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| Cover image courtesy of Floris Books |
Twenty years ago, my spiritual teacher* told me that I was no good to God unless I was happy. This was unsettling; I certainly was not consistently happy, as I interpreted was God’s need.
How I resolved this was to follow my inspiration to envision the ocean where it met the sand; this was my favorite part of the beach to walk before sunset. I felt happy there, naming shells, noting the glistening green of flat seaweed, and wondering about how wet sand formed the regular, rounded ridges that spread away from my toes. So I practiced with this memory.
Having read The Biography of a Yogi* this year, I now know that the source of happiness is not the source of joy. I am formed by what Paramahansa Yoganada* explains. Happiness comes from an outer happening, while joy is within—ever present, even if unrecognized.
Last year, when I learned of a change in the life of a woman I knew in America, for the first time I felt my happiness for another person flood my body and overflow diaphanously in the surrounding air. I was thrilled. This new response kept increasing until I realized I was often saying, “I am happy for you.”
My dictionary equates joy to happiness, but I believe joy is within—always there, waiting for my discovery of feeling warmth or goosebumps, without a cause. When I found a little poem by Gertrude Stein, I began repeating it every morning. “Every day is a renewal. Every morning the daily miracle. The joy I feel is life.” I know that Gertrude Stein is right—life is joy, no matter the appearances, for our aliveness goes deeper than our surface.
I didn’t buy Rain and Shine, yet this board book of children’s joy and happiness through the seasons found its way to my bookcase and has a lasting hold on my heart. I suspect that the children’s smiles and the vigor seen in their bodies as they run is more than happiness, but rather their natural joy unspoiled.
My realization is, “A new thought can create expanding awareness, until what was once unfamiliar becomes so natural that it is hard to believe it wasn’t always so wonderfully there.
* David Cousins, healer and reader from Wales, A Handbook for Lightworkers (Bath, England:
Barton House,1993).
* Paramahansa Yogananda, The Autobiography of a Yogi (Kolkata, India: Yogoda Satsanga Society, (2016).
* Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian yogi and guru who introduced millions of Indians and Westerners to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga. d. 1952.
* Gertrude Stein, an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. d. 1946.
* Ronald Heuninck, Rain or Shine (Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books, 2014).