Cultivating joy
“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
~ Rumi
Here's a link to a Washington Post article on cultivating joy:
I found it contained worthwhile nuggets to consider in my own efforts to feel more joy. Why is that important? Well, those of us on pause have difficulty fully feeling joy. On the other side of the coin, feelings of joy, or a much deeper level of joy, are a common feature of pause turning off. We might ask then whether making some effort to cultivate joy will make it easier to turn off pause.
First, we should keep in mind that the core of the JH practice itself promotes joy. It moves you closer to parasympathetic mode and activates the striatum and thalamus, all things associated with joy (see, e.g., RFP, 2020, pp. 12, 24). (Note as well this observation in the article: “Recent research suggests that joy is a distinct positive emotion for 'when we feel connected, or reunited with something or someone that’s really important to us.'” That points to one benefit of nurturing your relationship with your invisible Friend, doesn't it?) So the question is really whether or not doing additional things to cultivate joy can provide some extra help.
With that question mind, I think back, once again, to the young man who had one of the fastest recoveries JH has ever seen. This young man consciously worked at resisting the negative, wary, untrusting tendencies of the Parkinson's personality, tendencies he could feel growing as he remained in pause mode. Arguably, his doing so contributed to the speed of his recovery. So it's reasonable to assume some similar effort toward counteracting pause-induced joylessness would be well worthwhile.
My experience is consistent with this. The last two times I turned off pause both seemed to have something to do with joy. One time, while doing some yoga, I was thinking about joy and wondered if I might be able to feel some joy in a particular stretch. Just then I did indeed feel a bit of joy, and pause turned off. The only catch was that I wasn't sure which had come first – the feeling of joy or the moment of pause turning off. You see, joy is typically such a central element in pause turning off for me that it made it difficult to answer that question.
The last time pause turned off for me I was reading one of David Zarko's blog entries. (You may have come across David's blog on the “links” page here.) He was describing episodes, in his own recovery, of being overcome with joy. I felt both happiness for him and great inspiration. Suddenly I felt a spark of joy, perhaps in my heart. The next moment I had the thought, “Huh, is pause turning off?” Sure enough, within about a minute I realized pause had indeed turned off.
What can we make of these instances? Among the various possibilities, there's the idea that just having the intention of feeling joy might help bring it about (see SOP, 2022, p. 77). I've recently been experimenting with this simple idea, so far with good results. Then there's the possibility that experiencing joy vicariously might nudge pause to turn off. There's also the possibility that feeling inspiration or feeling happy for someone else might be a good way to spark joy. And there's the larger idea that joy seems to be incompatible with pause, and thus may be worth trying to attain.
So while I can't lay out a perfect model designed to spark joy and turn off pause, I hope the hints above provide some ideas to work with. See what you can do with them! What's the worst that could happen? You might feel a little happier?
See also these related posts:
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