It’s funny how easily we can forget the sheer joy of living. Yogic philosophy reveals that joy is our natural state. Spiritual teachings across cultures around the world speak of the Light within each of us. It is a light of awakening, love, and joy. And yet, joy becomes so elusive.
We have a habit of forgetting our true nature.
A friend turned 70 years old the other day and was utterly depressed that she had reached this age. On the other hand, another friend turned 70 and was amazed and thrilled to have made it through so many solar returns. One person weighed down by time, the other buoyed by it. Both of these people are accurate from their point of view. As we experience the challenges in life – sadness and grief, difficulty, illness, betrayal, letdown, etc. – we learn through contrast how they can interfere with joy.
The conditioning we experience through cultural and individual beliefs can obliterate our ability to access the sheer joy and wonder of being alive. All that programming creates such a veil. Rather than believing in ourselves and our eternal nature, we can believe in our limitations and forget the essence of who we are. We keep forgetting the joy and wonder we felt in our earliest years.
Getting caught up in the mind’s eye.
We get caught up doing, doing, doing all the things to survive in life. We go to school and study hard, memorizing tables, dates, facts, and figures so that we can then get a job. We find employment to make a living, put food on the table, and pay for the necessities of life. We work until we retire and take a break from all the busyness we have been involved in to get to this point. And all the while, we have spent time getting ourselves positioned for the next stage in our lives. In all this, we have been so transfixed in the mind’s eye that we have missed the present moment and the yearning of our heart’s desire to experience the richness that lives in our presence.
Beyond the dualistic and into self-actualization.
We get caught in the dualistic perspective – good and bad, good and evil, and love and hate; these are undoubtedly powerful dualities that can have devastating effects. From this viewpoint, we live between the positive and the negative poles. And here, we are comparing the past with the present or projecting into the future about the present, but we are not entirely in the present. Life is happening now, not in the past or the future. Yet, when we live from a dualistic perspective, we miss experiencing what is happening here and now.
At the very least, there is a third option here: the neutral. By leveraging this third possibility, we harness the power of the most stable structure in the world – the triangle.
Here we incorporate the trinity of the mind, body, and spirit. The number three represents growth, expansion, and abundance on all levels. When we find ourselves in a challenging situation and caught in the duality of right or wrong, good or bad, this or that, we can triangulate into the neutral position. We can realize that “it is” rather than “it is bad” or “it is good.” My friend, who became depressed on her seventieth birthday, could have saved herself from suffering if she had realized this neutral space rather than the negative meaning she had assigned.
So, while we experience and get caught up in the duality of things and know others in this situation, take heart. Not only is there a third option, it has been known for ages, and people live from this place, and they are our greatest teachers, whether women or men. They are self-actualized.
“There is a miracle taking place.”
A friend pointed out, “There is a miracle taking place.” The miracle is this moment. The miracle is unfolding. The miracle is life revealing itself to each of us. This is your life and my life. We sit at the edge of the creative impulse and vibrate in its majesty. From this perspective, we can awaken and remember joy – the essence of who we are.
