Where is the path to joy and love?

. It is very common among most people to resist joy and love.
Why is it so?
Most people have an unconscious resistance against giving. They think that they have to receive first to get something in return. But this is the wrong way round. You will first receive after you have given.
Many times you are not aware what you want. But ultimately you want always joy and love in your life. As you want joy and love you need to learn who you are. You are the key yourself. When you realize who you are, then everything will appear in the right order. That is what spirituality is all about.
You will look for joy and love, even when you do something as simple as sitting down, because consciously or unconsciously you look for the place where you feel most comfortable. All experiences you have come ultimately from love. The difference between fear and love is your perception of it in your mind.
If you did not receive much love as a child as you have in your adult life, then you may be inclined to seek personal power as a substitute in order to protect yourself. But it happens unconsciously. The need for love makes you be on guard all the time. You want always to be right. It is a need for power, but the need for power is a poor substitute for what you really are looking for.
What are you looking for? You are always looking for joy and love in your life. But what is joy and love in itself? It is essence. It is pure awareness. Awareness is a realization of who you are. You are aware what you are. It is when you are aware that you are essence.
Awareness is also self-organizing. For example, when you start to eat, a very complicated process is set into motion. A process begins which allows you to convert and process what you eat. There are a lot of organs, cells and other things you have no control over whatsoever at work. It is self-organizing. There is a greater awareness which is doing all this. You are not doing it. There is a greater awareness at work all the time in the background of your daily consciousness without you even being aware of it.
This is the case for most people. They are occupied by their daily routines and external activities and forget that they have this great marvelous dimension to them, which is active all the time.
Do you need to move to a secret and lonely cave to make yourself be more conscious? No, it is not necessary. You just have to ask: Who am I?
Await the stillness.
Accept that you do not know who you are.
But you know that you are present.
You are here. You know that you exist.
You are sense of I am.
You are the one looking at life.
You are not the one you think you are.
You are not the one you are named as.
You are not the one you are educated as being.

All these attributes are not the one you really are. You are being and witnessing life. That is all. You are connected to this essence all your life and all of the time. You may not be aware of it. But being and essence is present all the time, and has always been present, and will always be present.
You do not love yourself but you want another to love you. But that would never work. So how do you live and receive joy and love? Well, you have to listen. Come back to stillness. Listen to the judgments of your consciousness without condemning.
Each time you are depressed, you see it as being wrong. But at the moment that you accept everything which arises in you, then you will be free. You will see everything is a part of you. Everything you encounter is a part of you. That is the way you grow as a human being. Pure awareness is cleansing. Allow your awareness to look at your mind without any judgment. Be the awareness.
Forgiveness is the highest form of healing. That which you hold back will then be freed, and bring you immediate healing. You will dispel your resistance, when you accept that you feel resistance.
You are an extension of what you feel. You have an inner compass and that is your joy. When you do not feel joy in what you do, then you are not on the right path. You are not in the flow. Return to your essence consciously, keep your sense of joy in your meditation, and prolong this sense when you come out of your meditation and return to your daily life.
Your job is to sense this connection of what you are. You are joy and love. It has never left you. It is always radiating through you. You must be aware of opening your heart all the time and never to close this energy again. That is the place of your real home. Here you are the essence of who you are.

From Manfred Johannsen’s book: “The Power of Love – Path to Love and Happiness”

https://www.amazon.com/author/manfredjohannsen