Joy IS Possible

Terrible or not, difficult or not, the only thing that is beautiful, noble, religious and mystical is to be happy. Arnaud Desjardins

Tani was a talented, attractive woman in her early thirties who cared fervently about the natural world and about helping people. But, over and over again she held herself back from using her talents by becoming anxious and self-critical. She second-guessed herself constantly, in the guise of trying to improve herself so that she'd be acceptable enough not to feel threatened. Since her body and learned to anticipate attack, she tended to react defensively quite quickly. Tani avoided working in group settings for fear that she'd be as ridiculed and rejected as she'd been in her family and that she wouldn't be able to be calm and confident in the greater pressure of a group environment.

Tani started an appointment by saying, “I can imagine why you've asked me how I want the rest of my life to be and what my dreams are. But you know, it's really hard to come up with any. It was never okay in my family to have my own desires. I protected myself by rationalizing others' nasty behavior and focusing on being safe. Now that I'm an adult, when I think something would be worthwhile to do, I talk myself out of it by thinking that I couldn't possibly manage what it'd take. The schooling, yes, but not the people and the politics. I think I've cut off the part of myself that should feel that I can have a life based on what I want.”

There are many reasons why people often believe that a little peace and quiet is out of their reach – forget about being joyful. Really bad things may have happened that seem impossible to get beyond. Some people have been taught that they must shut down on themselves in order to be acceptable. Other folks' methods of dealing with pain disconnect them from themselves and their feelings. They then developed distorted views of themselves. As Mark Epstein says in Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, "In coping with the world, we come to identify only with our compensatory selves and our reactive minds."

What would it mean to think that joy is possible? And what is it anyway? We're aiming at something more profound than pleasurable reactions to things that we do, or buy, or achieve, not that I have anything against those! Such activities and accomplishments are fun, fulfilling, can be thrilling and even inspiring. But there is a deeper, more long-lasting joy, even for those of us who have endured terrible things.

At the center of each person is a still place, a well of deep and abiding bliss. This feeling-state emerges when we are at peace and deeply connected with our true selves. Even when we feel miserable and over-burdened with pain, or with old patterns that don't seem to go away no matter how hard we try, the still place is still there. It is where our true selves, our being, can be found. It is also the place in which we can access greater physical, emotional and spiritual energy, in which we connect, through a deep contact with our true nature, with all-that-is.

So, joy is possible. Joy can also increase. It grows when fertilized with our conscious attention. Joy simply is. Waiting for us to find it. The fact that it is not dependent on our attaining something or someone outside us gives us more power to achieve it. We can get there. All we have to do is dig through the pile and uncover it.

Well, that was easy to say. It's not as if we've all been sitting around doing nothing. So why has emotional freedom seemed pretty impossible, and what works better?

Our systems do have emotional and neurological resources for working through and resolving hurt. However, if we don't feel we can face all of it in the moment, then the effects of the event will be locked away inside us, ostensibly so that we can work through them later when we have the resources or a calm stretch of time.

Mostly, though, people do not get home, pull those memories out of the storage locker, sit themselves down, and let the the feelings flow until they settle into the past more quietly. People tense against their memories, trying to annihilate them by cutting off awareness of their bodies. It's as if distancing from the body that feels the pain will make the pain cease to exist. When the body persists in doing its job signaling, more and more loudly if necessary, that there is something that needs attention, people often come to blame their bodies as the source of the pain. Having stored the hurtful memories or emotions away, folks then tend to blame themselves for faulty wiring if they leak out. And around it goes again, as they try to disconnect more strenuously in order to put the lid on those old sores.

The many books on happiness available today tend to gloss over the struggle, with no model for getting from here to there. The exercises they contain are often valuable, but they are of no use until we can begin to see our way out. The path beyond pain requires some extra steps, and if we been traumatized, these steps are even more essential.

While Energy Dynamics are helpful for anyone wanting to change their view of life and to feel better in themselves, not only for those who have survived seriously damaging experiences, it is worthwhile at this point to clarify our working definition of trauma. Trauma is any stressor or event that overwhelms the system's ability to deal with it, thereby causing lasting and substantial psychological disruption. (Footnote 1) In situations in which we feel some sense of control, at least of ourselves, we do not become truly traumatized, no matter how awful the circumstance. It is when we feel helpless and overwhelmed, when the event blows past our emotional and mental capacities to tolerate it, that our systems shove it away into a specific portion of our brain, causing it to be stuck not only undigested, but inaccessible by talking or by psychotropic medication. So conventional therapies that rely on talking and medication to relieve symptoms do not release trauma. Bessel van der Kolk long-term research on Viet Nam veterans has shown that neither approach has a significant impact when it comes to releasing traumatic memories or the ways that our bodies react to them.

