King of Bhutan

Today we facilitated a group joy exercise in which we introduced different body postures every 5 minutes during a meeting about a tense topic. The exercise worked with the grounds of flow, physical energy and connection. The postures included slouching, standing up, crossing one's legs and arms, etc. In one posture, the participants were encouraged to imagine themselves as royalty from different countries in medieval times, meeting to discuss the preservation of world peace. We sat with a kind of grounded dignity and openness to the weighty matters at hand.

One of the participants stood up and introduced himself as the "King of Bhutan," a country which includes alongside its statistics for gross national product a number which signifies the country's gross national "happiness." (This is in fact true). He apologized for remarks he had made the previous day that had been difficult for some people. He spoke out of respect for the other people, and he himself had a noble air about him.  The energy in the room was a balance of seriousness and perspective, compassion and humor.

We haven't talked a lot about humor and joy. Naturally we have found that humor, especially in situations that have a genuine seriousness about them, can open up a space of joy. As we have discussed the grounds, we often hear humor when people talk about difficult situations that require some sort of letting go. When the letting go finally happens, that is often when the humor appears. We look forward to working more with humor. 

Solidarity Workshop

Over the weekend, Jenny and I facilitated a two-hour solidarity workshop for a group of political activists. We found the participants smart, open and willing. We started the workshop by identifying such grounds of solidarity as whether and how we connect with other people, whether we have common agreements and common objectives with them, whether we feel we can contribute and how we feel about others' contributions, whether we have a sense of trust, whether we think conflicts can be worked out, how strong our own sense of self is, and so on.

Afterward we introduced exercises to work with the grounds we had identified. We broke the group into two smaller groups. The groups were given the following instructions:

First exercise –
     Group A: "Create an artwork about elephants."
     Group B: "Decide together how to use your time."

Second exercise –
     Group A: "Decide together how to use your time."
     Group B: "Write some haikus about groups."

Third exercise –
     Group A: "Choose one of Group B's haikus to be integrated into the artwork. Then witness the process as group B integrates the haiku into the artwork."
     Group B: "Witness Group A choosing the haiku and then integrate the haiku into the artwork."

The last exercise was the juiciest, as each group watched the material they had created being worked over by the other group. While Jenny and I found the discoveries made during and after the exercises quite interesting, what struck us the most was how important communication was, particularly communicating respect, consideration, and having a priority of including others in consensus. Along those lines, in the wrap-up one participant suggested to us that we might have contacted the group before the workshop and dialogued about what was going to happen in order to create something that was more collaborative and directly tailored to the needs of the group. We thought it was a great idea and would consider the suggestion for the future.

Letting Go

Yesterday, a group member reminisced about a camping trip gone completely awry. After a black night of pouring rain and misfunctioning gear, a series of frustrating mishaps led him to become wedged in a car seat and unable to move. At that point he surrendered to the experience and felt joy. We listeners also found the story not sad and tragic, but uplifting, joyful and funny, identifying with the relief of finally letting go.

And so we add "letting go" to our list of grounds. Another member talked about the sense of "letting go" while sailing in the Caribbean, letting her guard completely down, feeling the experience in her entire body, allowing herself to be fully absorbed. Another talked about her work as a doctor, letting go into the functioning of the team and the needs of the patient. We have recognized many types of letting go, with many qualities such as acceptance, immersion, returning to what's important, shifting out of anger, relaxation, and appreciation. While "letting go" has some overlap with flow and connection, we feel that it will work well for us as a separate ground.

The counterpart to "letting go" is "holding back." We wonder if there is any way to hold back and still feel joy. It is a question for us to investigate.

Sharing Joy: Working with the Larger Group

Jenny and I are taking a break from our own practice in order to introduce the Joy Virtue practice to a larger group. We have been struck by how similar are the discoveries of the group and our own about the ground of joy. We all agreed that connection, flow, and trust werel a part of it. We agreed that there are many kinds of joy, even sad joy or heartbreaking joy, and that the opposite of joy seems to be alienation or disconnection more than grief.

