Finding the Joy!

Finding the Joy!

Last night I decided it was time to tackle the many, numerous boxes of beloved books stacked high in the family room after our move last month. Downsizing has its advantages, but having to reduce my library has always been a challenge. As I was sorting through all the books, my husband was packing what I no longer wanted into a donation box. At one moment he handed a book back to me and asked if I was really sure I wanted to donate that particular one. I glanced at it briefly. Dismissed it just as quickly and passed it back to him. As I did so a letter fell out of the book and floated down to the floor like a feather.

When I picked up the letter I recognized the handwriting immediately. It was from my mother who had passed away twenty years ago. Reading her letter brought back a flood of memories. When she was alive I received a least one letter a week. Phone calls were expensive, so correspondence became our way of staying connected. Our bond was a close one and we missed each other. Letters became our lifeline to each other.

The letter was tucked into a book she had sent to me early in the late 80’s when my life was at a raw and tender place and I was so very close to falling apart. It was her attempt to reach out and grab me back from the precipice of bitterness, self-loathing and despair. The book worked – back then, such a long time ago.

“Living with Joy” by Sanaya Roma [1] teaches you how to find the joy in your life. A key to personal power and spiritual transformation. Scanning its pages made me smile because it was just the other day that I had asked the Universe what message would be of service in the middle of all of this emotional fatigue we are experiencing as a result of the pandemic.

This overwhelming feeling of  emotional fatigue has been a hot topic with clients and friends lately. It very adeptly describes this sense that after everything we have all been through in the last nine months there is little to no room left to breathe, no place to turn to. It carries this sense of being trapped in a never ending cycle of fear and it is beginning to affect the mental health of our entire nation.

Although the message being delivered by all the media outlets is critical to heed – stay safe, wear a mask, wash your hands, be mindful of staying inside, limit your social circle – the constant fear of having to stay consciously aware every moment of the risk to our health and wellbeing begins to strip away at the little pleasures in life. It is like the joy of living is being sucked out of our very existence.

In Roman’s book she describes how mass media constantly communicates a feeling of doom and how these messages affects the emotional health of a society. She says that there is a reason that this is happening. “…you will see that as a race you are changing the path you are on because of these fear-based messages” [2]. What I found particularly fascinating is that she wrote this message in 1986. She might as well have been talking about the year 2020.

Our society perpetuates this consistent message that trains us to believe that growth and change can only come through pain and hardship. What the mystics are saying about this time is that the pandemic is pushing us up against this old paradigm of hardship and scarcity which produces a mentality of competition and power struggles. It is the old belief that the outer world is more important than the inner world. We are in competition for survival.

When in reality, according to the mystics, there is a new paradigm developing in which our collective consciousness is incorporating the universal truth that we are all connected. We are all one. The inner world is just as important as our outer world because they both depend on each other for survival.

You are a drop of water in the ocean. We are all drops of water in the ocean. There is no you or me, there is only US.

As we move into the Age of Aquarius, I believe we will begin to see a stronger national movement towards inclusion, integrity, and harmony. The coming together of communities acting for the betterment of the whole. Each individual is respected as an important part of the group.

Chaos initiates change. History is rife with examples of how entire societies were changed as the result of chaos. It is only through crisis that we find the initiative and motivation to change what is no longer of service. We, as individuals, are facing that kind of chaos during this pandemic within our own mindset and beliefs.

What if this period of isolation is providing us with a rich opportunity to turn inward and find inner peace and harmony? It is time to change this belief in hardship and scarcity. It is time to embrace the truth of love, joy and abundance. There is enough for all. We have the intelligence to figure this out.

How do you even begin this journey?

When we find our joy, even in the little things, we are able to begin to view life from a brighter point of view. We begin to see how everything is connected. We begin to experience love, peace and harmony by being present in the moment. Try this very simple exercise as a way to experience it for yourself.

Make a list of five things that make you feel joy. It doesn’t matter how simple or silly it may seem. Write it down. Then ask yourself what stops you from enjoying just one of them. Write that down too. Then make a commitment that no matter what happens today you are going to give yourself permission to do that one thing.

Be in that moment of joy. Then tomorrow allow yourself to experience another moment of joy from your list.

That is how we change from this feeling of being trapped to finding joy. One joy filled moment at a time. Those collective moments of joy begin to change your inner world because at the end of the day the world at large will take care of itself.

Atherton Drenth is a clairvoyant medical intuitive and the author of Intuitive Dance. Building, Protecting & Clearing Your Energy, (Llewellyn Worldwide) and Following Body Wisdom. Atherton also appears in the documentary, Voyage to Betterment as one of 12 experts along with other internationally renowned physicians, researchers, and pioneers in the fields of consciousness research and spirituality.

[1] Roman, S. (1986). Living with Joy. Tiburon, California: H. J. Kramer, Inc.
[2] (Roman, 1986) p. 32