Joy Is The Reason For The Season

'Tis the season to be jolly, right? With all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we often forget to take time to enjoy. We are so busy with gifts and guests and galas, we overlook the essential spirit of the season.

How can we stay unruffled by the holiday chaos and truly celebrate this magical time of year? I offer these suggestions for making your transition into 2008 a joyous one:

Don't Wait, Be Happy: Deep in the subconscious, most people believe joy is something that must be attained or earned. Once you complete the next project, close the next deal, get through the holidays or "pull your life together," happiness will be the result. Your permanent happiness is waiting just around the next corner.

Consider instead: Joy is your birthright, your essential nature. Joy is ever-present. Joy is without beginning or end. The yogis teach that 'sat-cit-ananda,' or 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss' is the core nature of the Self. Bliss is not the result of success, wealth, or achieving your goals -- it is the very essence of who you are. It is available right here, right now, without restriction.

Sounds great in theory, you say, but what if you're not feeling so joyful?

Relax the Need to "Fix"Things: Pleasure and pain are undeniable human experiences, but your attachment to pleasure and resistance to pain blocks your joy. If you need things to change to be happy, know you're heading down the path to suffering. Stop. Breathe. Relax. Release your impulse to "fix" things. Let everything be OK just as it is...and feel the tiny flicker of joy that arises within that spaciousness.

Practice this state of allowing with your loved ones during the holidays. If you feel stressed or triggered by a family member ask yourself, "What if they never change...EVER? Will you go on resisting (and suffering) for the rest of your life? Rather than trying to change others, simply practice staying present with whatever is arising in this moment.

Reconnect with Your Joy: If you need additional assistance re-connecting with your natural joyful state, consider the words of Buddhist teacher Thich Naht Hahn, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." In other words, you can use your imagination, memory, or simple somatic gestures (like a smile), to bring you into a joyful state.

By recalling special moments such as tucking your kids into bed, watching a glorious sunset, roasting marshmallows over a campfire, or snuggling with your beloved, you evoke a natural expansion of being. Whenever you notice yourself constricting in fear or doubt, use your special memories or somatic gestures to bring you back into this open state. Eventually, as you practice this technique, you will be able to access joy instantaneously.

A small word of caution: Opening to joy is not the same as renouncing sorrow or pain. When you are truly available to joy, you are also available to hold less pleasant emotions with equanimity and grace. By celebrating all of it, you honor the full unfolding of life.

Kahlil Gibran expressed this simultaneity of opposites: "Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"

Don't Confuse Pleasure for Joy: Pleasure is a fleeting experience that has a beginning and an end. You enter a new relationship and you feel dreamy, then you end the relationship and feel devastated. You earn your performance bonus this year and feel invincible, but miss it next year and feel resentful. Don't confuse pleasure for joy. Your fluctuating emotions are conditional. Joy is unconditional. Eternal joy comes with the dissolution of the ego self, which constantly grasps for personal pleasure. By letting go of transient pleasure and resting instead in the joy of the eternal present, you can be in ecstasy in every moment.

Joy is Your Power to Create: Joy is a supreme energy or power from which your entire worldly experience is manifested. Joy is the nectar that enlivens you. Your joy breathes you, walks you, dances you. It is the very impulse of the Divine within you. You cannot experience abundance, nor share it with the world, without first living your joy. Why is that? When you are constricted in fear or doubt or struggle, closed off from joy, it's a sure sign that your ego has taken the reigns. The ego-self is a finite identity with limited creative capacity. When you open instead to the infinite creative potential of the universal Self, you can manifest freely with ease and grace, and with joy as the abiding experience.

Offer Your Joy in Service: Your joy is a powerful light that brightens the world. It has a unique pattern, a unique vibration that cannot be replicated in any other person. If you suppress your joy, it will be lost to all. You have no right to silence it, or deny it, or shrink away from it. While joy requires no particular words or exchange, you might feel compelled to express it in some way. Eleanor Roosevelt is quoted as saying, "Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give." How will you offer your happiness to the world?

During this holiday season, with the warmth of family and loved ones all around, take stock not only in what you have to be joyful for, but how you serve the world through your joy.

And when you are wearied from all your holiday shopping, remember this: Love is the greatest gift, joy the most valuable currency. As Mother Theresa expressed beautifully, "A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love."

Come back every Monday for more from Stacey Lawson.

For more holiday season tips, click here for more from Huffington Post's Living!

Comments

[PazparaTodod]

I just e mailed a friend something of this nature/
I have been making it a point to be happy eeryday. Since this is of course, almost impossible, then I make it a point to at least feel gratful for something in specific (thank you for the hot shower I am having (don't you hate it when you have no water or no hot water?) I am trying to make it a pont to feel JOY that day. To feel something special. A "sweet emotion"

We are so busy in our lifes. We are always waiting till we lose 10 pounds, till we hae a boyfriend, till we get married or come out of a marriage...THEN we'll be happy. Yeah right.
The time is hera, the place is now!

BE HAPPY NOW

[Orikinla]

Merry Christmas Stacey Lawson!

I have been home this Christmas, mostly online.
I have been monitoring and evaluating updates on the forthcoming presidential primaries and defending the candidacy of Senator Rodham Hillary Clinton on blogs and websites. My mission is to correct every negative comment or report on Hillary Clinton online.

I did not call my girlfriend. I sent her my loving wishes by e-mail yesterday and she replied with a very blank verse of good wishes.
She is upset that I did not visit her and I am far away in another state.
I know she is missing me.
She sent me a text that I should call her.
I did not call anybody.

I don't want to go out.
There is an awesome beach nearby and a nature park with Golf course.
There are Christmas events here and there. But I want to remain indoors and visit places online.

As the title of the book by Elizabeth Gilbert, "Eat, Pray and Love", I have prayed, ate some food and drank some tea with milk, and trying to show love to some people online by sending Merry Christmas wishes to more people.

This is the first Christmas Day I have not gone out.

I am not missing my girlfriend.
I am missing my mother.
My Christmas Day has never been the same since she died 14 years ago.
My mother was the joy of every Christmas till she died. So, without my mother, there is no joy in my Christmas, except the joy of Lord, and that is very abstract.

I am also thinking about my brothers who are far away in other states and wishing them well.
I would have loved to be with them.
I love my brothers and I am lonely without them.

Am I happy?
Yes. I am glad and grateful to God for being alive and well.

Merry Christmas.

[flasher3838]

joy is cool but come on, we all know what the real reason for the season is. this is why liberal dems have trouble in red state america. just cause of things like this. if we didnt try to X christ out of christmas, we would probably have national health care already.

[sparkandy]

That was a lovely post. And it made me realize that even though I've lost my dear ex husband this last year, threw out my current lover because he broke some of my bones, I'm going to lose my house, I'm in trouble with the IRS and some credit card companies, and I only have partial use of both hands, among other interesting problems I've had, I'm still happy most of the time. It makes me wonder if I'm a joyful person. I still get to kiss puppies at work. I still have my beloved kids. I still like the sunshine, a glass of wine, the lake, music, the casino, cooking, listening to my friend Toni's latest drama, plants, "My Name Is Earl", and lots of other things. I've been wondering why I'm not more depressed over the catastrophe my life is. Now I know. It's okay to be joyful in the face of disaster. Thank you.

[Gary47]

Feel the joy, and celebrate life!

[Dap]

Dear Ms. Lawson,

Eloquently expressed. Joy to the World! Agape.

[larry278]

Yes!

[wmbear]

JOY TO THE WORLD...

Bush is about to leave
Let Earth get rid of George the King
Let every heart
A sigh of relief heave
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heav-EN
And heaven and nature sing!