Choosing Joy... with the WHOLE of My Being

Wow, have I ever been on a journey with this! I started out with the steadfast belief that we can, each of us, find real, lasting happiness; that it IS possible to achieve a base-line experience of joyful contentment. And with this belief I have travelled through my own psyche looking for the means to achieve just that.

I've looked in the wrong places: looking for happiness outside of myself and looking for fulfilment in service of others. Not that there is anything wrong with giving service! But if you need someone else to give service to, to feel joy then you invite complexity and pain into your life. You place your locus of control outside of yourself., and that's a recipe for disaster if ever there as one.

I have also looked in some promising directions: self-emoting and the stillness and peace that comes from non-attachment. These, at least, have returned my power to me but they don't bring the kind of joy I am looking for. I find what I get there to be sterile. I in my heart I want something more than that.

I have looked in some very useful directions: addressing some of the things that were actively blocking me from finding happiness. I found, for example, that I had actually been genuinely depressed. That I had been so for years. I was most surprised to find this to be so since my idea of what a depressed person should look like did not conform to what was going on in my life. But when I got right down to it, it was undeniably true: I had been depressed for most of my life! And discovering this was strangely useful. I found that finally admitting this to myself was the first big step towards healing myself of that heavy grey cloud over my life.

Another useful place that I have been to with my search for lasting joy has been my body relationship. I have engaged, ever increasingly, in learning to really love and respect my body. It actually started with this process of trying to find happiness. I discovered that it is quite difficult indeed to be a happy person if my body is unhappy. A good percentage of how I feel is directly informed by how my body feels. So, if I want to be happy, I must seek the happiness of not just my mind and my soul, but of my body too! And so I began to pro-actively learn to listen to my body. To engage it in conversation. To understand what it really wants and needs. And to my total delight I found my body had a LOT that it wanted to say to me. This conversation has now spun off into a whole new book called A Human Body Owners' Manual.

And so, slowly, a picture begins to emerge. I think I am really beginning to get it now. It's not THAT complex. But it can take some doing to get it right. I think real, lasting joy requires a body that is as healthy as it can be, a mind that is as peaceful as it can be and a soul that is as present in this life as it can be. If my body and my mind and my soul are happy then how can I be anything other than happy!

So that sounds simple enough. But obviously there are complications. Obviously, with each of these there are blockages and challenges. Each of them are complex and multifaceted. Each of them have stuff that has to be worked out, healed, understood, loved and accepted. But if I pick a thing to work on and work on it, then I'll get it sorted out eventually. And each time I do that I am one step close to my goal.

So I now have three plans:

1. To really learn to give my body what it needs to be as healthy as is possible.

2. To seek the peace in my mind that comes from total acceptance of myself and my life.

3. To make the choice to bring the highest version of myself to be present in my life as often as I can, until that is all that is ever here.

How does that sound to you?

It sounds pretty darn awesome to me!

Given how much I have written and said about ascension, I realise these three points are probably the closest I have ever been to expressing what in-situ ascension is.

The body is the vessel. The mind is the tool. The soul is the SELF. So? Prepare the vessel to receive the SELF. Hone the tool for the use of the SELF. Then bring the SELF into the vessel and present It with the tool prepared for Its use.

So this is what I have been doing. It's only been a few weeks now that I have been doing exactly this. But then I realise my whole life has ACTUALLY been bringing me to this point now. It is perhaps more accurate to say that I have only been conscious that this is what I am doing for the last few weeks. And I can tell you: just this conscious awareness has been pretty amazing. Everything that I now do, I measure up against these three metrics. Is what I am about to do good for my body? Will it lead to greater acceptance and love for myself and my life? Is this congruent with the highest version of myself?

If a decision that is before me does not at least measure up to one of these measures then, I ask myself, why would I want to do it? It's amazing how this works! And though I am very far from my destination of having my highest version of self perpetually present... I can say that, without a doubt, the process of bringing SELF here is itself a beautiful and joyful process indeed. And so a new, very pleasing secret reveals itself to me. There is great joy in the very process of moving towards my destination. And this is wonderful news since it means I don't have to wait to “get there” to find the joy I seek. I can find it right now by beginning, right now, to move in that direction.

This IS working for me! I'd love to hear, if you try this, what your experiences are...