Spreading Joy Year Round

Hi Everyone,

Welcome back to my blog.  Now that we are fully immersed in the holidays, I wanted to take a look at what we can do to stay centered in our spirits such that we can spread joy year round.

In order to set the stage for this blog, I wanted to share something that Thomas Merton, a Catholic Monk, wrote in Choosing to Love the World.  As a heads up, he is long winded in his sentences, but he seems to have enough commas to slow us down such that we can digest what he is conveying.  I was really drawn to this passage, even though, admittedly, I had to read it a few times to fully digest it.  I think he nails down the major impediment regarding our ability to spread joy year round.  In the following passage, he illustrates the root cause to the problems that we experience, which, is also what impedes are ability to stay centered in the spirit.  He says:

 The aggressive and dominative view of reality places, at the center, the individual with its bodily form, its feelings and emotions, its appetites and needs, its loves and hates, its actions and reactions.  All these are seen as forming together a basic and indubitable reality to which everything else must be referred, so that all other things are also estimated in their individuality, their actions and reactions, and all the ways in which they impinge upon the individual self.  The world is then seen as a multiplicity of conflicting and limited beings, all enclosed in the limits of their own individuality, all therefore complete in a permanent and vulnerable incompleteness, all seeking to find a certain completeness by asserting themselves at the expense of others, dominating and using others.  The world, then, becomes an immense conflict in which the only peace is that which is accorded to the victory of the strong, and in order to taste the joy of this peace, the weak must submit to the strong and join them in their adventures so that they may share in their power.

This describes the inverted view of the world that the ego attempts to establish as truth.  Blind to this illusion, we find ourselves trapped and motivated by this thinking.  When bound by this illusion, our thoughts and actions only serve to perpetuate the immense conflict of the world.

The problem with placing the individual self, or our ego, at our center, is that it sets us up to seek completion through someone or something that is outside of us.  We recognize that there is a void within us and are searching to fill it, but, unfortunately, we continue to come up empty-handed as our search is aimed in the wrong direction.  Blind to this, our desire to feel complete is misguided, and is instead, led through an attempt to dominate others.

Every conversation (or argument) is an opportunity for us to claim a victory through being right.  Every competition is a chance to be number one.  Every promotion is a chance to elevate our status.  Unfortunately, each victory leaves us wanting another one.  Like a hunger pang that never goes away, we are never satisfied.

Our attempts to dominate can be subtle, but regardless, they still add to the conflict of the world.  It can be as simple as demanding a certain behavior from another person (we want someone to treat us better, to make us feel special, to return love to us, to compliment us, to show up for us in some way, to return an email or phone call…the examples are endless). Another way to look at our demands is to see that any attempt to control another person’s behavior, falsifies the purity of their action.  We have taken away their ability to act purely in our demand that they complete us.

When we place demands on others, we are vulnerable to all of the mood swings of the ego.  If demands are unmet, we become angry or hurt.  If previously met demands are no longer being met (the loss of love), we feel the loss of that which were relying upon to feel complete, and again, become vulnerable to the mood swings of the ego.

Our dependence on others to complete us is causing us to act crazy!  When we are caught up in all of this craziness, we are blind to opportunities to help others.  That is the crux of the problem.  We are spending our time and energy adding to the immense conflict of the world, when we could be using that same time and energy to help others.

In this state, we are cut off from spirit, isolated in our limitedness, and frustrated.  Our frustration stems from the manner in which we are attempting to reach salvation (wholeness).  In this state, salvation is being sought through the dominion over others.  Comparisons matter because salvation is sought through being considered superior to others.  Everything is measured against the individual self to determine self-worth.  Accomplishments and status matter for this reason only.  If we want to genuinely and authentically center ourselves in the qualities of the spirit, we must break free of this thinking.

Self-worth should not vary from person to person.  Self-worth should be considered equal across all, because we are all one at the level of spirit.  To assign self-worth across individuals is to place varying values on human life.  If we cannot come to value all of human life equally, we will never be able to live in the awareness of truth (that we are all one and connected to Source).  Anything that fosters superiority or separation is of the ego and will continue to blind us to truth.  Fortunately, we can change this by becoming vigilant about unmasking the darkness that obscures truth.

When we place, at the center, our spirit, this entire world view is inverted.  Salvation is sought and realized through Source.  Strength is found in our connection to Source, thus, we have no need to prove our strength through the dominion of others.  Wholeness, completion, and salvation are found in our connection to Source, which further eliminates are need to dominate.  In this state, the desire to dominate dissipates in favor of finding ways to serve and to help others.  Victory, being right, being number one, and elevating one’s status no longer matters.  We finally see the chase as the illusion that it is.

When we are no longer chasing these illusions, we can position ourselves to be an instrument of God’s work/will, emotional healing through the higher energies of the spirit, as well as an instrument of peace, love, and joy.  This is how we began to disentangle ourselves from the immense conflict that Thomas Merton references.

It all starts with our individual choice to align with our spirit over ego.  I believe we each have a role to bring about peace within ourselves so that we can each disengage from the illusion of conflict.  In doing so, light will be brought to the illusion of conflict such that it is dispelled.  Peace is available to all of us in this simple choice.  This is how we stay centered in our spirit such that we can spread joy year round.

Click here to watch the video.

With love,

Shanna