Is it really possible to be joyful in this life? To be truly at home in the world, relishing the lives we live?
“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” was the advice of Saint Paul to the Colossians. Above––isn’t that where heaven is? Maybe I could experience just a slice of it if I could somehow tune out this world and keep my thoughts focused “above.”
So I took up spiritual practices that were means of escaping the reality of the world around me. When I found that I couldn’t escape, these practices enabled me to endure in the hope of something better beyond the grave.
Over the years, as I pondered Saint Paul’s statement about setting our minds on things above, I slowly began to realize that I had missed completely what he meant. He wasn’t talking about something in the sky, or something after death even. I had just never noticed how the letter to the Ephesians explains that, if we have eyes to see it, we are already “seated in the heavens.” Indeed, we are “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
Not will be blessed in the future, but are, now.
And not just some spiritual blessings, but every spiritual blessing that exists.
How can this be? Certainly I didn’t feel like I was in heaven, or that I had every spiritual blessing I needed. Far from being a heaven, my life sometimes felt more like a dungeon of despair—a hell.
In the words of James Oppenheim, the foolish seek happiness in the distance, while the wise grow it under their feet. Or as Angelus Silesius insists, “Unless you find paradise at your own center, there is not the smallest chance that you may enter.”
Heaven and hell are states of mind. Says Ralph Waldo Emerson, heaven walks among us, but it is so hidden by the ordinary––so muffled by triple or tenfold disguises––that the wisest of folk don’t even notice it. He laments, “No one suspects the days to be gods.” But, he insists, “We see God face to face every hour.”
In each moment, each of us has a choice––to experience Earth as heaven, or to trudge through existence as if it were a hell.
Says Emerson, “Life is ecstasy.” Not euphoria––not that occasional excitable feeling that overtakes us when some wonderful thing happens. No, ecstasy, which is an abiding joy.
I was well into my adult years before I discovered for myself Henry David Thoreau’s insight that joy is our fundamental state. Since discovering this joy within me, I’ve gone from sad to glad––from a spirit that slumped to a spirit that soars. I can hardly believe the difference. As Emerson found, a cosmic optimism uplifts my days, and an exquisite joyfulness accompanies me along life’s path.
I’ve learned that, in any given moment, I can choose to be either saddled by burdens, or seduced by beauty. I can decide to be trapped in despair, or transfixed by delight. I can opt to be mired in troubles, or melt with thanksgiving.
I found that the greatest obstacle to happiness wasn’t my circumstances, it was me. As Emerson explains, “Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.”
You see what a reversal this is of the usual way of thinking? I was looking to people, things, events to make me happy. What Emerson saw is that it isn’t circumstances that bring us joy. It’s we who bring joy to our circumstances. The joy is already in us, if we will just get in touch with it and let it out.
It’s a question of becoming aware of the presence of joy deep within. This awareness is the focus of all of our publications at Namaste Publishing. In his book The Presence Process, and in his CDs, Namaste author Michael Brown shows us how to access this joy each and every day of our lives.
To let myself feel the joy that was buried under years of sadness was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had the hardest time letting the joy out. Something in me just wouldn’t allow me to feel really good. I actually resisted feeling terrific, preferring to feel miserable because it had become such a habit.
To be fully aware is to be fully alive. Setting our minds on the things above is a matter of becoming spiritually conscious, here and now, not other-worldly. We detach not from life—not from our world—but from all the anxieties, the turbulence, the anguish, the sense of panic that keeps us from being truly present. Our eyes open to the splendors of Earth, our homeland, and we are charmed by the magic of each moment.
When we aren’t really present––when we are distracted, in turmoil, pulled in contradictory directions––we don’t notice the fabulous world in which we live. Tired, tense, troubled, and torn, we fail to make meaningful contact with the people in our lives, the bird that sings a carol just for us as we walk down the street, the rose that’s blooming right under our windowsill. It’s when we are disconnected in this way that we abuse the world as if it were a toy that can be discarded when we’ve broken it and treat it’s people and creatures like they don’t matter.
Living in the present, with all our channels wide open, takes willed surrender. It takes giving ourselves over to the joy within, forming a habit of feeling rapturous, embracing feeling wonderful instead of contenting ourselves with mediocrity. Now, in this moment, I either choose to surrender to the exuberance at my core, or I choose a half-life.
I have found that as I repeatedly embrace each moment, my narrow stream of consciousness gradually widens to cosmic dimensions. I increasingly feel connected to everyone and everything. The aching in my heart resolves itself in the wonder of being swept up in a mysterious whole.
To help you become conscious—the meaning of setting our minds on things “above”—you might like to begin Michael Brown’s wonderful Presence Process. It is life-changing. His book and CDs will introduce you to this marvelous experience that has the power to alter the choices you make each and every moment.
As we learn to be in heaven, the paradise we have discovered within will translate into a paradise for all peoples, all species, and Earth itself––our homeland. Or as the title of one of our other books, by Eckhart Tolle, expresses it, we will enter A New Earth.
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