JOY # 3

HANDLING GRIEF & SORROW
& 
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE 

                      The Ancestors

The next step on our journey to joy 
is the absolute essential of Spiritual Practice. 
One cannot talk about Joy before dealing with Grief and Sorrow and what we can do to overcome them on the way to a happy life.

Spiritual practice can help us to ...

(The Ancestors) 

... and to increase our threshold for stress.

The only way we will be able to handle the challenges that life brings is some way of going inward. The first step is equanimity which is basic to joy. This should be our daily medicine. The centering and inner balance of spiritual practice cannot be expected to last very long. Sometimes when there is severe stress we may need to indulge even more than once a day. Centering and balancing is vital for tranquility.

If we are to negotiate our tiny boat down the river of life between the banks of Grief and Joy and some form of regular, enJOYable 
spiritual practice is essential to keep body, mind and spirit in harmony. For some of us an embodied practice can be more powerful.

 Meditation can almost be anything thats done for its own sake and not for the purpose of performing or looking good. We need to do something - optimally daily - to balance the polarities of Joy and that of Grief and the other challenges of our human existence.

We have to find the one (or more than one) that best suits us. Its no use indulging in a highly commendable Eastern meditation unless it serves our own unique selves.

The famous Kabbalist Arizal designed a practice that was uniquely suited to each of his students, with each ones special inclinations in mind.

                   

There are essentially two forms of practice - Active and Passive

Active Meditation

(and embodied) include Yoga, Thai Chi, Chi Gong, dance, music, writing, art etc ...

(all done for their own sake!) 

One might call Eastern Vipassana mindfulness meditation Active, because it involves paying attention to inner and outer stimuli to calm the mind.

 Eastern Passive Meditation

The control over the mind into a state "of a clear blue sky" has become popular in the West. 

The Ancestors draw their distinctions between the two.

The Ancestors

The Ancestors also very much endorse Active Sensory meditations and Active Imagination as a route to the Creator ...

Moreover, our guides really want to help us in life and give us the comfort that helps joy. As the Zulu's say; by allowing them to help us "we lift them up" much in the way as when we give service to others the resulting joy also lifts us up. 

Spirit guides are not localized in space and time and their help can be precognitive. They 
"hear what hearing ears do not hear, and see what hearing eyes cannot see." 
An Ancestral/SpiritGuide altar is a container or medium for gratitude and making requests to the spirit world. These requests are best made on behalf of others or - if for ourselves - on how can they best help us to assist others. Requests should be for the greater good and not about "Me." 

(there is a DVD on line you can view on my web site davidcumes.com on connecting with your guides. The part on the Altar is toward the end.)

Our guides can carry and lift us up even more if we engage and give permission - ask and you will receive - is their cosmic law. We must also ask very specifically because the other cosmic law is Free Will. You cannot ask them to help with your life - thats too broad and negates free will but rather - for instance - "should I take this job?"

In the West because of our busy lives we are in sympathetic nervous system overload which is ostensibly a chronic flight or fight response which not only leads to "dis"-ease but eventually to disease. Stress can kill. It should be balanced by some kind of relaxation response or meditation that invokes the parasympathetic nervous system to calm us down. Asana yoga performs well here and has been adapted in the West, mostly for stress busting. These techniques will enable us to experience grief differently and facilitate joy.

We need to remind ourselves continually that there can be no Joy without Sorrow, no rose without a thorn. It's all a question of how we look at the Grief, as a disaster or as a catalyst for change. We need to be alchemists and change the garbage in our lives into manure with the help of balance in our energy bodies. The Buddhists say "take your suffering and make something useful out of it."

We can, like the Phoenix, rise up from the ashes with the help of spiritual practice which can put primitive, survival monkey mind on hold.

In every crisis there is opportunity for change.

The Ancestors also urge us to

be careful of what we taste and where we immerse.

We need to minimize input of the negative that surrounds us (never to immerse in it,) while still being aware of whats happening and helping where we can.

Seek whats positive and life assuring wherever we can  and ...

Life is messy but we can still have equanimity during the storm.

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_-_MP3s/06_Its_a_Movie.mp3