LOVE has two companions and one of them is joy. Both love and joy are thought of as emotion which is not strictly correct. The emotion that we mistake for joy is happiness which is really only pleasure in another of its many disguises. We search for joy because we are unhappy.

Unhappiness is a disease of human beings that is in epidemic proportions. One of the main reasons is negativity. The state of the world outside – which is chockablock full of negativity – reflects what we feel inside. Our outside and our inside are exactly the same and it’s what is happening inside of us that is the source, not what is out there.

To see what we are really like inside, all we need do is take a look at what is happening out there, the news headlines explains it all. It makes little difference who we are, whether we are academics, housewives, working class, so called ‘well off’ or we are as poor as church mice, we are all trapped in this web of negativity to some degree.

The desire for happiness lives in time – in the past and the anticipated future, ‘I think I was happy yesterday and I want to be happy again tomorrow’ so I look outward to try and find or preserve it. We can never find it ‘out there’ so the quest for happiness goes on endlessly.

It is the ego that is really looking. It is referencing the images of pleasure in its library of the past and looking outward for something that corresponds somewhat to what made us happy before, or it looks at the second hand images from others that said, ‘This acquisition will give you joy.’

To be happy is to rely on having something else – something from outside of you. Maybe it’s some possession that you want and don’t have or did have but now don’t. It also could rely on someone whom you believe will bring you happiness if only you can be with them and they would give you their attention. It could also be an achievement or event that you are striving for in the belief it will make you happy.

People depend entirely on what happens in their life for their happiness – but what do you get if you can’t have what you want – if that prized possession or person or achievement that you want so badly is denied? You don’t get happiness – you get unhappiness instead, something we try so desperately to avoid.

People do not understand the fact that ‘what happens’ is a very unstable thing. We can never tell with any certainty what will happen at any moment in time and when something does happens, it is not always as we would wish, for it does not rely on our personal desires but is life itself.

Rich and well to do people suffer from unhappiness probably more than the person who is less well off because the affluent amongst us are even more identified with having material possessions in the hope it will bring happiness than the average person does – as they can afford them. No matter how much we have though, we can never be satisfied for long, we always want more.

Our desire to acquire something to make us happy is a bottomless pit that we are continually trying to fill but never can. There is always greener grass on the other side of the fence, so to speak. If we obtain a flash house or car or whatever, it’s not long before it becomes commonplace and we want something else flasher or newer.

We all feel this way to some extent, not just the rich and famous – but the necessity to have things to make us happy tends to lessen with the less we have – so a poor person is probably more content overall with life than a well off person. Strange!

Every little bit of our unhappiness (or as we believe, joylessness) is our reaction to not getting what we want in life, in other words, our non acceptance and rejection of what is!

Joy is the same as love, it is timeless – it is free. It does not live in the memories of the past or in anticipation of the future, but only in the now moment, in the eternal. Only if we can slow down or stop our incessant thinking, to let go of the past and future for a moment, can we have a chance of experience true joy – and maybe even then, it won’t grace us with its presence, for it is as free as the wind.

It is the same as leaving the window open on a sultry summer’s afternoon. Maybe a breeze will come in and maybe it won’t, but if the window remains closed, there is no chance of a cool breeze refreshing you. So leave the window of your mind open to both love and joy and maybe they will come into your life and refresh you.

The joy of being cannot be experienced by having some possession or person, achievement or event, or through anything that happens. Joy cannot come to you – ever. Joy just is. It emanates from the timeless dimension within you, from consciousness itself. Both Joy and Love is who you really are… underneath the egos dark cloak of deception.

Dan’s Quote: “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.”- C. S. Lewis

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