Joy that is Peace; Peace that is Joy

Since my previous post, I've been thinking a lot about joy and Martha Beck's description of true joy as lacking "the wild ups and downs of an excitement-based life."

My metaphor for my old habit of making excitement a necessary component of life is the water bugs I saw skittering on the surface of the creek I used to play in as a girl. (For my more nerdy readers, here is a link for the explanation of how they manage this.)

I used excitement to give me a sort of high, the adrenaline-rush through my veins and muscles and emotions making me think I was experiencing joy. I used the anticipation of excitement or some happy event (I can get through this day if I just think about going to that party on Saturday) to deny that day's emotional pain or discomfort. At the anticipated or 'joy'-producing event, I'd skitter around, adrenaline holding me aloft like water's surface tension does a waterbug's hairy little feet, acting like the adrenaline rush and forced happiness were joy.

I thought they were.

But true joy cannot happen on the surface. True joy is below, where calm reigns and the current is slow, where emotions are free to plumb the depths despite the wind and waves and turmoil above.

Isn't that why Jesus talks about "the peace of God that passes all understanding"? (Phil 4:7). And why Darlene Cohen at Shambhala Sun says "we can experience joy in life by opening up fully to our experience"? The Etz Chaim Center says that joyful living is about forging a deeper connection to the soul and creating an on-going opportunity to share our joy with others." (italics mine) On the blog Baha'i Thought, Phillipe Copeland writes that "happiness and joy are more than just ephemeral emotions ... they spring organically from the soul's response to the Word of God."

One final quote, and I'll pursue the topic further in future posts. This is my favorite from Khalil Gibran:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was

oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

You can leave comments through Google+, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com. Thank you.

What Does 'Finding Joy' Mean?

When I think about the phrase, "finding joy," it occurs to me that it's a complicated idea. 'Finding' implies 'searching', and I often think of 'searching' as something I do in the world around me. Then I have to remind myself: searching for joy happens internally.

Martha Beck, sociologist and life coach, writes in her article, "How to Find the Kind of Joy That Lasts", that what we think of as joy is often excitement with an added component that's almost crazed, or at least super intense. Many of us have come to expect that excitement as a definer of joy.

This is where I, as a person who lives with chronic pain, have learned to better understand the search for joy. Like Beck, I have let go of the need for excitement, though for a different reason: when I get excited, I tend to spike a migraine. I've had to learn to allow and express joy without excitement.

Says Beck:
True joy lacks the wild ups and downs of an excitement-based life. It's a peaceful landscape, filled with peaceful thoughts and peaceful emotions. Indeed, it's so peaceful that, to our adrenaline-soaked culture, it looks rather plain. In fact, I like to think of it as the plains of peace.

As I have learned to experience joy without excitement or adrenaline-punched energy, I've found what Beck describes, that true joy is peaceful, internal, and calming rather than exciting. That's not to say there's no place for excitement in the lives of people whose health allows it. Its release of energy and emotion can be positive and even cathartic.

The point is not to conflate excitement with joy. Searching for joy always shot through with excitement is a recipe for addiction.

In recent posts, I've been writing about Buddhism's Eightfold Path. The Path encourages the internal work -- reforming how we think, speak and act -- that sets the stage for joy. This is a search humans have been on since we became conscious beings. All forms of spirituality, religion and therapy and  have their own ways of setting the stage for joy. That will be the topic of my next post.

I welcome comments below through GooglePlus, or at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Attachment To Desire

At the end of my previous post, I said I'd write about opening the doorway to joy. The idea that we can find joy in lives that are restricted by illness, pain, grief, unemployment, a broken heart, poor mental health, or addiction can seem ridiculous. Essentially, though, finding joy in life is at the heart of religion and most of the self-help books you can find these days. We're all on that search and have been since we became conscious beings. I find different titles and ways to say it, but finding joy is really the underlying topic of all the posts on this blog.

For now I'm focusing in Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and how walking that path can help set our spirits free to experience joy even as we live life's pain.

The second step on the Eightfold Path is called Right Intention, and is composed of three intentions:
1. The intention of renunciation, which means that we intend to resist the pull of desire;
2. The intention of good will, which means that we intend to resist our feelings of anger and aversion;
3. The intention of harmlessness, which means that we intend not to think or act cruelly, violently or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

I like the way the first intention -- renunciation -- follows logically from the first step on the Eightfold Path, The Four Noble Truths. The Truths are all about understanding how our attachment to desire causes us suffering. Notice the Buddhists are careful to say, the attachment to desire. It's not desire itself that is the problem. Desire for food and water makes us survive. Desire for sex ensures the human species goes on generation after generation. Desires to become a better person or more learned or more comfortable have ensured all of the change and growth since we lived in caves. I write this blog because I desire to find joyful freedom within a life greatly restricted by chronic migraine pain. These desires are essential to who we are.