It is often remarkable how similar are our experiences of the ground, and yet how different the ground might manifest for each person. Some find that flow happens most easily in new situations, others in situations that they are familiar with. Some find connection in people, some in landscape, some in working together, some in being alone. A number of people mentioned feeling joy when experiencing the grandeur of the mountains; but just as many people described the same joy when seeing the Manhattan landscape.  And of course, some take joy in both. We are all interested to see where our investigation will lead us.

Harvest

At our wedding ceremony Jenny and I vowed four vows, one of which was: "when you are present, I vow to be as joyful as I can be about your presence."  We anticipated that joy would not always be automatic and easily accessible. We recognized for us the critical importance of maintaining joy to the marriage, and promised that we would work at it. Further, we saw joy not only as a fruition of our path, but as a critical ingredient to the path, one that would keep us open, connected and motivated.

We have been presenting the notion that for us joy is a virtue, that being joyful not only benefits ourselves but others, that it is something that needs continual work and support, and that it is, indeed, our obligation to work at it. Since we started this practice, we have been noticing how common this approach is. For example, I was surprised to see recently in a popular jobhunting manual the suggestion that deep joy was itself a mission or calling, an overarching purpose and orientation.

In the portion of the Torah that Jews read last week in the synagogue, there is the command to enjoy the bounty of the harvest, and to enjoy sharing it with others. As harvest time and Thanksgiving holidays approach, it is intriguing to consider putting our attention not only on an appreciation and sharing of all that we have, but on honoring it by really enjoying it.

A beautiful analysis of the Torah portion can be found on a friend's blog at http://parshathoughtsmore.blogspot.com/2011/09/parashat-ki-tavo-on-joy-and-arrival.html

Creating Exercises for the Ground Of Joy

Jenny and I have entered the next phase of our virtue practice: creating exercises to till our "ground." This is something we always enjoy. These exercises will relate to one or more of the grounds of joy, not necessarily directly to joy itself. It is best if the exercises are playful, doable, a little out of the ordinary – small moments that are intriguing to our deep self and disrupt, to some degree, our habitual patterns.

For example, one of our grounds of joy is flow – when there is physical, emotional, and creative flow, we find it easier to be joyful. Anything that might get some flow going outside of our daily routine would probably work here. How about:

1) dancing hard to a Motown song within a minute of waking up?
2) talking animatedly for three full minutes, using not just our minds but our hands and whole bodies?
3) creating a painting together, using the method of throwing globs of paint on the canvas?
4) heavy breathing?
5) each of us gets two full minutes of applause from the other?
6) developing a cheer for the universe and performing a cheerleading routine to go with it?
7) slow dancing while doing the dishes?
8) doing tai chi together in the swimming pool?

Alternatively, we might play with flow by restricting it. For example, we could:

1) make the bed without bending our knees or elbows
2) have a conversation in which we count to three between each word
3) do the dishes with our hands tied together

The idea here is not that the exercises do or don't bring us joy. Rather, we are playing with the ground so that on a level outside of our awareness we can bring some fresh air into the issue of how, on a moment to moment basis, we keep ourselves from being joyful.

We aren't asking ourselves why, we aren't analyzing, we aren't trying to do anything about it, we are only playing with an aspect of it in order to shake things up a little bit. After a week or two or three of exercises like this, one after the other, we have been finding that what is shaken up begins to settle down into a new place, and, as if by magic, we have more access to our virtue.

Describing the Ground of Joy II

Today we are continuing our preliminary list for the ground of joy:

5. Whether the situation reinforces a basic sense of intrinsic goodness or trust –this might include a sense of innocence, faith, grandeur, decency, cosmic mystery, or unconditionality. For example, Jenny experiences it when she sees me holding my daughter's hand. I experience it when I see strangers helping each other.

6. Getting what we really want – there may be a sense of good fortune, relief, victory, satisfaction, or excitement. This is perhaps the condition that comes to mind first for many people, that our joy depends on getting what we want.

7. Whether we are willing to be joyful –we are often simply unwilling to surrender into positive feeling. Of course, all of the virtues that we've worked with require a degree of willingness, but we somehow find that with joy this is particularly so.

These are our working conditions for the ground of joy. Soon we will begin to create exercises that play with each of these grounds, and as we do we might adjust or rethink some of them. We are both looking forward to next step.