Enthusiasm and liveliness are by-products of the fundamental sentiments of joy, love and peace. These essential states of being, these basic emotions are natural and exist spontaneously in every being who has not been conditioned otherwise. Joy, peace and love can lead us to bliss and ecstasy, the higher octave of these foundational sentiments. They are the natural state of our being. We are not always in contact with them as their true nature has been hidden from us. We have been persuaded that we reach these states of mind in precise circumstances, by being famous, wealthy, through pleasurable activities, or in another mode through spiritual practice, meditation, rituals, ceremonies, etc. But the fact is that we are in these states of bliss and quiet constant joy, filled with love and peace, from birth. As time goes by we experience conditioning and programming by our parents, siblings, relatives, friends, schools, as our experience of life is coloured by traumatic experiences, polluted environments, negative emotions, violence to oneself or others, etc. One of the most prevailing conditioning which prevents our experiencing the foundational sentiments in our current technocratic societies is the one that we are the underdog, not important or accepted unless we conform to societies’ norms. (Read my article on education.) Thus, to find the essential and natural state which allows us to experience enthusiasm and liveliness in our everyday lives we need to find inner unity with ourselves. To accomplish that often it’s as simple as practising relaxation. It’s important to understand that we really don’t need to do anything to find our inner unity as it’s always there. The sentiments of joy and love are going to appear spontaneously without our needing to look for them as they are our natural state of being. Seeking internal unity is coming back to who we really are.
Sometimes, we need to make external, physical gestures, to come back to that inner state of joy. It’s important to learn to relax, to let go, to just BE. Using simple things such as switching off the television, the radio and the telephone for a time, cutting off any source of outside stimulation, not talking to anybody and just resting in silence. Without moments of solitude, one cannot establish boundaries and marks that determine the best way to live and relate with the world.
To make it easier and conducive to understanding oneself it’s useful to have a place in our home where we arrange natural elements on a table to recreate for ourselves the beauty of nature. For example, a bowl of water, a plant, a stone, a crystal, a candle, beautiful pictures, etc. This beautiful space, created with our happiest thoughts, is a place where it’s easy to reconnect with our internal unity. It’s recreating a sacred space-time and going back there regularly. The more we are going to cleanse ourselves and relax, to slow down the pace of life and simply be without judging ourselves, the more we don’t try to do or to be according to someone’s else’s or society’s norms but just BE, the more we are going to become neutral; and the internal natural ability to experience the foundational sentiments of joy love and peace are going to return.
Sometimes this is not enough, our conditioning is too powerful. Sometimes external circumstances are so irritating or difficult that just relaxing will not do it for us. Sometimes our thoughts are obsessive and relentless, and situations are intolerable. Our mind can’t stop as it’s never been trained to do that. It can drive us crazy sometimes when our mind is constantly juggling with morbid thoughts. Then it’s time to regain control. There are many simple ways of doing this.
One way is pushing to exaggeration these obsessive thoughts, pushing everything to the very worst by creating a nightmare scenario in our minds until we have no other alternative than to laugh at it. This is how Native Americans nations have succeeded in surviving the genocidal experiences and constant segregation and misery that have been imposed on them. They have survived the worst possible catastrophes and situations by knowing how to laugh at it all. With intense laughter that moves our bowels with successive contractions to the point it hurts, we can realize a transformation of our perceptions and thoughts. And when we have experienced such laughter, if we then get up and dance and sing, we are going to multiply tenfold the transformational effects of this simple personal magic.
Let’s give an example of this process; I am experiencing intense irritation against a person at work who’s making my life horrible. This obsesses me to the point of tainting my peace and joy. Once back home I go to my sacred space and after a moment of relaxation, I imagine that I lose total control at the office when this person makes another of their annoying remarks. I visualize that I hit the person who has offended me with a chair. I am immediately fired and thus my anger is so great that I knock a woman down as I storm out of the office building. She begins shouting at me and gets a policeman interested in what’s happening. I impertinently scream at him to mind his own business, so he arrests me. I’m brought to court of justice for impeding the work of a police officer. I’m impolite and offensive with the judge as he reminds me of that horrible person at the office who’s responsible for all this. I’m thrown into prison. I continue with this nightmare scenario in my mind until I can’t take it seriously anymore and break out laughing. When you feel this joy get up and dance and let forth any sounds or song inspired by your joy and dance.
Know that this simple magic can completely transform your experience at the office. You will see when you go back to the office that the circumstances have been completely transformed in your perception and experience. This person that has adversely affected you might even become a good friend or at the very least you will know how to manage the small inconveniences he creates.
Another way of creating joy in your life is knowing how to say thank you. It’s a simple and universal practice that of expressing to the universe our gratitude for being alive. We can pray aloud, we can sing, or we can make offerings as all aboriginal nations throughout the world have always done daily. Try taking a little food of your plate outside and giving it to the spirits of nature. Often, people who try it for the first time are so moved that they have tears of joy. If we feel and express our thankfulness for the gift of life, we feel joy in the heart.
When we feel that wave of thankfulness, when that energy arises, this is the perfect time to apply that same simple magic of transformation to our lives. If we have a situation or circumstances that we need to change so as to be more fully happy with our lives, we dance this situation and we can laugh at it.
Another powerful transformation technique consists in giving oneself a new name. Very often if we know how to be fully conscious of what’s happening to us, we realize that we created these difficult situations. Thus, we can also change them. By remembering a happy event of our life, we synthesize and capture that emotion, the joy of that precise moment, by giving it a name. Example: if we felt a great joy as I did when we rode a bike for the first time, we can give ourselves a name that captures that moment, for example: One who flies on a bicycle. We can also rename ourselves by using something that catches our glance as we are having these difficult moments (I am snow falling, or I am the dancing tree). By repeating aloud or within or by singing this name in a funny or serious way, we are going to create an energy that will result in an immediate transformation of the energies that created the circumstances we want to change. The word, the verb of Man is active, its magic, it participates in that divine ability of naming things on a creative frequency. We can also dance that name to increase that magic and sometimes when we dance and manage to increase the emotional momentum to a feeling of ecstasy, when we are slightly in a trance mode, although aware of our environment, there can spontaneously arise a sound, a song or some words; and this is something very precious indeed. Be remembering and uttering this sound or song when a difficulty presents itself, the simple fact of repeating these words or this sound is going to create the energy to transform the situation. This is very simple and common magic, which comes from the basic nature of who we are as human beings.
It’s always good to remember happy and joyful moments of our lives. They are key moments, times when we were in unity with our divine essence. Take time to revisit them in your sacred space. Also find names to describe who you were in these moments. That can be uttered when you need to change the circumstances that have arisen in your lives.
Sometimes people have difficulty dancing or singing even when they are alone. They have been taught that you should not differentiate yourself from others, that being different from others is being at risk of being judged and creating problems for yourself. This is a conditioning, a programming to make cyborgs out of human beings so they fully become cogs of a system that is destroying the world. The reality is that we are all unique, different from all other people in the world. It’s important to celebrate this uniqueness to realize the internal unity which gives you peace, joy and love. These sentiments are doors to your own bliss and ecstasy that make everything possible.