Tag Archives: joy

THE SECRET OF SUCCESSFULLY GROWING OLDER

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The secret of successfully growing older physically –
Is to simultaneously grow younger spiritually.

As our body starts falling away – heading back towards the earth –
At the same time, we should be striving to attain freedom of spirit –

We’ll know we’re living right
When, as our happiness is receding,
We experience joy on the rise.

We’ll be satisfied with decreasing material success
When a “spiritual” fountain opens up in our hearts –
And grows daily more refreshing.

It’s a race we win by losing –

An “end of life” paradox:

As we dissolve into the dust –
We simultaneously become more radiant.

SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS

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“Sin”
Is treating people (including one’s self) and other living beings as objects.

Objects aren’t real – they’re ephemeral –
Only subjects are “real” in any true sense.

For example, the ego is a self-made intangible “object”
While your “true self” is always a subject.

The essential work of human beings is to find and align
Their true selves with a “real” God – not with “made-up” ones.

Mostly, though, we need to jump-start our everyday lives
Into an alternative world of creativity, joy, and color –
That we’ll start experiencing the moment
We decide to put aside our comfortable ego
And, completely, “wake up”!

A DANCE OF JOY

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Usually, one doesn’t meet God personally,
And, even in that case, ordinarily just by accident.

We pass by, and only later realize
Something happened –
Maybe just a momentary impression –
Like noticing stars looking like astral “white flowers”
Or a simple shrub beside the path, when hit by the sun, turning into a “star.”

It’s the joy arising in our hearts
That tells us God has just passed by.

Unexpectedly, we feel like dancing –
Even though the world might think us crazy –

And we are – but only for God.

Our heart starts beating an internal drum:

– Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy –

Our feet leave the ground –
And, suddenly,
We’re in the air!

Who says there’s no such thing as ecstasy
In North America?

JESUS DID IT FIRST

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After, spiritually, we’ve fallen fast asleep –
Suddenly, God will open a door
Where, apparently, there had been no door –
And, with a good-natured chuckle, surprise us back to life!

Inside God’s voice may be heard another – more distant voice –
We hear it by being able to glimpse a face
Behind the face of society’s accepted quotidian “God.”

At times, though, it can seem like we’re a leaf floating downstream – just being carried along –
Sometimes exhilarated, at other times, getting stuck –
No matter how fast we go, however, usually we’re pretty passive –
So that what seems to us like “action” – is more like being a stone flung up into the air.

Given this, how much work and courage would it really take
To become fully conscious and fully alive –
To even start such an effort?

It might be easier than you think!
First, just wake up –
And then wake yourself a second time to your highest state of “awakeness” –
Walk to the nearest window
And look out –
If you’re fully “awake” by that time – more than you’ve ever been before –
At that very moment, you’ll get hit “right in the puss” with joy –
Human beings’ natural state.

It takes only a single moment to pass into eternity
Where we come to “life” without passing through a womb –
Avatars call this “life beyond life” –
Jesus called it pretty much the same thing – “being born again” –
But no one has described, specifically, what it’s really like.

Jesus lived through these peak experiences many times –
Especially, and finally, when singing the 22nd Psalm on the cross –
“My God, my God, why ….”

A touch of joy in death – unimaginable –

But Jesus did it first.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GOD

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21st Century American poets
Sing about God’s “disappearance” –

But it’s not God who’s disappearing, it’s America’s spiritual culture –

What a waste! – our allegiance to a nationalism of no love –
To upper-echelon materialism –
And, also, to this ersatz “heaven” of global capitalism.

This raises the question, however,
Whether anything can exist without a center –
Especially since our own center is an “ego”
Which we’re rapidly losing confidence in.

The primary duty of working poets at all times and places
Is to sing about joy in the presence of God –
So that each of us might, in turn, have our own individual joys reaffirmed
And our true center hold.

When American poets started giving up God –
What was left was a group of negative images and a few slick verbal tricks –
What was left, in essence, was a deep emotional depression – artistically made invisible.

But what came next, of course, was Satan –
Grinning ear to ear –

Death trailing behind in all its manifold forms –
Entering our lives like the tide –

This is the price we’re going to be required to pay
For American poets being so willing to let the “real” God go.

TEARS OF JOY

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Evangelical Christians talk about being “born again” –
As if it’s easy.

And that suffering and dying are nothing more than just saying the words
“Jesus Christ.”

But this is all a sham.

Suffering and dying are very difficult –
As Jesus so graphically demonstrated.

But that’s what it costs –

Dying, to make way for the birth
Of the kind of people God meant for all of us to be –

Pretty much everything in the ancient world had to be destroyed
To make room for that.

It’s the same for each one of us – it won’t be easy –
Giving up and
Starting all over again –

Arriving straight out of a spiritual womb
Into a sky we’ve never experienced before.

At birth, everyone starts crying,
You, your friends, the entire world – everyone –

Tears of joy.

SEARCHING FOR GOD – WITH BOTH MINDS

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We possess two minds: a logical/mathematical/scientific mind and a creative artistic one:
Joined at the brain’s center they function best when acting together
Because it takes both to encompass reality.

