A message of JOY
JOY is not about feeling good.
It's not an experience or an emotion.
It’s yet another attempt to point to THIS:
What is when belief in separation and self fall away.
This is not about the small, personal joys we chase: happiness, blissful or expansive states, or just feeling less bad.
Many pursue nonduality to get these things. I certainly did. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just not how it works.
JOY is the taste (quality or essence) of this ordinary experience, when it is clear that there is:
no self: no one needing anything.
no separation: nothing lacking.
no resistance: completely accepted.
It’s a quiet, uncaused, impersonal, inescapable JOY.
Even in pain, grief, or when emotions crash through, there’s JOY. It’s not dependent on circumstances. Just yesterday it was there in the dentist’s chair.
It's just constantly overlooked because we’re obsessed with what we believe needs to change before we can be okay.
As long as no-self is unclear, JOY is heard as the pot of gold at the end of the nondual rainbow.
But there is no pot and it’s not at the end of anything.
JOY is here, now, as THIS.
The you you believe you are can’t know it.
The belief that I am a separate self blocks it.
So true in my direct experience!
Yes, I agree that joy can be experienced in unpleasant situations. Recently, at the dentist, I practiced Tonglen, taking on the suffering others while the dentist was drilling! It's very uplifting to recognize true joy! 😊🙏