Joy and the Reactive Emotions: A Personal Illustration

An attentive reader pointed out that in my previous blog post I wrote about joy as if it were somehow different from other emotions. I am happy to have a chance to write about this again, and hopefully to make it more clear.

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.

The wisdom that this joy exists appears in meditation lectures such as this excerpt from a lecture by Swami Rama [1925 to 1996]

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.

Focusing on Strengths Is an Exercise in Choosing Your Thoughts

We are all living in two worlds. One is a world of things. The other is a world of thoughts. The world of things is material, physical. The world of thoughts is immaterial, subtle. Each world has its own pleasures and miseries.

I like to think of life as a zip-line I can ride from the material to the immaterial when the going gets tough. I also ride my zip line out to the material when my thinking process needs taming. (Smell of coffee, taste of dried fish, finger tips on keyboard--thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky finger, fingertips are especially reassuring body spots--sound of running water, light of the computer screen. Okay. All is well here.) The idea of a zip-line adds a little whee to a subject that I worry will put you to sleep before I've had a chance to explain how it is possible to find a reliable happiness within us.

Attention can travel into increasing subtlety from the things outside us, to our body, emotions, and thoughts. Thought-choosing activities, such as focusing on strengths, zip us along that line in the direction of the subtle. When we choose our thoughts, we dis-identify with them. Choosing what to think, and dis-identifying from our thoughts, is inherently joyful.

Here is a little exercise to try. I want you to have an experience that will more clearly communicate what I mean when I say "inherently joyful."

First, ask yourself: What am I thinking?
Notice what you are thinking, and find words to label or describe your thoughts.

Then, ask yourself: What am I not thinking?
See what comes to mind.
Notice that now you are thinking it.

Choose a thought you particularly like, and think it.

Notice how it feels to choose what to think. This is not the admonishment to whistle a happy tune. It is an invitation to notice the feeling of choosing a happy tune. I am also interested in experiments choosing to whistle unhappy tunes. Feel free to write and let me know how that goes. My guess is that the choosing is the important part.

The Taittriya Upanishad provides a model that shows why thought choosing has the tendency to delight. It describes a five-layered model of human being called the Kosha Model. By choosing our thoughts, we realize that we are not our thoughts, and this realization lands us, identity-wise, in that silence that lies between thoughts. The Kosha Model calls this place the ananda-maya kosha, the joy layer. If we view ourselves as being comprised of layers, like an onion, the outermost  layer is the world our senses perceive, then the body, the emotions, the thoughts, and there, more subtle than thoughts, we find the layer of joy. This joy has a somewhat different flavor from the joys we experience engaging the world around us.

In the outside world of things, we are pleased when we get what we want. We are displeased when we do not get what we want. The outside world is a fleeting thing, full of loss. Stuff breaks; people die. And tend to be in it for themselves.

I do not remember where I read that "getting what we want" in the world is about a 50/50 proposition. I suspect it was The Art of Joyful Living by Swami Rama. The chapter "The Game of Black and White" in Alan Watts' The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are takes on this topic, too.  The idea is that the mind constantly balances our perception of dualities such as pain and pleasure, success and failure, winning and losing.

So, when we succeed, the mind moves the bar to keep us at a 50/50 ratio of success and failure. If a game is too easy, the mind loses interest in it.  I am recalling reading that the mind actually creates our experience of "reality" out of these perceived contrasts. This is a little bit different from the advice to seek balance. This is saying, well, you are going to have it anyway. This is saying, statistically, no matter what you do, the world will disappoint you half of the time. It is a normal thing to reach for success, and pleasure, and cool doohickeys. However, if we are investing all our happy chits in fame and doohickeys, we end up running in place.

So, here's what to do when your doohickey breaks, when your buddy moves far away, when someone else gets the girl.

Focusing on strengths is a more fully engaging thought-choosing exercise than the quickie I gave you above. Here again is basic strengths focusing:

1. Recall an experience that you would describe as good, one that you are proud of.

2. Ask yourself, "What positive trait did I bring to this experience?" Or ask yourself, "What is good about me that this experience shows?" Take your time finding the right words.

For many of us, thinking of our strengths is unfamiliar and takes some effort. That is good! It will pull our attention more to the task, and we will be landed more firmly in that happy place, the ananda-maya kosha. That happy place of identity that is more subtle than thoughts.

