Choosing Joy

Part 11: Non Separation

It’s been some months since my last post in the “Create Joy” sequence but my journey with this has most certainly being ongoing! One after the other the objections have arisen and, each time as they did I “miraculously” managed not to notice that this WAS an objection. Each time it seemed to me to be an unrelated difficulty… a real and genuine reason for negative emotions… and then I would work my way though it and realise that, all along, this was simply another objection to my original choice that simply had to be dealt with.

Making a soul-level choice is like choosing to go on a journey. You begin by deciding where you want to be. But that decision is not the same thing as BEING THERE. It is the same thing as putting a pin in the map at your destination. You still have to strap on your boots, get up off your ass and WALK to get there.  And you don’t just walk one step… you walk many steps. It also seems to me that the first part of the journey is always a long steep uphill. When you set out it is hard going. But then, at some undefined point you begin to notice that you are getting used to the walking. And then you discover that you are on the downhill part of the journey. Though you are still walking, it certainly does get easier. And then there is the feeling that you are getting closer to your destination and that also spurs you.

The destination I set for myself was to be living in joy. Choosing that end-point for myself has resulted in quite an unexpected journey. As I walked the path I realised that I had been hiding all kinds of things from myself. There was a plethora of bad habits… emotional and spiritual bad habits… that I had been hiding under a foggy miasma of unhappiness. As I stripped that obfuscating layer away, so I discovered the underlying issues. These were the “objections” that arose. Now, I COULD have given up with each objection. I could have simply said “see THIS is why I can not live in joy” and let it go at that. Or I could have stayed with the process and kept on “walking” in the direction of my destination. I chose the latter. And in so doing I found myself working through the objections one by one.

I shared some of my early objections with you in previous posts but there have been quite a number more. I don’t want to belabour this series of blog posts with a blow-by-blow of all of them but there are two particular objections that I want to talk about because I think sharing these might perhaps be of use to you.

Before I get into the specifics of these two objections I want to talk about the principle that underlay both of them. It is this: I realise I have always thought of myself as being apart, separate and perhaps a little “above” this human experience. I don’t mean “better than” I just mean I didn’t really feel like the messy, chaos of being a physical, mortal human was right for me. I felt like I was a spiritual being who was trapped in this mortal form. And being mortal was troubling and problematic. A temporary, aberration that I would soon “get over”. And on some level this is, of course, true. We are all here on earth in these bodies pretending to be human for but a blink of an eye and then we’ll be back in the realm of spirit. But in focusing on this I have allowed myself to avoid really bringing all of my being and energy into this life. I have managed to incarnate without ever bringing more than a small percentage of myself here. And more than that, I have spent my life looking for evidence of why it is not a good idea to really BE HERE.

And if you look, of course you will find: there is a whole world of great reasons to not be here. Life here is hard, painful, confusing, brutal, sad and just plain absurd. If you look for evidence for what is “wrong” with life an avalanche of it overwhelms you and carries you away.

For myself, I DID look. And every bit of evidence was my reason why I should want to not be here.

The problem is that you can’t really be choosing joy and also, at the same time, be looking for evidence of what is wrong with life. These two activities are incompatible! 

So I choose joy.  And then I discovered that I was somewhat attached, or perhaps even addicted, to my desire to find evidence for the wrongness of incarnated life here on planet earth.

And really… all of my objections ultimately came down to just that. I NEEDED life here to be WRONG to justify my own rejection of it. I NEEDED others to be wrong so that I could keep them out of my heart. I NEEDED the world to be a bad place so that I could justify my constant desire to “go home”. This is how I was maintaining my separation from all of it.

So it seems it really comes full circle. Choosing joy is the same thing as choosing oneness. Choosing joy means letting go of separation.

How about that!

So I find myself at a crossroads. I can no longer choose joy AND make this world and life here wrong. I can no longer choose joy and keep seeking evidence for why I need to keep myself separate and apart from life.

So I choose joy.

I choose to cease looking for evidence of “wrongness”. I know there is pain. But it isn’t “wrong”. It’s just the outcome of incompatible choices and beliefs. Mine and others.  And while I am responsible for mine, I can work to heal that. And as I do I can offer to help others with theirs too. And those that don’t want to be helped right now I can simply accept that. This is not their time for healing.

I know also that there are all kinds of things that are not right for me. There are many choices and experiences that do not resonate for me and that I do not need or wish to bring to myself. That too is okay. If they are not right for me then I will learn not to choose them and so not experience them. I don’t need to stand on the sidelines and point and shout “look how wrong that is!” I can just let it go and focus on the things that ARE right for me.

So choosing joy implies things that I did not realise it would imply. It means learning to live some very delicate balances. It means learning to dance with life rather than to fight with it. It means following my heart and listening to my soul in every moment. But most of all, right now, it means choosing to accept myself, my experiences, my creations, my thoughts, my feelings, my body and my world. It means real acceptance and it means real love.

I find I can no longer hold myself separate from life.

In my next two blog posts I would like to tell you of two ways in which I was keeping myself separate and how I am now finding a better way to be with them.