JOY: It’s a Spiritual Thing!

Inspiration

It took me a long time to realize it, but joy is a spiritual thing! I spent a good portion of my early years in an ongoing search for happiness. There was a great deal of activity, but the brief moments of happiness I enjoyed were often intense and fleeting. Every time, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had reached the mountaintop and would do my best to stay there within the spirit of that moment, to remain present to that experience. But I could never carry those feelings back down into the valleys and plateaus of daily living (not for long anyway). So, I would seek my next slice of happiness, my next wave of experience. As I look back on some of those moments, I am now able to connect with a tiny, persistent, nagging element of despair that was ever-present but almost always unacknowledged. This despair was grounded within an innate knowing that these moments were not meant to last. It was this knowing that made them so much more precious and rare.

My growth along the spiritual path has helped me to understand the differences between joy and happiness. In my experience, the fundamental flaw in happiness is its primarily external orientation. This orientation renders it inherently capricious and subject to the ever-shifting tides of time, circumstance, and emotion. In our search for happiness, each of us becomes vulnerable to various kinds of external and often random influences that we depend upon to produce whatever conditions we imagine will result in our happiness. The more favorably these influences and circumstances fit within our particular set of criteria, the better we can enjoy deep and lasting happiness. Thus, we continually give away our power and reduce our capacity to exercise agency within our lives in our continual pursuit of happiness. We must also note that for many of us, happiness is also deeply connected to the ever-changing tides of our emotions. We can be happy one minute, see or hear something disturbing, and then be unhappy or even dejected the next.

But joy is a spiritual thing. It bubbles up from the spirit and bursts forth through the heart. Joy is an internal experience that moves from the inner to the outer world. Because it is spiritually based, it is not subject to external influences or circumstances. Joy is a realization that can often burst forth from within our interiority. This spiritual quality is what makes joy superior to happiness in every possible way. Joy can be found within (and often in spite of) the most unpleasant and horrible circumstances, because its internal origins are connected to higher levels of being and hope. Quantum physics has revealed that everything in the universe resonates at its own frequency; on the scale of consciousness, higher levels of consciousness begin around the resonation level of love (love is 500), while joy resonates even higher (joy = 540, peace = 600). 

As we work on raising our vibration, we also expand our consciousness. This expansion promotes our ability to maintain higher frequencies more consistently. As we raise and expand our consciousness, we hone our ability to hold those vibrations, thereby rendering us less susceptible to many of the lower vibrational emotions that we encounter in daily life. In effect, we increase our set-point, which also creates more resiliency and buoyancy throughout our entire being. The things and people who may have once been able to trigger us, or push our buttons, begin to have less influence and eventually fall away. We may still feel some of these emotions, but we can more easily acknowledge them and let them pass without any major disruptions to our inner equilibrium. This rise in our set point also allows us to experience more joy overall, and sometimes it bubbles forth in truly unanticipated ways. 

Joy is not an emotion. It is a highly vibrational spiritual state that is also infused with emotions like happiness, satisfaction, gratitude, love, peace…that all add to its power to lift us. In theological terms, this lifting is referred to as “anagogy”. It is the experience of being “lifted up” by means of spiritual encounter that both energizes, exalts, overwhelms, and ushers one into a deeper connection to the presence of the divine. Being in the zone, being overwhelmed by beauty or pathos, feeling connected and in sync with life, epiphanies… are all anagogic states that raise our vibrational frequency and usher us into joy. Reclaim your power by connecting with Spirit and finding the joy within!

Symbolism

This image was inspired by the experience of joy and the realization of its power within my life and spirit. I wanted the image and the figure to have a certain energetic, open feel, but still be dense and bright. This is why I chose to portray a leaping figure in a circular composition. These two elements combine with the emanating rays of light to create a sense of energy and movement. The use of the lotus symbol is reminiscent of spiritual awakening, beauty, the rising sun, and eternity in various traditions. Just as the lotus blossoms upward from the murky waters of the muddy river bottom, we often find joy amid the muck and mire of life as it seems to burst forth and lift us above it all. These ideas correspond to the rays of light which appear to both expand from and move toward the center of the composition.

One of the most interesting things about this piece is that its square format and circular composition allow it to be displayed from any side. Turn it left, right, or completely upside down, and it is still just as intriguing. In the present view, it appears as if the female figure is leaping for joy with all her might, almost as if she could fly away. If you turn the image so that the figure’s hands and feet appear to be pointing downward, you will notice that her positioning is very similar to the yoga asana Upward Bow (Urdhva Dhanurasana), which helps to open the heart chakra. Joy is a spiritual experience that is felt within and bursts forth from the heart.

Featured

This image, Live in the Light III, JOY, was accepted into two juried art publications, American Art Collector and Bay Area Art Today. Both publications are forthcoming in October 2015. American Art Collector is a yearly juried publication produced by Alcove Books and circulated nationwide for the past 12 years. Bay Area Art Today is a juried publication that is distributed throughout the 10 counties that comprise the San Francisco Bay Area. I am excited and honored to be one of the artists featured in these publications.

TAKE ACTION: Joy has already been scooped up by a collector, but prints are available in a variety of sizes and paper choices. Join the mailing list to receive a discount on your purchase! Purchase Joy in print here.