Today, many people are using just one of their minds in their search for God or for understanding reality – the “logical” one –
And that’s true whether we’re speaking of believers in orthodox religion or atheists –
Since both can be quite comfortable construing reality in a purely logical manner.

Atheists – being materialistic – use “Occam’s Razor” to crop spirit entirely out of life’s picture,
While Fundamentalists and Conservative Evangelicals proselytize a “god-given” faith
composed of ancient superstitions systematized into a “take it or leave it” religion.

Both are dead-ends.

I propose that people should start searching for God and their true self by using both minds. A new post-“postmodern” field of human endeavor will be necessary to accomplish this: a freely creative and artistic, yet inherently rational, spiritual discipline of using both of our minds.

In the past, artists convincingly portrayed various aspects of God, but restricted their images and stories to their culture’s predominant religion – whether Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam.

Today, however, artists need to widen their scope of work to encompass all human religions, spirituality, thought, and emotions. Human beings’ highest and most joyful levels of creativity could then be used to “paint pictures” and “tell stories” about God, and to discover their true selves – with absolute freedom – while grounding this new“ spiritual-art” in a profound and rational understanding of reality.

This “Two Minds spiritual discipline,” however, will never be included in the course curricula at Princeton Theological Seminary or Oral Roberts University because this combination of a rational scientific approach with spontaneous and free artistic creativity, by its very nature, could never be the subject of academic systematization.

The best thing would be for each person to become a “scientific-artist” or “artistic-scientist” (depending upon one’s natural preference), and to go and search for God and one’s true self on their own – using both minds. If they happen to learn about someone who might be helpful to them in that search – they should go and talk to that person – one on one.

Repeat, as often as necessary, until radiant with joy!

FLYING STRAIGHT TO GOD

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Look for a subtle movement
Or a place of pure stillness –

God may be found in either place.

Your heart, on the other hand, is a boiler room
Banging out wants and fears –

Once in a lifetime, though, you may hear God’s distant call,
And, suddenly, your heart’ll leap out of your chest
And fly like a bird quickly disappearing into the deep blue sky –

Free at last!

This is the actual moment you become holy –
And fill with overflowing joy –

When your heart leaves your heart –
And starts flying straight to God.

JOY

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… since there is no joy without God, but all joy is in God,
and God himself is wholly joy, it follows that the first speaker
said first and before anything else ‘God’. Dante

The greatest love affair a person can experience is with God. When we begin to fall in love with God and start searching for our true self, the confirmation that we’re going in the right direction will be the amount of joy we feel in our hearts – a fountain of sparkling, radiant “life” that starts bursting through our broken self.

Pleasure and happiness are good things to experience, but joy far surpasses them. Nothing comes close: not sexual orgasms, superb food, high art, or incalculable wealth. That’s because no one can buy God or one’s true self. This is the “pearl” for which we should be willing to sell everything because, without joy, what’s the point of living, no matter how successful or famous we become? Joy is a dance with God that takes place in our hearts – a dance that, once begun, never ends.

The further along the path towards God and the true self you travel, the greater the feelings of joy you’ll experience. You can see it in faces of the “saved” – the saints and enlightened ones – who literally become suffused with radiant joy. When you’re overloaded with joy, when you simply can’t take a single drop more, what arrives next is ecstasy – when you feel as though you’re flying high above the ground. Ecstasy means “standing outside yourself,” while simultaneously remaining firmly grounded inside yourself.

Joy is experienced at the core of our being – in our heart of hearts – in our true self. Living in the spirit is like attending a wedding celebration that never ends. Jesus repeatedly used weddings and celebrations as metaphors: people are invited to a wedding, but fail to come; or they come, but aren’t properly dressed for the celebration – a celebration in which Jesus is turning water into wine – i.e., turning the material into the spiritual. Weddings symbolize hope for the new life that will be created by entering into this new relationship. The weddings and celebrations Jesus was referring to are the ones where you discover your true self and then decide to go on and “marry” God.

“No one knows the source of joy” says Rumi. Actually, we do know – joy comes from experiencing God. Happiness may arise from many different things, but joy derives solely from our relationship with God. In the material, once-born world, everyone strives for happiness, but it’s in the world of spirit that we find the true source of joy. We actually can measure the health of our relationship with God by the amount of joy in our lives. An objective test as to whether you’ve repented (i.e., turned to God) is whether you’ve fallen in love with God. If you’re still joyless after you think you’ve turned to God, then you haven’t, no matter how religious you might appear to be or think you are.

from “Diner Mystic”

CALLING DOWN TO YOU

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When you “die,” while still being alive, you’ll be free
To be nobody – that is, someone who’s totally in love with God.

This liberation occurs the moment
All the roles you’ve been straining to hold up to the world’s view
Fall of their own weight –
Including your name and identity.

Yet “you’ll” still remain, just as you’ve always been, isn’t that right?

When you “die” while still being alive, you’ll be free to travel straight to God –
And you’ll do it –
Really, where else would you go –
Nowhere?

Everything I’m saying here applies to each and every moment in your life –
There’s really no distinction between before and after –
Only fewer distractions once you’ve arrived.

Listen, joy is joy,
God is God,
And you are you –
In all worlds.

Hear that distant singing? Listen carefully, it’s your own joy
Calling down to you.