Human beings are built to exist in so many different ways, but there is one guiding question we can all ask, one that not only enriches our own lives, but also life itself. This question is:

What brings me joy?

Joy implies many things; it implies connection, gratitude, abundance, flow, presence and immersion, acceptance, and harmony. Perhaps there are more you can think of?

When we apply this guiding question to all aspects and levels of our lives, we begin to get our own inner compass attuned and pointed towards each of these qualities. Now one is finding their own path to joy!

Joy takes on many different forms for different people. Because we grow up in a society of shoulds and oughts, the recipes and images fed to us may not truly resonate, but they can also take up shop in our hearts, causing tension and conflict. It also takes courage then, to notice what brings us joy, and then to act on it.

Taking inventory of where joy resonates across our lives, in areas such as relationships, work, recreation, health, our attitudes and beliefs, and most fundamentally, where we place our attention, is an invaluable practice.

How does one distinguish joy from other positive emotions in their activities? There are a number of ways:

• The activity that brings joy is worthwhile regardless of the outcome
• The activity brings presence and does not have a ‘whiplash’ effect, where the positive begets a regretted negative
• One feels inspired and perhaps even inspires others in doing the activity
• The activity itself feels naturally positive and right
• It creates a ‘flow’ state, where the experiencer and activity enter a kind of oneness

Being joyful and doing what inspires joy is not just a generous gift to yourself, but it is also one to the world.

By being naturally yourself, ‘following your bliss’ as they say, you encourage and inspire others to bring their heart out of their inner citadels, and to take up the invitation to live life, which is invigorated and renewed in every moment. A precious thing in a time where humanity’s attention slumber-zips between the past and future, chasing one to recreate the other.

It is refreshing to see people doing something novel and beholding their joy as they do so. Joy is also the much-needed medicine to much of the world’s ailments today. This balm’s lack is seen in and reflected by today’s politics, media outlets, and many societal institutions.

The connection between these examples? Their outer-focus — on blaming, shaming, distorting, prescribing, and crusading against the objects of their fixation. This has a crucial implication, following your joy means cultivating yourself, giving attention and awareness to yourself, and not allowing yourself to get lost in projections and attachments to knowing and self-images. This is a habit that is cultivated and pays itself off gradually, and then more suddenly, via the revelation of the ultimate gift of joy.

Joy and Remembering the Gift of Life

Existence itself is undeniably the most natural thing there is, and another undeniable aspect to existence, is that it is a process and not a static image. As we step into and live in joy and presence, we begin to merge with the life-process and step into what is natural for us from moment to moment.

The ultimate gift that living in joy has in store for each person, is true self-knowledge and completeness, which occurs only in the Now. The common innocent belief is mistaking self-knowledge for a final image, a relentless and fruitless pursuit, which will only make thirsty where most it quenches.

While we may align our activities with joy, a fantastic thing, another essential way can be taken to unravel this gift. This is the practice of presence and awareness in each moment, which enables us to meet with life as it is. In doing so, we each start to remember ourselves as a unique manifestation of life; distinguished within it, and yet at a certain threshold where this gift is realised, one with it, as it.

As joy, presence, awareness, and self-knowledge gradate into increasing unification through these practices, the tides of compulsion get weaker, the inner pangs of suffering grow more distant, and the sounds of self-doubt quieten into a whisper, and eventually dissolve into an ether.

At such a point, we realise that pursuing the path of our joy not only leads us to our unique life expression, but also to our true nature beyond the world of form, expressing itself as a cherished manifestation within it.