The path to joy

The road to the enlightenment, the path to joy, the search for happiness, all these “quest’s” for something different than we are currently engaging in seems to be the “stuff” the world has been caught up for the last thousand years or so. Every teacher discusses their methodology on how best to make this happen, the right rituals, the right mindset, the right god(s) and even the right place. When I look at the hundreds of books that adorn my shelves, I see the search I have been on myself for the past two decades and wonder why I am not further ahead in my quest, or am I? Is the arrival at “enlightenment” supposed to be connected with the blaring of horns, the sudden deep sense of relief that I made it!!

Or is the journey more about being “self aware” and having the mindfulness to realize when we are full of shit and just running our game, and that we can be “truthful” to our own motives and have the mental capacity and moral compass to course correct before too much damage has been done. So in my exploration of my own “shit” I realized, and only too recently (thank you Caroline Myss, The Anatomy of the Spirit) that the constant replaying of old wounds, even though it was only in conversation expressing when I had come from, was a way of leveraging negativity and to perhaps exaggerate my journey. In a conversation with author (The Art of Getting What you Want) and friend Lisa De Mayo she had said something that stuck with me, “the things of my past happen so long ago, they are not even true for me anymore”. I love it when the truth hits you and all you can do is stand there and let it wash over you. This led me to further explore ideas that were present in my mind but had not fully realized their power. A book on my night stand (one of eight like many of you I am sure) is the book written by Eckhart Tolle “The Power of Now” and in it he discusses the necessity of learning to be present. If we are suffering it is because we are living in the past, if we are fearful we are living in the future, but in the “Now” there is grace, peace, and possibility of the life “we had only imagined”.

So this brings me round to my opening statement about the fervent search for nirvana, peace of mind and joy. In the heart and mind of the writer, I have discovered for myself that there is no path, no journey I must go on to find joy. There is no destination I must seek out and get to, to find the Holy Grail and save my own soul. There is just the moment I am in, “now” writing this letter to you. The seconds of my life I am in is where all my joy resides, each moment offering its gift of learning and discovery, and if I am present to each of these moments, there in lays the joy. I don’t have to exert energy to “get anywhere”, the universe itself is moving my life forward with or without my consent.

But I do get to choose “how and what” I experience along the way by continually bringing myself back to the present, where all the love and possibilities exist.

C. David Gilks Your Fellow Traveler