Pleasure ~ Happiness ~ Joy
Everyone wants to enjoy pleasure and happiness. Yet, Buddha says, “All of life is suffering.” Sadly, he is proven right far too often. Just turn on the news any day. Or ask for a needed raise. Or take a few random blows from your own family.
Is there a surefire way to immerse yourself in joy, if for a brief moment, on demand, out of nothing, regardless of what happens out there?
Yes, there is. Countless millions of people have been doing it for thousands of years, especially people who have next to nothing. How else could they survive earthquakes, famines, wars, and worse?
And yes, you can do it, too. In today’s world, you’d better. Struggle too much, you won’t secure it; settle down enough, you’ll already be sitting on it. It’s simple. Not easy, just simple.
But first, allow me to clarify some basic premises so we are on the same page. The terms aren’t important. Feel free to use your own. It’s how you feel that matters.
PLEASURE in daily living is essential for sanity. Even simple pleasures. Still, they usually need specific provisions. Some are even guilty pleasures for which we pay a price later. Most pleasurable sensations last only a short time. Then, the craving for them can be unpleasant and much longer lasting. People are good at seeking pleasure. The refrigerator door, for instance, gets opened more times than probably all other doors in the house put together.
HAPPINESS is a feeling deeper than mere pleasurable sensations. Raising a family is one big example. But it requires conditions to be even more favorable, for a longer time, and on a bigger scale. Sure, we all try to be happy. You know it isn’t easy. Overall, in life, things are good only about half of the time, being counter-balanced by the Yin-Yang duality of reality the other half of the time. The craving for happiness can also cause stress and suffering, sometimes just as bad as unhappiness. Of course, we never give up.
JOY is different. Feel free to pick another descriptive term for yourself. I’m referring to ‘joy’ as the built-in state of well-being that is always within each of us. It naturally counterbalances all the inevitable negativities in real life. The truth is self-evident that we all have it, or we wouldn’t be alive. As long as life prevails, this positivity still prevails, by definition—if only by a thin margin.
Don’t get me wrong. Joy is your essential ground state. You still need and have pleasure and pain, happiness and sorrow for the peaks-and-valleys landscape of life.
Without joy, your pleasures can become perpetual pursuits, and your happiness eternally elusive. Even if you can get both, they may somehow feel fleeting, unfulfilling, even hollow.
With joy, pleasures become more pleasurable despite some partnering pains, and happiness becomes happier despite some shadowing sorrow. And both will seem easier to get and less suffering to let go.
This joy is already and always in you, waiting for you to settle back in, requiring nothing outside of you. How?
Pay close attention to any living thing, and you’ll see this inherent joy in them. It is the “life force” that keeps it alive. A plant or a pet shows it abundantly. Even an inanimate object has it, like a stone or a star. It is that unnamable something that gives everything its very existence.
This joy is your basic state of being. It requires nothing that’s not you. When external conditions are difficult and demanding, it’s only natural that you get distracted from your intrinsic joy. That happens a lot in life. And when outside conditions are favorable, you tend to be too busy being happy and pleasured. So, you may neglect joy, too.
Yet, this joy is always here for you to truly en-joy. It takes some time, a lot of mindful attention, and enough practice to return to it. Daily habits can shorten the time and lessen the difficulty. What practice? What habits?
1-Minute Tip Sheet
The Healing Habit of
Returning to Joy
You need not climb to the mountain top to get to the intrinsic joy that’s already in you and nowhere else. You only have to return to it. It’s your natural default state of being—if you only let it.
Breathing can help you find it. You can practice a breathing exercise of your choice. There are many free tutorials online. You’re also welcome to use our Metacardio Breathing Room, free online.
Call it meditation if you must. Yoga, Tai Chi, and many other mindful practices of non-verbal, repetitive, gentle movements without the ‘monkey mind’ constantly yapping are the same idea. Walking and similar activities can do it, too.
Billions of people with hard lives have practically nothing except their bodies. So, they just sit down quietly and breathe easily. Many also quiet down in Nature and soak it all in at the moment, freeing themselves from fighting the past and fearing the future.
You can simply try sitting alone in the bathroom and watching drops of water drip slowly from a faucet for a few minutes. Quit as soon as you feel uneasy. After a few times, you’ll be staying longer and longer. The open secret is trying not to think, evaluate, or judge anything for now. And you might experience the all but miraculous relaxation and clarity in your head. Afterward, your thoughts and judgment will get better.
No one can tell you what this joy feels like. You must experience it firsthand. You can acquire this joyous experience with very ordinary means. But no one can do it for you, and it’s not for sale.
Warning: It is habit-forming, addictive even. Safe to try this at home without adult supervision.
So often, I cannot contain this joy.
So often, it becomes my work.
So often, it overflows into my life.Metacardio©
For lead-ins to the Healing Habits, feel free to read or review any of my 14 posts here. They’re all free and non-monetized. (No one could pay me enough to have this much joy.)
Images curated from iStock with subscription
Extraordinary Living by Ordinary Means 2024