3-2-1: On creating the conditions for joy, how to go to hell, and the simple way to clarify your thinking

You will have a growing appreciation for life’s basic experiences: the pleasures of simple friendship, creating something, helping a person in need, reading a good book, laughing with someone you care about.

I sometimes hear complaints from adult students that their jobs aren’t creative or rewarding. I wonder. Joy seems not so much dependent on the conditions of our external reality as it is on our way of looking at life. We apportion value. It is not intrinsic.

How do we bring about the feelings of joy and happiness that we need in order to be strong enough to deal with our suffering? The first thing to do is to release, to let go. Joy is born from letting go, leaving behind.

As the Persian mystic Rumi instructs us, “When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine.” André Gide, the French novelist and philosopher, enjoins us: “Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a mor

using joy as an object of meditation,

Far too many creative people have been taught to distrust pleasure and to put their faith in struggle alone. Too many artists still believe that anguish is the only truly authentic emotional experience. They could have picked up this dark idea anywhere; it’s a commonly held belief here in the Western world, what with our weighty emotional heritage