Notice how it feels to choose what to think.

Happy zipping!

Focus on Strengths to Stop Shame Spirals

I hope the phrase "shame spirals" means nothing to you. A shame spiral is an uncomfortable thing. I came up with this phrase to describe an unhelpful thing my mind does sometimes. I could have called it a self-condemnation loop. Different things trigger them. In me, they are often triggered by social interactions. That hardly seems fair. What most people would call "having fun" can end for me in sleepless nights of shame spiraling.

I want to set aside the causes of shame spiraling to focus on a solution. So what I am writing here presumes that some rational thought has already been applied to the unhelpful mental activity that is underway. We have already asked ourselves, "Did I make a mistake?" "Can I learn from this mistake?" "Have I done something I had better not repeat?" We have already made a vow to set aside any hurtful behavior in favor of helpful behavior. We have already made a plan to make amends for any real offenses we may have committed. We have done what we can do. But the mind does not let go of the shame. We do not forgive ourselves, learn from our mistakes, and move on.

Shame spirals take themselves to be quite important. They aren't. They are silly, useless, imaginary, and a waste of energy. Knowing that does not help. Here is what might help: do the opposite. I can hear the voice of my dear yoga teacher Nishit Patel saying this to me. And my strengths-focus mentor Jerald Forster has given me the formula for the opposite of a shame spiral.

If you notice that your mind has grabbed hold of shame, take a moment to recall something that has gone well in your life. Something from the same day might be nice, but in a shame-spiral emergency, anything will do. Simply recall the details of the experience, and keep bringing your mind back to it. Ask your mind, "What has gone well today?" My mind responds more willingly to questions than to demands. "What has gone well in my life?" If your shame spiral has gathered a lot of momentum, it may be necessary to do this a few times. Once you recall a nice, strong, positive experience, bring your mind back to it if shame returns.

Bringing your focus to a positive experience will bring some relief. To do the opposite of a shame spiral, however, you need one more step. Acknowledge that you contributed something to this positive experience that you are recalling. Suppose you remember a nice trip to the beach. How did you bring this about? Did you make time for relaxation and beauty in your life? Suppose you remember helping a friend. What does that say about who you are? Be specific about the positive qualities in your character that cause good things to happen in your life. Voila! You are doing the opposite of a shame spiral. You may even find yourself doing a self-appreciation waltz. Why not!? If it is convenient, grab a pen and paper and write down the strengths that are coming to your awareness. Mull them over. Find just the right words.

In the Katha Upanishad a chariot is used as a metaphor for a person. The vehicle is the human body. The horses are the senses. The road is the world around us. Consciousness is the driver of the chariot. The reins are the mind. In the event of a shame spiral, use your conscious choice. Grab hold of the reins of your mind. Do not let your reins flap uselessly. Your horses will pull you into a ditch and flip your chariot.

Here are some additional tips. Different techniques will work for different people. Find out what works for you and choose to practice it.

• Engage in an absorbing activity that you enjoy. An active activity. Not a passive one.
• Stay in the present by being aware of your physical body or your breath. 
• Visualize the harsh voice in your mind as a judge. Visualize the judge being merciful.
• Think of someone you know, and imagine the good things you desire for them. 
• Do a random act of kindness, such as buying the coffee for the next person in line.
• Do an act of charity. Or, if you are spiraling out at night, begin to plan a charitable activity. 
• Read something that makes you feel uplifted. 

You've got this!

Second Touchstone of Strengths-focused Coaching: focusing on strengths.

In this short video clip Marcus Buckingham begins to make his case for focusing on strengths. He says that research reveals that 77% of children who bring home a report card with an A and an F grade will receive more attention for failing than for succeeding. In longer sound bites, you can hear him follow up that point with statistics showing that over the course of their lives, the same children will improve more in the area where they received the A than they will improve in the area where they received the F. Let me restate that point. Your potential for growth in your life is in the area of your strengths. Focusing on improving your weaknesses will be frustrating, and bring less growth. Focusing on your strengths will be intrinsically rewarding, and will maximize your growth.

