Seattle) time, I'll be giving a LIVE, one hour webinar of "Awakening to Life." This webinar walks you through some of the challenges faced by people who have near-death experiences, spiritually-transformative experiences, visions, shared death experiences, and other events. Being touched by heaven isn't all unicorns and rainbows once we return to everyday life! But there are pathways of hope, healing, and awakening that experiencers can use to make their lives even better than before. The cool things is that you don't need to have had one of these experience in order to learn something from this webinar. I give everyone some tips and techniques you can use to enrich your life and let in the love! Attendance is limited to the first 100 people who dial in on the 19th.Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/887728137?pwd=UmJqY3F4QUpKVW5ZaldUOHNMWUJMQT09Password: AwakeningsUpcoming LIVE, ONLINE Class
Starting July 11, I'll be teaching a LIVE, ONLINE version of "Heaven on Earth 101: Living in Peace." This class has met with rave reviews when I teach it in person so I've decided to offer it via Zoom video conferencing. This class will meet five consecutive Wednesdays at 6PM Pacific time. Each class will be one hour. We'll also have an optional Question and Answer session as well, so you'll have access to all 6 class meetings, plus class notes and handouts, plus recordings of all of the classes so that you can view them again and again. Videoconferencing allows you to take a class with me, live, from the comfort of your own home! Total cost for the entire bundle is $60 plus a $10 fee for your own video copy to review. More information and registration here: http://NancyRynes.com/workshops.
Stuff You Might Have Missed
Archive: Past Newsletter Issues
Article: Lives Changed by NDEs (Boulder Daily Camera)
Article: Awakening to Life (Pages 6-10, Journal of Exceptional Experiences and Psychology, Summer 2016)
Article: The Meaning of Life
Article: The Things I Learned from Dying
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Bio: Nancy Rynes is a speaker, artist, and author of "Awakenings from the Light" (available from Amazon.com). Nancy's books and workshops teach you how to bring a little bit of Heaven to your life on Earth. She divides her time between Seattle, Washington and Tucson, AZ. Check out her website at NancyRynes.com
Copyright © 2018 Nancy Rynes, All rights reserved.