Joy as a Baseline

I recently wrote about how our world is shifting in collective consciousness. It might sound nice on the surface, but it’s definitely not all love and light. Our mass awakening is being pulled up out of the dark soil of what has been coined the meta-crisis: the tangled web of environmental and social issues that plague our world.

So it might seem a little strange that I follow up with a writing on Joy. After all, with all this meta-crisis stuff going on, we have work to do! And it’s the most important work, after all. In service of reducing that endless and unspeakable suffering of all sentient beings, no less. Sitting in bliss right now would be just a little bit irresponsible, right?

Quite the opposite.

Let me explain. Today I had a rather unexpected experience. During one of my Integral Alchemy sessions, I was dropped into an embodiment of that all-encompassing Mother of emotions: Joy.

It caught me a bit off guard. Integral Alchemy, a form of somatic therapy, is all about healing. My previous sessions involved healing in it’s various forms of releasing of pain, fear, and trauma. So I made the (rather common) mistake of expecting more of those things. Somewhere along the way I’d come to think that healing had to be hard. I was equating healing with struggle.

Far from it, Joy is the core of healing. Joy is what remains after the crucible burns through all of our conditioning. Joy was there before any of our conditioning. Joy is our birthright.

Joy is our baseline.

What a timely reminder then as I embark on building Speira1, a conscious community of highly agentic people who are both awake and actively shaping the world, as to what energy this space should be built on. It’s clear to me it must be Joy.

Not the glossy, surface definition of joy that comes from bypassing, distraction and momentary fulfilment of worldly desires. No, I am talking of the uncaused Joy that bubbles up from that natural limitless wellspring within. A joy that can hold everything.

This is the soil I want Speira to grow from. After all, Joy is the ideal environment to cultivate Creativity. Creativity and Joy are facets of the same diamond. It’s no accident they go hand in hand.

As does Creativity as an expression of true grief, loss, sadness and heartbreak. For those with the scars to show, when those emotions are fully felt, what waits on the other side is a more expansive version of Joy. One that has explored the edges of suffering, is shaped by it, and expands to include it. It is immeasurably larger than the cheap definition of joy that one might (innocently) presume prior to experiencing fierce grace in one of it’s many forms.

I did not often live with Joy as my baseline. Most often, my formative and early adult years showed up in various shades of anxiety, scarcity mindset, and the need to prove myself. Joy was always something I was ‘working towards’. Don’t get me wrong, I had many, many moments of Joy. But the baseline was anything but. In any situation, I would typically think of the worst case scenario and plan life backwards from there, trying to protect my life from outcomes I was hoping to avoid, and working under a self-actualization mindset towards those goals I thought would bring me that elusive feeling of Joy.

Those days are long gone. Something softer has long taken root. Joy visits more often. It comes spontaneously and without warning. Mostly in small but potent doses and when least expected. And I am learning to receive it, and in doing so, more and more of it opens up.

When true Joy is embodied from the Source, we being to see something else too. It is not dependent on circumstance. True Joy is kind of a spontaneous combustion, a current that runs from an infinite well. When aligning your self with that type of Joy, our presence alone begins to ease the suffering around us. We operate from a balanced state. We tap into intuition and can listen more closely to Source. Creativity emerges.

And in that state, isn’t it natural that some of that Joy spills over into the world? That simply by being in Joy, we help ease the suffering we once tried so hard to fix?

So let the foundation of Speira be built on just that.

Let’s begin with the energy which we all deserve, the one we know we need, and the one from which true creativity is born.

Let it be Joy.

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate.

Give in to it.

There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.

We are not wise, and not very often kind.

And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.

Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.

Anyway, that’s often the case.

Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.”

- Mary Oliver