Strengths-focused coaching helps people replace "fix what is wrong" thinking with "maximize what is right" thinking. Strengths inventories like the free VIA are available online, and can help anyone begin to shift their focus. The most transformative way to focus on strengths, however, is to find your own words to describe your own strengths. Strengths-focused coaching guides you to notice your positive experiences, and to articulate the strengths you were using during those moments. By taking the reins of our minds, by choosing and creating our own thoughts, we can transform ourselves. We can overcome the negativity bias that 77% of us were raised with.

Cambridge educated and Gallup poll supported, in some ways Buckingham argues more persuasively for a strengths focus than I ever could. Meanwhile my background in superconscious meditation and Yoga deepen and enhance my appreciation for the usefulness of his message. In my previous blog entry I connected the first touchstone of strengths-focused coaching, noticing when your mood lifts, with the Vedic concept of a satvic, a peaceful and uplifted, mental state. The second touchstone of strengths-focused coaching connects to the value of service. Focusing on our strengths gives us the feeling that we may be of use. That is one of the most inherently satisfying feelings a person can cultivate.

A Touchstone of Strengths-focused Coaching: noticing when your mood lifts

There are two touchstones of strengths-focused coaching. These touchstones help you achieve your goals and realize your life purpose. This blog post is about the first touchstone, noticing when your mood lifts.

Giving importance to how you feel will naturally result in your making better choices. In the long run, it can guide you from the roller coaster of short-lived pleasures to a reliable feeling of well-being that is independent of external circumstances.

How You Feel Matters

Consider the following example. Ray has nightmares when he watches horror movies. He enjoys joining his friends in something they like. He even enjoys the attention he gets as his friends rib him about being afraid. However, his pleasures are shallow and short-lived compared to the price he pays in nightmares. After Ray watches a horror movie, the images from the movie tend to revisit Ray, and make him uncomfortable for days. His negative feelings are more keenly felt, and last much longer than his positive feelings. Giving real importance to how he feels would guide Ray to say no to horror movies. Until he gives importance to how he feels, he will continue to make his choices based on what other people think, feel, and do, as well as on his habit patterns, and on short-term pleasurable feelings.

In the language of Yoga Meditation, saying no to watching a horror movie would be a satvic choice for Ray. Satvic choices result in peaceful or uplifted feelings. Satvic choices are informed by our innate knowledge of what is right and wrong for us. Strengths-focused coaching helps clients make choices that pay off in good feelings that are reliable and lasting. 

Noticing When Your Mood Lifts

At Ray's house, every one over the age of 13 cooks dinner for the family one night per week. Ray enjoys cooking. He is really good at combining flavors, and can improve on many recipes. Of all the people in his family, Ray is the one who likes cooking the most. He has always been the best at it, and every year, since he was 13, he has been improving. When he is cooking, Ray feels happy.

Being an average and ordinary person, however, Ray does not give a lot of importance to the uptick in his mood. Sure, he likes to feel good. But like most people, he assigns greater significance to feelings that he associates with problems. On a day when he enjoys cooking, he might still end the day focused on a disappointing grade at school, or a conflict with a peer. Strengths-focused coaching helps clients shift their attention to what is going well. Paying more attention to our positive experiences pays exponential dividends in our sense of well being. It gives us the courage of our convictions, and helps us present ourselves to others in a confident, positive way.

A strengths-focused coach would support Ray in valuing his positive experiences with cooking. Maybe Ray would contribute an amazing dip to the next horror movie night, but skip the movie. After he gave importance to how he feels, it would be difficult to persuade Ray that he was making the wrong choices. 

Strengths-focused Relating

Strengths-focused relating is intentional and structured. After reading this blog post, you will be able to give it a try. The intention of strengths-focused relating is for two people to commit a period of time to focus on each other's positive experiences and positive qualities, or strengths.

Strengths-focused relating can be practiced between intimate partners, any two family members, two friends, two co-workers, or two acquaintances who have made an investment in exploring the different modalities of Strengths-focused Living.

People might try strengths-focused relating as an intervention in a relationship in which there is unwanted negativity. Then again, they might try strengths-focused relating for the simple pleasure of intentionally holding a positive focus in a valued relationship. There is joy in thinking about and sharing positive experiences and articulating our own and each other's strengths.

