True Joy in the midst of stress - affirmations revisited

I received this video from Darlene Siddons a few days ago, with an invitation to share it in any way I want. It turned out to be an interesting gift in the way it gave me a sense of “perspective”. It reminded me how I enjoyed affirmations some years ago - it was such a nice feeling, and it sounded true somehow. Even if it wasn’t quite how I experienced my life.

For that same reason, there were also times - many times - when I would get kind of annoyed with affirmations, and the cute images and the sweet words and the perfectly relaxing music - because it was so far from what I experienced in my life - it felt like sugar-coating.

The latter was exactly what I saw reflected in my initial reaction as I took the first look on the video. There was a slight residue of that old irritation: “I don’t need all that sugar, I prefer the real thing, I prefer to feel what is”. And this I did, I did feel what was there — and it was surprise!

Because as I watched the video, my experience immediately changed from a reserved “No” to a joyful “Yes”! Yes, this is true, this is how my life is like - I just don’t go around and think these thoughts, I don’t do affirmations - but I do feel it this way most of the time.

I don’t use affirmations and I don’t try to reduce stress. I seldom create stressful experiences, but when I do, I don’t try to reduce them - I dive into them and transform them, until I find my True Joy right there. Because it’s there as much as anywhere else. And that’s not sugar-coating - that’s the natural sweetness of love that permeates everything and everyone, unconditionally. Flowing through you.

Robert Scheinfeld and Joy

In Robert Scheinfeld’s “busting loose vocabulary” joy, or rather, True Joy, means much more than it usually does. He explains it in detail in his brand new “A Path To True Joy” multimedia introduction.

To me, the experience of True Joy was really puzzling at first: All of a sudden, I felt this wonderful joy (all kinds and shades of it), and I was so used to it coming from outside of me, that I spent quite some time looking for its source all over the place! It was cute, I think, me looking around and trying to find out what made me feel so happy. Was there a special letter in my inbox? No. Me winning in lottery? No. A new work opportunity? No. A new friend or lover waiting just around the corner? Nothing of the kind. Everything “out there” was “as usual” (or sometimes even appearing worse than usual ) - yet there was all this Joy within me! Weird…

As time went by, it became more natural that it comes from within and that I take it with me where ever I go, into every experience. I find myself enjoying every situation, every moment, every person exactly as is. I don’t really need to change anything (what a relief! ). And yet, it all keeps on changing, keeps on transforming, as True Joy keeps on expanding.

Yes, True Joy is an expansive feeling as such - there is no upper limit to it, and it does not make you explode either. It can be experienced as peace, joy, wisdom, happiness, love, abundance, creativity, humor - any state that you would attribute to what Robert Scheinfeld calls busting loose and others call awakening or enlightenment.

By the way, I notice how Robert’s “labels” of his teaching materials are changing and expanding too: From the “Busting Loose series” to “Journey to The Infinite” and now “A Path To True Joy“. A path - not the path! An infinitely creative Being - and that’s who you really are! - plays with many variations of a path and as many unique ways to walk it as there are people doing the walk. It’s not just one way.

This being said, while I tried many different approaches in Phase 1, never quite fulfilling all their promises, Busting Loose became in fact “the last self-help book I ever read“: The search was (and is) over and what’s left is exploring and enjoying the path as such. I’m creating it in my own way - as will you if that’s where you want to go.

Ambition to meaning

I just watched the Ambition to Meaning film and feel like sharing impressions with you while they’re still fresh… It is an inspired and enjoyable movie, a creative combination of a teaching by Wayne Dyer and a “real story” (including the stuff that good stories are made of: people, emotions and situations you can identify with, conflict, drama, surprise, transformation…).

I resonate with the general idea of the film - the shift from ambition to meaning, from struggle to flow, from illusion to truth. And I also feel like making a couple of important comments. Important to me - and perhaps also important to you…

Ah, before I do that: You should know that the film addresses the shift from a “main-stream” way of life (raising children, making career, making money, adapting to what you believe is expected from you as a man/woman) into what you could call a life based on a recognition of yourself as a spiritual being. So if you haven’t made that shift yet, just watch “Ambition to Meaning” now and take it to your heart!