This second step not only reinforces what we've learned from the Truths, it drives home the lesson by using the verb intend. For renunciation, it's not I will resist the pull of desire, but I intend to resist the pull of desire. Built right into the phrase is an acknowledgement of how even our noble desires are subject to attachment. We can become attached to desiring to resist the pull of desire, causing our own suffering by castigating ourselves or getting depressed when we don't resist. 

Saying we intend to resist desire's attraction signals to and reminds us of  the danger of attaching to the desire to detach from desire. We humans make life pretty complicated.
 
ACCEPT THE DESIRE
When you're in chronic pain, you want it to stop. When you're unemployed, you want a job. If a loved one has died, you want them back or want to have not said, or said, or not done, or done something. If you're growing older, you wish you had the strength and energy and looks of the younger you. If you're disabled, you wish for your full capabilities.

You're human. It's natural. Accept that you have desires. Let them be what they are, sit with them. (Meditation and prayer are, I think, essential to this kind of acceptance. You can click on an item in the Labels column to the right of this post if you'd like to read more on the subject.) 

INTEND TO RESIST ITS PULL
I intend to stop complaining so much about having to stay on the bed in a dark room so often. When I realize I've been complaining, I simply remind myself of my intention, which is a lot more positive and much better for my self-esteem than wondering why I'm such a narcissistic whiner.

Basically, I wrote this post to remind myself of my intention.


You can contact me by leaving a comment below via GooglePlus, or at carold.marsh@gmail.com.

Right Thinking and Acceptance

Letting go, or acceptance, is a concept found in many religions. It's the foundation of the 12-Step program. For many of us, especially those raised in Western cultures that more often talk about pulling by bootstraps or making things happen, letting go sounds like giving up. I wrote about this specifically in an earlier post.

As I make a fresh start with this blog,I'm beginning with Buddhism's Eightfold Path. I mentioned the Four Noble Truths in my previous post because the Truths are the first step on the Path. I also explained that I separate pain (what comes to us inevitably as part of life) from suffering (what we do to exacerbate pain, like worrying, complaining, wishing things were different, etc). So here is how I understand the Four Noble Truths.

FIRST: Pain is an inevitable part of life.
SECOND: Suffering happens when we attach ourselves to our desires rather than accepting life's pain.
THIRD: Suffering ends when we detach from our desires and accept pain as inevitable.
FOURTH: The Eightfold Path offers a way to practice and learn detachment.

These Truths form the first step on the Eightfold Path, and that step is called Right Thinking.

There's a quality of self-examination that is essential for ending suffering, a self-awareness that permits examination of our thoughts. When I had to leave work I loved because the migraines were interfering too much, it took me many months to realize that certain thoughts -- what if I never work again? -- and emotions -- feeling victimized -- were unnecessary, yet of my choosing.

Here's what I discovered when I began to choose to rise above my self-imposed suffering: just sitting with life's pain is really hard. Not that suffering is easy, but there's something about cycling through suffering that holds a kind of odd payoff for our need to figure things out or our addictions.

Yet there is a purity in acceptance, a scraping away of baggage and addiction and desire that brings one face to face with God, or Allah, or our Buddha Nature, or the Great Mother, whatever language one uses for the Ultimate Divinity for which we're all searching.

Christians sing a hymn, Just As I Am. After the title phrase that begins each verse, various realities of life are acknowledged without one plea,

* waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot

* tossed about with many a conflict, many a doubt

* fightings within, fears without

* poor, wretched, blind

 and with the expectation that Christ will cleanse, will purify, having shed blood for us.

Isn't it what we're all wanting, really wanting, deep under daily problems and triumphs and sufferings? We think it will come to us if this ache or hurt would just go away, or if someone would give me a job, or if she/he would just come to realize we were meant to be together, or if I would just stop making mistakes and be right all the time, or if I could have just one more drink, one last puff at that pipe.

Above I wrote, sitting with life's pain is really hard. But that's not the final word. Learning to accept pain by letting go of self-created suffering, by detaching from desires, is the opening of the doorway to joy. That's what I'll write about in my next post.


You can email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com, or make a comment below.

"The Power of Now" and Pain Management: Love, Joy, Peace

Sixth in a series

"And when I base my pain management on my spiritual life and in God, the coming together of physical practice, mental ease and spiritual depth results in much more than just managing of pain: it results in a better quality of life, and, I pray, makes me a better person."

That is a sentence from a previous post.  I repeat it now because it's a nice segue to today's post.  A few days after writing that sentence, I found myself commenting, on the blog of a friend, that I may not be working or accomplishing much because of the almost-constant migraine pain, but I can still strive to become a better person.

My spiritual life has always been about making me a more loving, joyful and peaceful person, regardless of my life circumstance.  Why shouldn't pain management be about that, too?  It's not that much of a leap, especially with Eckhart Tolle's help.

The best way I can think to explain what I mean is by a kind of rough syllogism:

1. Love and joy are "inseparable from your natural state of inner connectedness with Being."  ("The Power of Now", Tolle, page 29)
2. Pain management that is based in spirituality brings me to my inner connectedness with Being.
3. Therefore, pain management is about love and joy.

