When we talk about joy, we think of moments of pure happiness. But, it is said that joy is deeper than simple happiness. Happiness exists in the absence of suffering, even if that absence is temporary. We are happy for the moment. And moments of happiness are very important for stress release and building mental resilience.
Joy, on the other hand, is a deeper experience. It exists in times of happiness but also, quite poignantly, in times of suffering or sorrow. Joy is an extension of our wellbeing, which stems from our very life force. It is an expression of being alive. Therefore, Joy is unconditional and not dependent upon external circumstances.
Joy is a natural feeling of aliveness that is always there, whether we recognize it or not. There is nothing we need to do to make it so. We don’t need to invent, capture or increase it. We need only release it. In order to experience more joy, we can open up to life and allow its energy to flow. In this sense, Joy is more of a verb than happiness, which seems rather noun bound. Joy flows, if we open to it. We can’t hold it, but we can feel it. Happiness is a thing we can hold, barter or commodify. It is also conditional as it needs us to satisfy certain criteria to secure it. For instance, happiness may be dependent upon things like the weather, other people’s approval or the amount of caffeine we’ve had. So, happiness is a thing and can be increased. The path to happiness is finding the things in life that increase our happiness. This keeps us maneuvering, expecting and anticipating the dopamine reward of its experience. Our coffee is perfect, the sun is shining and the person sitting across from us is nodding approval of our intelligence. But, all of this sets up expectations. And should the person across from us look away toward someone else our Jenga tower might fall into disarray.
Happiness engenders hope. And hope leads us to an expectation of reward. When the reward is thwarted we feel saddened or deflated, and so scurry to rebuild the tower with new pieces. And, in this way, we oscillate through life in excitement and decline, trying to satisfy the fickle criteria that supports our happiness.
However, as Joy is an expression of self-existing aliveness, the path to feeling joy is simply to recognize what blocks our experience of being joyful. What are the things in life that block the flow and radiance of being alive? Some of the ways we block our joy is to do the very things we do to make us happy, such as drink too much caffeine or seek others approval. In the Shambhala teachings we see a lack of confidence in ourselves as the root condition of these blockages. Our teachers refer to this as “The Trap of Doubt”. When we doubt ourselves we attach to material things external to ourselves to try and prop up our towers. But, this play of ego turns the truth on its head. As we look for things outside of ourselves that we feel others will admire, we become less and less confident in our true selves. As we emphasize our relational selves, we lose the truth of our wellbeing. Other things determine our happiness and we are cut off from the source of our joy. When we look to others for their approval, we cut ourselves off from the source of our life.
It is important to interact with our community. But, a non-codependent approach would be to seek feedback rather than approval. In this way, we are canvassing our community in order to build a deeper understanding of ourselves rather than throwing ourselves away in comparison.
Meditation practice connects us to this deeper, more authentic sense of ourselves. This is not the ego self, clinging to our world in a desperate attempt to find happiness. It is the true self that knows itself and can rest in its own wellbeing. This profound feeling is joy. And joy cannot be manufactured. It is already there, if we find the time to just allow it to be. Meditation is the practice of returning to this essence again and again until we begin to engender the confidence to let ourselves be. With that unconditional confidence, we rise above the trap of doubt, and feel gratitude for being alive.
Confidence and gratitude connect us to the wellspring of joy.