Last month, I wrote on how being of service was really about bringing more joy into someone’s life. This month, I wanted to put a spotlight on the importance of also needing to do that for ourselves.
Too often we get mired in the day-to-day monotonies and stresses of life, thus we forget: JOY is supposed to be the baseline of our experiences. When this disappears from our awareness, our vibrations remain static and we are no longer a beacon for that which was meant to be our default state. Think about what it feels like when not in JOY – the sense of obstacles always closing in, struggle, being robbed of happiness, and worse: feeling like a victim. When we are in a state of JOY, all that disappears. Gone. Nowhere to be found. In fact, the state of JOY says “All things are good which are coming to me. I am so happy with all I am experiencing! There are no barriers!” JOY is an open pipe for the flow of welcome experiences, versus those which put us in a framework of energetic resistance.
So how did we get to this space where we are no longer feeling massive amounts of JOY? And more importantly – how do we reclaim that which is supposed to be our go-to station with life? Being of service to others in helping them move towards JOY is an amazing gift, but have we stopped to realize it is equally (if not more) important to find this JOY within ourselves? And that if we do, we may be contributing to society EVEN MORE than just being of service to one or two (or even 100) people at a time? (This is not about being selfish… as some people think that to pursue JOY or HAPPINESS is about ego and selfishness. Nothing could be further from the truth).
I think we fell out of joy when we started to realize that life didn’t necessarily play fair, as we erroneously equated “fairness” with “joy.” We struggled against this notion, because our intuition told us that life was meant to be JOYFUL, but unfairness took that joy away… In reality, it isn’t about being fair versus unfair (we create our own personal reality, remember); rather, it’s about being IN-JOY or NOT-IN-JOY. Since the Universe was designed from a perspective of JOY, then we must DE-PROGRAM ourselves from belief systems that construct disorder, struggle, and unhappiness as being the baseline. Instead of constantly “reminding” ourselves every second that “life is unfair” or “it’s not meant to be joyful,” let’s start affirming the opposite (which is really the truth): It’s meant to be JOYFUL. Imagine how our lives would be had we focused on that framework growing up, versus its opposite. We would have far more compounded experiences to demonstrate JOY than anything to the contrary.
So how do we do that? How do we change from a constant stream of feeling Not-Joy to being In-Joy? Answer: Start feeling and recognizing JOY now. In everything. No matter how small. Remember, life doesn’t happen to you, but rather you happen to life. As the saying goes “Happiness is an inside job.” By recognizing joy now, you are PRIMING THE PUMP. All of us have decades of old thought-habit-patterns that need changing when it comes to this area... But when we work on SEEING, RECOGNIZING, and most importantly FEELING JOY now, it helps move us away from those mental ruts and gets us exploring this new territory. This is vitally important when we realize that the Universe manufactures reality based on the dominant frequencies of consciousness; therefore, continue to experiment with JOY so that it becomes the call the Universe cannot help but mirror back. You get what you focus on… What you focus on expands. Focus and expand JOY. Another great aspect for tuning into JOY is to focus on GRATITUDE. Gratitude is so enriching! It hooks us into joy -- and with continued practice, can keep us there. It is the true path to freedom.
It’s so important to note that in order to meet the JOY of the Universe, we must condition ourselves to be a receptor of it. Gratitude helps with this. More often than not, you have to give yourself PERMISSION to accept JOY; and be OPEN to RECEIVING it. This is why feeling GRATITUDE and JOY now is so important (despite current circumstances); it’s part of the de-programming and RE-Programming effort that leads you, step-by-step, to the doors of Universal JOY…
I also believe it’s not just a matter of focus, because often we find that we cannot focus on something for more than three or four seconds before we get distracted. That’s okay. Our belief-habits aren’t simply just a matter of what we focused on in the past, it’s what we kept going back to in our minds. Cultivating JOY works in the same way. What you consistently come back to, time and time again, will carve out that new pathway. It’s like tuning a piano. You have to keep returning to it at the start, but then it gets “in tune” and remains there longer. This is how habits are formed. Consider an experiment in JOY… a 30 day experiment. Tune yourself up to recognizing and feeling JOY, and the more you do it and come back to it, it will become the dominant, normal frequency of your vibration, just like an instrument – and the Universe will respond. It has to. Like frequencies attract like experiences.
I can’t stress how important this really is. Look at it from a quantum mechanical (QM) perspective. In QM, the observer affects quantum particles. In other words, how you observe reality has consequences. If you can start viewing reality through LOVE and JOY… see what this does over a 30 day period. Make a conscious effort – through JOY – of observing the outside world with love and joy conjured from within. Quantum Mechanics tells us, this absolutely affects the outside world and its relationship with us, making it a more JOYFUL experience. This isn’t wishful thinking; it is science. What the heck, we know it works from the other direction, right?
Here’s the real kicker as to why feeling personal JOY may be something far greater than even providing joy to another person in the act of deliberate service: The collective consciousness. Each of us is contributing to this pool every second of every day. When we can cultivate JOY within ourselves, that JOY feeds into that stream – and we definitely need more JOY consciousness in the collective! So, in a grand sense, you are not only improving your own consciousness and experience, you are adding that grandeur to the greater masses; you are providing a service far beyond one, two, or a hundred individuals, but rather 9 billion. Do you see now why JOY is so important? And why we need to return to it?
Yes, it’s going to take some work – if only because we’ve given ourselves some really bad habits of not being in this most basic yet profound state. But again, JOY is the baseline; it’s the foundation for why everything came into existence: the JOY of EXPERIENCES. When we can start feeding that back into both the Quantum Field and the Collective Consciousness, then (and only then) will we start to see real and lasting change on a larger landscape.
Cultivate JOY today!