First, a review of the levels of existence it is possible to pay attention to from gross to subtle:
outside world / body / emotions / thoughts / joy
Given the alternatives, that inner "joy" is a pretty tantalizing option.
In the continuum, "emotions" refers to feelings we experience as a result of having desires. When I get what I want I experience feelings I like. Hooray! When I do not get what I want I experience feelings I do not like. Nertz!
"Joy" refers to the feeling of life itself. Whether the outside world is dishing up what we want, or it is dishing up what we do not want, we have the option to give our attention to the pure joy of being.
Here is my experience. I do not always talk about my experience, because I have had some disappointments in life, and I do not want to make you sad. However, I want to give you a real life example to wrap your understanding around. At the end, you will understand what I am saying, whether or not you agree with it.
I tried to become a mother for many years. I did not believe there was anything that could stand in my way. I was open-minded, and determined. I started looking into adoption when I was unmarried at 33. A trusted confidante urged me to table adoption and focus on marriage, and I did table adoption for awhile. I met my husband when I was 36. I chose a man who wanted to be a father. We happily planned names and dreamed futures for our family. After a couple of years: doctors, since we were already not young. Then we were back on the adoption path. It took a few years and many thousands of dollars to bring us to Thailand and a son who was ours for less than 48 hours. I did not get what I wanted. It was out-of-body level devastating to watch the case worker walk out the door of our hotel with my little son, knowing that I would not ever see him again.
Never more than during that experience did my knowledge of the levels of my being come to my aid and bring me solace. I recalled my yoga teacher, Nishit Patel, teaching me that all of our desires can be categorized into desires to eat, reproduce, sleep, and survive. It helped me have compassion for the degree of pain I was in, seeing the 25% of humanity in me, the desire to reproduce, crushed in an instant.
But that was also when I noticed the amazing thing. By choosing to think myself into the place of the compassionate observer within myself, what I felt in addition to crushing devastation was utter amazement at the force of my own aliveness. In that amazement was acceptance, and in that acceptance was something like a thrill of life, a joy. I experienced myself on many levels during that disappointment.
At the time, I recalled this story of profound acceptance, and it gave me permission to be resilient when something else within me told me I should be inconsolable:
In a buddhist village a young girl got pregnant out of wedlock. She protected her boyfriend by telling her parents that a monk had raped her. The parents took out their disappointment on the monk, who said only, "Is that so?" And when the child was born, they took him to the monk, whose life had already been ruined by this rumor of being quite a bad guy.
"Here is your son," the parents told the monk.
"Is that so?" the monk answered, accepting the child.
The monk and the child lived together happily for five years. They ate and laughed and loved together day after day.
Then, the girl who was the child's mother got jealous. She saw what a wonderful child was hers, and she wanted it back, so she told the truth about her boyfriend, who was now more mature and employed. And the family went back to the monk, and apologized.
"It is not your child after all," the parents told the monk.
"Is that so?" the monk answered handing over the child.
Whether we judge our experience to be good or bad, or right or wrong, there is a joy of love and aliveness that exists within us. We are not beholden to pain, misery, and bondage. We can feel joy whether or not we get what we want in this ever-changing world.
I find the wisdom that this joy exists reflected in many places. It appears in popular music, like the song "Happy" by Pharrell Williams:
[Verse 2:]
Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don’t hold back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don’t waste your time
Here’s why
Because I'm happy.
From "How to Tread the Path of Superconscious Meditation" about 19:45 to 22:06
What is the goal of life?
If you do not know what the goal of life is, meditation, contemplation will be not useful.
You should know what the goal of life is.
You all say the goal of life is to attain God; that's not true. This is hearsay. You have heard it. You have read the book.
The goal of life is not to attain God.
The goal of life is to be free from all pains, and miseries, and bondages. A state which is free from all pains, bondages, and miseries, that is the goal of life.
To remain constantly in a state of happiness is the goal of life. To be happy and full of love is the goal of life.
Now, if you are not happy and you attain God, you see God, and you know God, it is of no use. If you are with God all the time and you are not happy, that is not a sign of seeing God.
And if you are happy, you don't need God. You see.
So, what do you mean by God?
God means that state of attainment where you are free from all miseries, pains, and bondages.
Yes, I am not Non-believer of God. But, if I believe in God and have full faith in God, then I should be free from all pains, miseries and bondages. And if I am still in the clutches of pains and bondages and miseries then I do not know much about God.
My story is not one of a "constant state of happiness," or attaining "the goal of life." It is a glimmer of joy in a time of profound disappointment. Over the years, it has given me a lot of hope.
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