Reality Inspired Joy

I learn. I’m in the process. I’m learning, and that might be the most important skill for us humans while we live. I want to teach myself to be in a constant state of amazement. Whenever I remember to enter the state of amazement, I feel joy flowing all through my body. That is a soothing, comforting, healing joy. I need no drugs, I need no pills, I need no positive thinking. Just plain and simple connection to the reality, a mindful connection, keeps me amazed – always, when I only remember to connect!

Connection With Observation

Whenever I focus on things that keep me amazed, I feel alive. When there is pain, it troubles me less, to a degree that I don’t feel it at all while I am connected. I feel emotionally stable. I also feel strong enough to tell others and show them the things that keep me amazed. And they often get amazed themselves. I love to see happy people around me. Sure, I feel gratification when I see them become happier through an effort of mine. But my being part of their joy is not an imperative.

Whenever I think of the crystalline structure in a grain of sand – I am amazed.

Whenever I watch a fly walking on a vertical wall – I am amazed.

Whenever I think of an oak growing from an acorn – I am amazed.

Whenever I watch the behavior of a dog, e.g. the skill how it uses its legs – I am amazed.

Whenever I think of a human eye or hand, how they work – I am amazed.

Whenever I think of an adult human having grown from an invisible cell – that blows my mind.

Whenever I think of the Universe, let alone the concept of a light year – that, I feel, is much too big an idea for me. I simply can’t grasp it. I have more than enough, much more than enough smaller things, from which every single one has the potential to keep me amazed if only I remember to focus.

These are just a few examples of an endless scope of ideas that, even each one separately, make a solid ground for me to stand on. Those are all intellectual activities and require to have your mind awake.

How The Joy Makes Me Whole

I try to always remember to connect to the reality, especially when I am in stress. Because it feels good. It gives me joy. It helps me a lot to manage stress, to cope with pain, to heal and recover sooner. And I also feel that it does good to my health in general.

Is that joy healing? Does it have any supportive qualities for medical treatment? I don’t know.

All I can tell you is that I like this way of observing and thinking, and I also like the joy that it gives me. Yes, I believe that that joy is also healing.

For eight years, I have not had a single virus. And even running nose, if any, I haven’t had it for more than one or two days. My headaches that I used to have once or twice a week and that never subsided without a pill, are now gone completely. And I associate this change with the joy that I get from – seeing the world as it really is.

I was blind. I did not see any of those real, obvious things that exist independently from my or anybody else’s will. And I was stressed, depressed and sick.

But now I see. And I not only see, but also celebrate eagerly what I see. My stress is gone. My depression is gone. My sicknesses are gone.

Touch wood, my friends would say. But I am quite confident even so. I don’t brag. I am grateful. I only mention the fact in order to encourage others.

I can’t have a total and complete assuredness. Who can? But I feel how the joy of being carries me on its wings. Every small thing gives me amazement. In my fifties, I can run and jump like a fool. I can sing and laugh. I can also cry from abundance of emotion. I choose very well to be a fool. A very happy fool.

And as a very happy fool, I feel strong and wholesome. I know how it feels when you need to stuff your cupboard with anti-flu medicine when the virus season approaches. But for me now that time has gone long since. With this attitude, I simply don’t get sick anymore.

I don’t get sick. I haven’t been sick for years. But I never set it as a goal not to be sick. Even if I get sick some day, I know that it will be much easier to stand with the connected attitude. I will always try to avoid thinking, speaking, focusing on the health issues because those are useless. I focus instead on things that keep me in the state of amazement.

Two Birds With One Stone

I kill two birds. I suffer less from the symptoms, and, with me being like not in the same room with the sickness, it feels bored and ignored. So it leaves sooner.

I do not brag. I am not conceited. I know that I am as exposed to all the worst illnesses as anyone else on the planet. What I am saying is that I have not been sick for nearly a decade, and I feel that my health improved this way due to the change of my attitude that I’m trying to describe here.

I deliberately changed my attitude. I trained myself to see things as they are and draw the joy of living out of them. My joy comes not from fantasies, not from “silver linings” of the dark clouds. My joy comes from the true, steady, independent reality that’s all around us.

But the story does not end here.

Sensory Connection

I have also trained in myself the ability to feel pleasure.

Whenever I see a yellow field of dandelions, I open my eyes wide and allow that sight enter me. I may stand there a while and just take that sight in. A yellow dandelion field is a source of unspeakably great feeling in the whole body of mine. I both feel the pleasure with the whole of my body and it gives me a wonderful state of mind, too.

Whenever I eat a piece of chocolate, it gives me pleasure, or, to be more exact, I train myself to always remember to feel that pleasure. It is now completely different from the time when I just swallowed things without even knowing for sure what it was.

Whenever I stroke the fur of my dog, it gives me pleasure. The stroke feels so good in my palm. And it looks like even the dog enjoys the stroke even more if I connect to it and feel it rather than just stroking him absentmindedly.

Whenever I enter an area filled with the scent of bird cherries in bloom, I feel pleasure, and I am wholeheartedly with Stevie Wonder as he exclaims, what a wonderful world!

