JOY AND HAPPINESS – SUFFERING 

 SORROW AND GRIEF #3

Tools for Maintaining Joy and Happiness

 

Spiritual Practice

An ongoing spiritual practice done for its own sake, not to perform or look good that is regular, sustainable and enjoyable is probably the most important of all in terms of keeping our equanimity and balance. This does not have to esoteric and one can invoke more than one practice. If it is somatic or body centered it may be more powerful such as; yoga asanas, Tai Chi, Chi, Gong, dancing, playing a musical instrument, hiking, walking on the beach etc. It may need to be done more than once daily in extreme situations. 

 

“Golden verses of Pythagoras speak of storms coming and going. 
The wise person like the good sailor, knows how to rid them. 
Know your weaknesses and inclinations so that you can temper them with your strength.” Unknown

Moreover, maintaining a relationship with our spirit guides, to ask to receive and show gratitude.We also need to remember that the Creator wants a personal relationship with each one of us.

“Sometimes I go about pitying myself and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.” Ojibway wisdom

 

 “When I lose my way God will come along another road and reach me. When I grope in the land of forgetfulness, God will remember me. When I no longer know who I am, God will call me by name. When darkness is my only companion memories and old prayers will be stars and in time, or beyond it, someone will be sent, bringing a lamp.” 
Christine Fleming Heffner 

Spiritual practice will help us to remain unattached to either joy or sorrow. Joy is temporary as should be sorrow. Joy is a just a stronger measure above happiness. Except for those few individuals who seem to be able to maintain a joyful disposition, it is fleeting for most of us. What we are aiming for in our practice is equanimity, balance, harmony, serenity, well-being and meaning which is the equivalent to happiness and joy. 

 

“… When joy disappears, look for your mistake.” Tolstoy

 

Gratitude Creates Joy and Gratitude is also Spiritual Practice

Be grateful and you will be happy. Happiness leads to great empowerment. Attend to your well-being, especially to happiness, the cause of which is sometimes found in hidden recesses, always in gratitude.

Ingratitude; “a horrible and unnatural 
crime...” David Hume

 

“Gratitude is the moral memory of humankind.” G. Simmel

 

“Reflect on your present blessings, on which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” Charles Dickens

 

Your gifts are only gifts if you find them thus to be – your heart makes them so.

 

There is no joy as transforming as the joy of gratitude.

… Where there is gratitude there is light.

 

The sages have praised gratitude over the ages and now neuroscience is broadening our appreciations of the power of gratitude (Robert Emmons, and Michael McCullough.) A gratitude practice induces a parasympathetic relaxation response and accentuates the alfa rhythms on an E.E.G. It also increases neuronal density in the prefrontal lobe of the brain on F.M.R.I. studies, somewhat similar to that seen in advanced meditators. Gratitude is spiritual practice and prayer at the same time. Supplication in prayer is usually about asking for something and depending on how it is done it may have a neutral effect. Supplicating on behalf of the greater good usually has more traction than praying for material "stuff."

Spacious mind is about gratitude and joy. Narrow mind is about acquisitiveness. 

If we practice gratitude we become more grateful. It creates a positive feedback loop, helping us to pay things forward. Paying forward makes us happier still. 

Sometimes it helps to think of those times of deprivation to make us appreciate and have gratitude, as well as realize how lucky we are in relation to some other sufferers and those prior bad times that plagued the planet.