The formal structure of strengths-focused relating is important in building a strengths-focused relationship. Follow the provided structure for a minimum of 6 months before introducing your own variations. This structure is carefully thought out. There may be benefits that are not immediately clear to you that unfold over time. For example, it may feel vulnerable to say out loud what you are good at. This structure has no room whatsoever for a critical response. It is 100% safe.

Set aside 40 minutes, once a week, for four weeks to meet with your strengths-focused relating partner. That is the minimum investment that will be effective. That is enough time to determine whether this practice is valuable to you. Then, you may decide with your partner to continue your meetings.

You can meet by phone, through a computer program such as Skype, or in person. Make sure the time and place for your meetings is clear. It is best to meet at the same time and in the same place for each of your first four meetings.

Before your meeting, prepare to share a positive experience with your partner. The experience can be a recent one, or any positive experience from your life. A positive experience is any event which causes your mood to lift. Also, reflect on the positive qualities, or strengths, in your personality that you were using during this positive experience. Be ready to tell your partner some of the positive qualities you noticed in yourself. Not every positive experience will work. For example, it may be a positive experience to eat a lovely meal, but this positive experience may not be one in which you are using your strengths. All the same, if you were particularly good at savoring a brussel sprout, were very grateful to the host, or made a brave decision to skip desert.... Only you know when you are using your strengths.

Please do not be surprised if this preparatory work is not easy. Many of us are more accustomed to noticing and sharing what is not working than what is working. We may be more used to noticing our weaknesses than our strengths. That is precisely why it is useful to practice relating in a strengths-focused way. As you move through the four introductory weeks, it will definitely get easier.

You will listen in a special way during your practice sessions. The listener has a very important job! You might call it extreme listening. Your job when listening is to keep your attention on the words and tone of your partner. You will demonstrate that you heard your partner by saying back what you heard. You will use a combination of mirroring, or using the exact words your partner used, and paraphrasing, or putting what you heard into your own words. Listening this attentively requires us to set aside many of the habits of everyday listening. For example, we set aside reflecting on whether we agree or disagree with what our partner is saying. We also set aside rehearsing what we are going to say when it is our turn to speak. We set aside evaluations, thoughts of whether what is being said is good or bad, and reflecting on similar experiences of our own. We set aside competitive thoughts, such as whether we have as good an experience to share. Whenever the mind wanders, we bring it back to the sound of our partner's voice, and the words our partner is saying.

On the day of your meeting, bring a watch, a smart phone app, an egg timer, or some other means to keep track of the time. Bring a print out or a digital version of these instructions. Arrive on time for your meeting. Show your respect for your partner's time, and for the process you are undertaking together. Each minute is accounted for, as you will see below. If you want to have some social time, schedule that for before or after your strengths-focused relating practice time.

Decide who will share first.

Follow this 20 minute process for each partner.

5 minutes: Tell your partner the story of a positive experience.
3 minutes: Your partner will reflect your positive experience back to you. Your partner will show that they listened attentively by using some of your own words, and paraphrasing others. They will not embellish on what you said with their own comments.
2 minutes: Elaborate on what your partner mirrored. Draw attention to the most important points and share additional details.
3 minutes: Share the positive qualities you were using during this experience. Take your time, and express yourself in a way that is personal and specific. Your partner can help you by asking for more information. For example, if you say "I was smart." Your partner may say something like, "Tell me more about being smart. What were you doing at that time?" Be as clear as you can in saying what your strengths are. Tell your partner what you are good at, and what your positive qualities are as you experienced them during this positive event.
1 minute: Your partner will reflect your strengths back to you using your words.
2 minutes: Clarify or embellish your ideas about your strengths and how you showed them. Invite collaboration from your partner only if you want it. Allow time for silent reflection as you reach deeply to express yourself clearly.
1 minute: Your partner will suggest a strength that they noticed as you spoke. They may mention a strength you have not mentioned, or underscore one that really stood out for them. They will give evidence of the strength from the story you told. "When you _____, it showed that you ________."
1 minute: Take time to consider the strength your partner shared. Decide whether this is a strength you feel within you. If so, put it into your own words.
2 minutes:  Celebrate! Acknowledge that you have followed through on your commitment. Share your feelings. You may ask your partner to share their informal thoughts about your story if you wish, but that is not necessary.

Learn more about strengths-focused relationships at Jerald Forster's website www.strengths-focused-relationships.org

Krishnamurti - Who am I?