And that is how I become a better person through managing my pain: I become more loving, more joyful as I begin to feel that I am inseparable from Being, from the Divine.

Notice that none of this is about thinking.  We cannot think our way into connectedness with God.  Tolle says that love, joy and peace arise from beyond the mind (page 29), and so the mind has no power to bring us to that state of inner connectedness to God. 

No more can I think my way into pain management.  My mind wants to wail about missing that party or fume about yet another day stuck indoors with the blindfold on.  It's human to think like this, but that excuse quickly wears thin as pain perpetuates itself.  Maybe it's human, and understandable, but it's also counter-productive.

Speaking of pain, this migraine is bothering me.  It's time to practice what I preach.  I'll continue these thoughts in my next post.

I would love to hear from you.  Please use the Comment link below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com .

Everyday Angels

To be independent, to gain self-sufficiency and to be in control of one's life: these are highly regarded and sought-after qualities for many of us.  They are laudable qualities.  They are also traps that potentially keep us from recognizing one of the amazing blessings of life - the presence everyday angels who are there, quietly and without fanfare, to help us when we are in need.

Recently I traveled to Connecticut for the wedding of a dear friend.  Not having traveled much without my husband - who understands and lovingly cares for my needs when I am in pain - I wondered how I would manage the trip.  But the wedding was too important for me to stay home so I went even though Tim could not go with me.  It was a beautiful and joyous weekend, one in which I re-connected with old friends, rejoiced with Stephanie and Jal and their families, and - not unexpectedly - dealt with migraine pain most of the time.  It was a weekend in which I met everyday angels at every turn.

This is, like most things in life, a mixed blessing.  I'd really rather just be able to be independent, make my own plans, do my own thing.  This part of me feels embarassed at having to ask for help and to admit that I cannot simply pick up and go like other folks.  This part of me resents my dependence on others. 

This part of me also isolates me under the guise of self-sufficiency, a wonderful concept that loses its wonder in a life of pain.  I struggled with my ego and its need to be competent and in charge while all around me, my pride notwithstanding, angels appeared.

My first angel was the bride, Stephanie, who, in response to my email full of concern about how I would get from the airport to her home town, connected me with two guests who also live in D.C.: Premila, sister of the groom, and Laura, long-time family friend.  Stephanie also ensured that I had a place to stay at the inn for out-of-town guests that also was to be the site of the reception.  Having made up my mind rather late, I might not have secured a room at the Wake Robin Inn had Stephanie not made a quick reservation for me and immediately connected me to Inn staff.

Premila and Laura proved to be wonderful travel companions, not at all concerned that I couldn't share in the driving of the rental car (air travel being a never-fail migraine trigger), and understanding of my inability to attend the Friday picnic.  Premila called me from the picnic to offer a plate of food, and Laura delivered that plate to my door. 

Saturday's wedding on a hill at Stephanie's family farm was lovely.  The bridal party arrived in a wagon towed by an antique tractor; guests were transported from the parking area to the hilltop in another tractor-pulled wagon; the setting was beautiful and the music perfect.  At the reception in a tent on the Inn grounds, I had the most fun I'd had in years.  Yet it was no surprise to wake up Sunday morning with a migraine.  The late night, loud music, flashing light bulbs in the dark venue, and food made with ingredients not on my migraine diet made for a perfect migraine storm.  And I would not have missed it for anything.  You learn to make these comprimises when you have chronic pain, otherwise your life would be just awful.

So Sunday morning I struggled up the hill to the Inn where I thought breakfast would be served at 7am.  I really needed my morning tea and a bit of food, part of my pain management regimen.  But when I walked in and was told that breakfast did not begin until 8am, my face must have registered serious dismay because Shaffin, the staff person with whom I was speaking, urged me to sit down while he went to the kitchen to see what he could do.  Making me comfortable in a corner of the room and thoughtfully turning off the light above my head, he moved away with a promise to return soon.

It's hard to sit up with unsupported head and neck when a migraine is at full force.  It's hard to be without the soothing routines of home and readily available comfort measures.  It's hard not to feel sorry for oneself, so when Shaffin came quietly back carrying a tray with teapot, fruit and a muffin, I felt tears of gratitude arise.  "My angel," I thought. 

Later, during the luncheon at Stephanie's parents' house, I was carfeully ensconsed in a comfy recliner by John, father of the bride, and checked on by Eileen, mother of the bride, and Jal, the groom.  "More angels," I thought.

It was good to lie back in that reclining chair, comforted by the breeze from the window Eileen had opened for me and listening to the chatter from the back porch.  It was sweet to hear those companionable sounds and I felt blessed to be there.  I felt blessed by Stephanie, Premila, and Laura, without whom the trip would have been almost impossible.  I felt blessed by Shaffin, Jal, Eileen and John, who made the pain easier to bear. 

I am not independent or self-sufficient.  I do not have the ability to do for myself without relying on people to help me.

I have something better.  I have angels.


I would love to hear from you.  Please use the Comment link below, or email me at carold.marsh@gmail.com.