Unfortunately also, that sense of helplessness stymies our efforts to struggle past with the pain and self-loathing that are the most pernicious waste products of trauma, leading us to feel hopeless as well. (And that helplessness also fuels a tremendous amount of pleasure-seeking. In reaching too much outside ourselves to feel better without paying attention, we inadvertently strengthen the idea that we are lacking within ourselves, that we are intrinsically inadequate. Then we find ourselves going after more things to make up for the emptiness we feel.)

In order to free ourselves from the effects of stubborn old baggage, as well as of trauma, we need to introduce movement into the frozen portion of the brain where serious hurts are shut away. Energy is what makes things move. Our energy systems can also be trained and augmented. Developing our Energy Dynamics will help us move beyond old, self-defeating beliefs and enable us to turn our attention to what is positive and supportive in ourselves and in others. We'll then be able to lessen the power over our emotional well-being that the memories have and then include them in the story of our lives in such a way that they add meaning and depth to how we define ourselves, rather then diminishing us.

A free and full life is not without crisis and difficulty. Some trouble comes to us all. But, do we have to be contorted and arrested by those sorrows? It takes determination to remove the horror-house glasses that have distorted our view of life, so that it looks as if our old pains repeat, over and over. All of us who have gone through horrific times have been handed the assignment of coming to terms with what happened rather than seeing it as having diminished us. How do we deal with crisis and loss in such a way that we remain self-supportive and confident and are able to continue with our lives, having come to some peace with what happened? How we deal with pain and loss is directly related to how much richness we are able to allow ourselves to experience. It is possible to reassert our sovereign place in our own story. Optimally, we'll resolve them and integrate what we learned, and then reconnect with the foundation of knowing our own value, with which we can move forward more richly, deeply, with a larger sense of who we are, and with more sensitivity and empathy.

Joy comes as a result of our effort, effectively applied. The paradox is that joy is always present in us. Under all the layers of pain, unresolved feelings, and beliefs that life is hard and we don't deserve to have it be easy, there it is. Waiting. As soon as we do the work, sometimes, just a piece of it, we can be flooded with contentment, gratitude, and yes, joy. It doesn't matter what we've been up against before, or even what our life circumstances are now. There it is.

You may have witnessed an acquaintance fighting grief that provides an example. When people react to the loss of a loved one by hiding from it, they become stuck in the painful memories. They can't remember the good times. Their outrage and dismal outlook grow. Alternatively, when they allow grief to run its course, they start recalling happy times and the blessing of having had that person in their life. The loving feelings surface, seemingly of their own accord, because they have been there all along, hiding in the bedrock. The grief and rage simply covered them over. The psyche seems to have a mandate to make sure that we face things, so it continues to present us with the unfinished business before we can get to the fun stuff.

Joy is a deep, abiding feeling of happiness grounded in peace and bliss. It is our felt perception of the the creative and sustaining energy that the Universe is made of. When we are centered deeply within ourselves, we feel true joy. It does not depend on any external circumstance. When we are settled in the still place and in that feeling, we feel nourished and held, even when circumstances around us are less than optimal. Enlightenment is being able to experience this on an on-going basis.

We, as regular humans, can experience this kind of Joy. A worthy goal for life and for the development of our spirits is to do the work that increases the time that we spend within this Joy and express it through the way we live our lives. And yes, here, at the beginning of this journey, you may not know yet how to access it. You may have had so many painful things happen to you that you are far from seeing that it has anything to do with you. You may even have piled bad behavior on top of the crap. You may be so lost in shame, despair, and self-doubt, that you think you don't deserve it.

But, the fact is, Joy and connectedness lie at the heart of everyone. In the course of this book you'll see how to uncover the Joy that is already in you. Doing the work to resolve the feelings heaped on top starts to build a renewed sense of your ability to act on your own behalf. In doing so, you start the healing process. As you go on, you can change your outlook on life, learn to value your true nature highly, trust in your strengths, and see your opportunities. Shift your viewpoint just a little, and you'll see that the struggle itself is evidence that you still have hope that, with enough work and the right tools, it is possible to be happy.

But first, we need to look at how the brain works, and how it keeps us stuck. If we understand that, we can see how to use our own neurology to help us release baggage, rather than carrying it everywhere.