 SACRED LIFEBOATS |
About Joy |
SACRED LIFEBOATS |
About Joy |
If we agree that, as individual expressions and individuations of the divine God/Goddess, we seek to know ourselves as Love and Peace and Joy, (so many names for God), then the sacred path is to find Joy in our experience of our world.
How do we do that in this rapidly disintegrating world? It's about our intention to be Joy and experience Joy in the midst of it all; to preserve who we are and what we desire to create in the midst of the insanity.
We believe that awareness is a vital part of evolution. We did not come into this world to be lost to ourselves in it. We came into this world to uncover the awareness of who we are in the midst of it. So we use the circumstances of the world to hold our joy out front as our guiding star letting us know we are walking the divine path.
Joy & Pleasure: A distinctionPleasure is physical/sensual experience through your five senses:
- sight = clothing color and style; the way a room is designed
- taste = favorite food, e.g. a hot fudge sundae, or barbequed salmon
- touch = baby's skin, silk, warm water
- sound = music, familiar birdsong, wind in the trees
- smell = essence of vanilla; a favorite food cooking
Joy is the experience of becoming a slightly more complex being. It's a place that you've never been, a new idea, sensation or experience:
- sight = when you first see great artwork, or a sunrise/sunset; each time it is original and unusual.
- taste = a new kind of food; or a new mixing of flavors
- touch = receiving a unique massage; touching your lover in a new way
- sound = new music that makes you want to move your body; singing with others, sounds in nature that you've never heard before, e.g. a symphony of bull frogs and crickets.
- smell = first time for lilac, gardenia or new spice
- reading = ideas that seem to come together in something fresh and new
- seminar training = interpersonal experiences that you did not imagine were possible
- nature = connecting with an ancient part of yourself you did not know you didn't know
Joy & Shadow: As I have the courage to explore my shadow, so I come to know my joy. When I invite shadow into awareness, either deliberately or not, and have the courage to embrace it, I become a slightly more complex being. I experience this increase in complexity, or consciousness expansion as more than pleasure. It feels ecstatic or in touch with the divine; the essence of the creative experience...like being in love, in which I create the courage to stay open to new possibilities.
