What's Joy Got To Do With It?

Honestly, what does joy have to do with it? If I hear one more New Agey "gotta be happy or I'm gonna die" guru tell me that I have to be happy, I'm just gonna . . .well, you get the picture. Do I? Do I have to be happy? Of course not. Being happy or not isn't all that important. What is important, is being what you are in any one now moment, and then having what you're being mean nothing.

Again, do you have to have what you are being, mean nothing? No, certainly, you don't have to do this either. In fact, you don't have to do anything at all. Where's that list? Nothing of the sort. Not now, not ever. However, if you do decide that you want an outstandingly bright quality of life, there are requirements. You don't have to fulfill them, but if you do fulfill them, I can guarantee you a momentously increased quality of life, sheer awe over simply being alive in the first place, an increased experience of love, more money and success, and the power to change the circumstances of your life to the better, that you have never seen before. Again, do you gotta? No, you don't. But I do like doing it!

What does it mean to have nothing mean anything? What this means in practice, is to have everything around you, mean exactly what it means, and nothing else. Not a single shred of more meaning than the truth. Truth is, when I am angry, I am angry. That's it. End of story. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. Angry is angry, and angry ain't nothing else. That's it. Really. And then? And then, what we usually do, is to add a zillion other meanings to our anger that clog, cram, and crap up our lives, making our original anger, which we can do nothing about anyway, since it's already in the past, and we've already reacted that way, into something huge, big, very resistant, and usually a block to our getting on with the natural joy our lives take on, when we stop our meaning making machinery. Wow! Sounds good to me! Sounds like more people would be committed to fulfilling this simple requirement to our being happy and successful. But they aren't. If they were committed to fulfilling it, instead of just wanting to do it, it would be fulfilled. Because even though they wanna do it, they don't. What they do instead is to strive to pay attention to their wants and not the requirements needed to actually be fulfilled in order to have those wants manifested. The inner dialog sounds similar to: I wanna go, I wanna stop being angry, I wanna different . . ., I wanna, I wanna, I wanna . . .ah, to be human!

Customarily, we do not fulfill these crucial requirements for success at all. Not usually. Look at all the crime, upset, and war, in the I-wanna world. What we do instead, is point to something that has made us angry, and then come up with all manner of justifications for being angry, because of course, anger is so bad that if we just come up with enough good reasons for being angry, we can still be "good" people. We even ask others "Well, wouldn't you be angry if so and so said such and such." Yep. I might have reacted that way, I might not have. But so what! Truth is, that you reacted that way, and what that means is that . . .drum roll here . . .you got angry. Nothing more, nothing less.

And of course it's completely human to want to fix and change our anger, because frankly, being angry for any length of time at all just doesn't feel all that good. Yet the irony is that when we are hooked into fixing and changing that which cannot be fixed or changed, what happens? Our actions simply force what we don't wanna have in our lives to stick around because what we resist, persists. And we do like to feel good, because again, quite frankly, feeling good . . .feels good! Oh! You mean that humans are actually that simple! No, they're not. But the processes and Universal Laws that rule their lives certainly are. Hit your finger with a hammer and it hurts. Nothing complicated about that! Add more meaning to your being angry and your actions will guarantee that you will not only stay angry, but that your anger will transform from a momentary experience of truth, to an illusory creation that acts as a guilt producing block to your success. Again, pretty simple rule here!

So how do we do it? How do we so detach ourselves from our anger, so that being angry in the first place doesn't drive us crazy? In a way that keeps us from firing up the meaning making machinery and loading down our lives with huge amounts of illusory junk? It's easy, but our resistance to giving up being right isn't. What's easy about it, is that all we have to do is tell the real truth in any one now moment, and we are free. Tell the truth about your anger, fully experience it, and then it's gone. That's it. But we usually tell something else. We tell a long story about why we are angry, in an attempt to justify what we already are. But how does that work? To justify? What we already are? Seems silly, doesn't it? That's because it is! Why not instead of attempting to justify what we already are, simply say we are that! Hey, I'm angry here. Oh, and yes, what does that mean? That you're angry there. What else? Nothing else! Do I have to repeat this a thousand times? Getting angry yet? I certainly hope so! Great! What does that mean?

Point is, we get angry when we do, and we give up our anger when we do. And not one of us seems to have control over our initial reaction of anger, at least for the most part. Something happens, and we have decided, or it has been decided long ago for us, that that thing will make us angry. Good, we get angry. But here's the catch. We can only stay angry, to the extent that we resist the truth of our being angry in the first place. If we simply say we're angry, and then fully experience that anger, what happens then? It is gone. G . . .o . . .n . . .e. For real, and for now. And that "what we do after we get angry" is the place where we have complete control of our actions. And in a world bent on domination and control, to be offered the keys to the one area where we can totally dominate and control our lives, guiding them into exactly the directions we say we want them to go in, you would think humans would read these words and then immediately begin practicing that which gives them total access to their incredible power. But we don't. Not always, at least. But now that you know, there it is. The opportunity to practice these simple and effective truths. Ah, yes, humans are complicated, aren't they!