If however, you have made the shift already - at least to some extent - and find yourself in what I’d call expanded Phase 1, or in the beginning of Phase 2, you might find the following comments supportive. They address the issue of purpose in life:

I totally agree with Wayne Dyer when he states that you don’t have to chase or understand your purpose because it’s part of you. And, when he speaks about our need to make a difference I’m reminded of a time, when I felt that too. I felt a need to make a difference (heal someone, inspire someone, enlighten someone, make someone feel better…) because deep down I felt and feared that if I didn’t make a difference then my life would be worthless, and I would be worthless too. But that’s a lie, an illusion!

You don’t need to make a difference, you don’t need to make the world a better place to live - your existence does not need any justification at all! Your existence and your life is a miracle as is. Its value is beyond any description, it is beyond perfection. This is true for every human being and every human life!

The same is true about the need for “service”. While “serving others” may feel better then being “selfish” it’s basically just one way of playing the Human Game - not the best way, not the ultimate way — because there is no such thing. Let me illustrate it with these questions and metaphors:

If you imagine the entire humanity as a sun, and yourself as a sunray amongst billion others, is there any value or point in saying: I need to make a difference in the life of the other rays? Of course not - all you need to do is to shine. And this you do, you just shine - just like any other ray. You cannot shine more or less, shine better or worse, or make the other rays shine more and better. It’s all the same sun, shining.

Or, if you think of your specific role in the Human Game, you cannot serve or not serve - you’re just playing your part and one role is not better than the other, or more of a service than any other. For example, if you want to play the role of someone enlightened bringing love and wisdom to the world, you’ll need someone else (preferably many of them so that you can feel that you make a big difference! ) to play the role of less enlightened and having less love than you. So who is really serving who in that play?

Again - and to me this is one of the aspects of the Busting Loose path that I find most “liberating” - the truth is that every step of the human journey is equally magnificent: The shift from ambition to meaning is not a shift to a better place or a better life - it’s just a shift to a different perspective, playing with the miracle of the human life in a different way.

Byron Katie interview

If you ask me, this is the ultimate Byron Katie interview. Even if it doesn’t look like an interview and even if strictly speaking it contains no questions - only answers. But then, if you move beyond the semantics, an inter-view is exactly what you’ll see here - and perhaps one of the most enlightening inter-views ever:

Not only is it an inter-view - a look within - as such. There are in fact, if not questions then at least inspirations with a hidden question within them. Now these inspirations come from an “inter-viewer” that’s been called the wisest ever - the Tao Te Ching . Here’s how it works:

Each of the chapters in A Thousand Names For Joy begins with an essential quote from Tao Te Ching. Such as this one:

“The world is sacred. It can’t be improved. If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you’ll loose it”.

One such quote then motivates Byron Katie to “issue” her response - which is everything that you’d want from an interview with her, including essential inspiration coming straight from her heart as well as those of her personal experiences that relate to it. But that’s not all:

What really makes this book feel like one ongoing Byron Katie interview is the very way she expresses herself. She’s as far from being intellectual and theoretical as you can get. She speaks from direct experience - and since her direct experience is joy, joy is what you hear, see and feel when reading this book. Joy in every possible sense of the word, including the highly “spiritual” as much as the highly “human”.

To me, this Byron Katie interview is a beautiful expression of what busting loose really is about. En-joy!

The element of experience, Yes and No

It’s interesting sometimes to take a look at something that appeared like a truth to you years ago and see how you feel about it when you add new elements of experience to the whole thing. This is the kind of an experience I created for myself, when re-visiting a message titled “The Power of Your Yes” at the Empowering Message the other day.

It’s not that I disagree with my past self. It’s more that the element of experience that I can add now is knowing that no matter how much you want to, no matter how right it feels, no matter how true it is, it is not always possible to say YES to whatever you experience. Or rather, on your way to true, Infinite Yes you will encounter a giant No.

This was exactly where I found myself a year or so later: I knew YES was the only answer, I had exercised a Yes-attitude for months and months and finally I had to give up. Or rather, I had to acknowledge that besides expanding the ability to say Yes I also needed a tool that could help me work with the fundamental “No!”, the rejection of what is. At that point it felt like a defeat - I had believed that my willingness to say Yes could melt all hindrances on my way and now I had to face that it wasn’t strong enough. Or at least, that’s how it looked to me.

At that point I had worked with just about every self improvement and self help tool out there and it appeared like none of it could help me through a inner resistance that appeared stronger than life itself. Even if in the end it was but appearances, it has taken me another few years to work myself into the very core of it. I’m glad I’ve taken the time to do it. Not because I wanted to get rid of it, but because it was - and continuous to be an amazing journey - a Journey To the Infinite.