Wednesday, December 21, 2011

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.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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.