Joy For The Sake Of Joy – Always

It would be important to know that I never do any of the above things with the purpose of improving health, looking good, impressing somebody. None of those.

I do all those things for the sole purpose of pleasure and enjoyment. I am not responsible for the great health that sticks to me as I do it the right way. I do nothing, absolutely nothing, to keep it or hold it. It is just given to me – like from above. I can’t now even remember how it felt to be sick and miserable. I was like that, and not that long time ago, either. Just a decade or so. But now it is difficult even to imagine how it felt to be sick.

What If You Are Too Busy

But now, what if you are a mother of five, struggling day in day out for the income to feed your children, and working often on the verge of exhaustion? Then connecting and feeling the reality might be much beyond yourself? You are overloaded even so, aren’t you?

In fact, nothing can be easier because connecting and feeling is not a specific activity that you must do. It is just a change of attitude.

If at your workplace, you have been waiting for the end of the day every day, now just try to notice what you are doing and how it feels.

I remember a master advice from a kung fu movie, “remember to breathe”. First, it sounded like a joke to me, because the situation was too serious, and there were a lot of more important things to think of on priority. What can breathing help here? And do we ever forget it at all?

But then I had a true light bulb moment. Breathing is our closest at hand source of pleasure, our closest pain killer and sedative. When you remember to breathe, well, when you connect mentally and feel that you are breathing rather than doing that on autopilot, it helps you to regain solid ground under your feet even in the most challenging moments.

Breathing feels good, does it not? Just try it now. Feel yourself breathing. I bet you feel better as you do.

And then there are all those things that have the potential of keeping you in a constant state of amazement – if only you remember to notice them.

If you wash and sweep, then feel the cloth, feel how your hands do clever sophisticated movements. Feel amazed. Feel grateful for having hands.

If you do data input, feel the keys under your fingertips. Be amazed at your clever fingers, be amazed at the incredible cooperation between your eyes, your brain, your hands. Feel grateful for your body.

If you develop large scale projects, be amazed at your ability to have those visions.

In all cases, feel your body, feel the space around you. Be present. Celebrate the moment. Celebrate the fact that you are alive.

What If Your Illness Is Too Serious

But what if you suffer from a terrible illness, if you are confined to bed, if you are so exhausted that mindful connection may seem impossible? What if you are doomed? What if it seems that you have completely lost the ability to feel amazed?

Then I need to reiterate that mindful connection is more of an attitude than action. It requires close to zero effort. It requires only some discipline.

Doomed you are not to any degree greater than me having currently no known health issues at all. No one can know their next moment, nobody can know for sure if they will be given a tomorrow. In that sense, we all are doomed, and it is very refreshing to bear that in mind.

On the other hand, there was a man in my close family, whose cancer, being in its last stage, left suddenly. Instead of the two weeks given to him by doctors, he got 15 years of full value life.

You know nothing, my friend. However ill you feel today, you never know whether you will die before or after me. That ignorance is cheerful. Accept it and benefit from it.

Even if your doctors don’t give you any hope of being alive by the morning, you still have a few minutes, don’t you? Don’t hesitate to get the most out of them!

And what if that joy to which you connect, pushes the button in you that switches your illness off? You never know, never! And you will know only if you give it a chance!

How I Have Tested On Myself The Therapeutic Effect

I have been in pain, yes, I have. Ironically enough, I found myself in hospital with excruciating pain in my leg shortly after an emotional conversation with my friend on the subject of pain control. I do face pain now and then, but this time it was one of the worst ever.

I felt challenged to apply now to my own situation what I “preach” to others. What an opportunity of a credible test, after all!

I tried to bring to my mind things that normally amaze me. Well, I must admit that this time it was not as easy. And the sense of amazement was somewhat weak.

But then I took it one step further. I started to bring up memories of the moments when I had been happy. In my thoughts, I walked again the tracks where me and my wife had walked together. I recalled people who had inspired me, with whom together I had had fun. I tried to restore the atmosphere of those moments. At times, my thoughts got even somewhat naughty, and I happily allowed them to be.

And, guess what, while being busy with a mental journey like that, I suddenly realized that I had not been thinking about the pain. In fact, I had not felt it the least.

The landing hit me heavily. The pain, severe pain was there again or, rather, still there. Oh, God, please take me again to the world that strengthens me and refreshes me!

And I was back in the amazing world of my pleasant memories. From there, I could watch my sick self in the hospital bed like from a detached point.

This “technique” has helped me to survive the harshest moments of my life. I have applied it e.g. even on a visit to dentist. Let them do with my tooth whatever they want. I have no time to worry. I am too busy watching through the window the show that the clouds set up for me. The fragment of a branch of a tree that is visible there in the window, it also needs to be given some time and attention of mine.

If no window is available, there are still walls and colors. There may be a picture on the wall, or an ornament. All those things are helpful.

All In All

Remember to always, always, always keep yourself in a state of constant amazement. Because that is what living the life really means.