Anthony Rella, MA, LMHC

Author: Anthony Rella

  • Peace

    “Peace in the struggle to find peace.”

    – Sarah McLachlan, “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”

    Sometimes what we want most is freedom from our suffering, and we take shortcuts to get there. We silence ourselves when we need to speak, we make ourselves smaller. We cut people off and disconnect. We get angry and rail against our suffering. We abuse drugs and alcohol. We abuse sex or food. We tune out watching TV.  We try to get rid of parts of ourselves that only become more stubborn and vicious. We go numb.

    There is something within us that does not want to sit out life. That is the part of us that gets angry, resentful, and toxic every time we fail to speak up about an injustice, fail to speak on our own behalf, fail to set a boundary we desperately need.

    Justice, Edward Onslow Ford

    It takes courage to face the conflicts in our hearts and minds, let alone the conflicts in our relationships and communities. There is a world out there that needs us to show up. The world needs us to live for our values, even when it means conflict, even when we’d rather pull the blanket overhead and sleep until the world gets better.

    The world won’t get better on its own. The world is us. We are creating the world every day. Even our inaction is an act of creation, colluding with the world as it is.

    No one can solve the world’s problems alone, but we will not find peace within or without by standing by or going numb. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Inner peace comes when we know who we are and act according to that knowledge. We can feel this peace even in the midst of chaos, because we realize we are acting with integrity and purpose. The struggle feels rich and suffused with meaning. We are doing the best we can to create the world in which we want to live.

  • Flow

    “Flow” is a concept proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, described as a state of single-minded immersion in a task, where one’s emotions align with the task and energize us. A person experiencing a state of flow becomes so immersed in the task as to lose a sense of the separate self, but also experiences spontaneous feelings of joy. A state of flow requires involvement in a structured task; a task that offers immediate feedback that requires adaptation; and a balanced experience of one’s competency and the challenges of the task.

    by Malene Thyssen

    Flow is often explored in the context of work or hobbies, where one’s skill and passion join in a state of “doing without doing.” In my practice, I work with the concept of flow as also a feeling of alignment and integration. When I am in the flow of my life, my relationships and obligations feel nourishing and intriguing. I am not always in a state of ecstasy, but I have the sense that I am where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to be doing. My sense of purpose arises from within and feels validated by what is happening around me. I perceive problems and challenges as natural responses to having purpose, not a sign that my purpose is wrong.

    There are places within us that get stuck and pull us out of flow. I might love what I’m doing but feel preoccupied by what’s going on at home. I might hate what I’m doing but resist making any changes out of fear. Old traumas might prevent me from saying what I need to say or doing what I need to do, blocking up energy. If I cannot act with my heart, mind, and gut aligned, then my life can begin to feel empty and lacking joy.

    Integration of self strengthens flow. Dishonesty with myself or others diminishes the strength of integration and the capacity for flow. The emotional integrity necessary for flow means the ability to bring everything I am into the moment without getting distracted by my multiple stories or efforts to protect ego, as those interfere with the small adjustments necessary to support flow. If all I do is smile and say everything’s okay when I’m seething with anger inside, then I am not in integrity and certainly not in flow. If I’m unwilling to discuss my pain because “men don’t do that,” then my pain will stay buried within, out of reach of healing.

    This does not mean flow is out of reach for people who are working toward healing and integration, because that would include almost everyone. What it means is that the work of healing and integration creates more and more inner space, freedom, and capacity for flow.

    The paradox is that we approach flow through sinking into these stuck places. The wound is the pathway to healing. Avoiding or numbing ourselves only further limits and impedes our ability to experience healing, authenticity, and joy. We can practice patience and the gentle opening of attention, noticing more and more the unconscious patterns that constrict energy and flow.

  • Ease

    Western Heart’s Ease, by Franco Folini

    Some days, everything feels hard. We might not feel equal to the task of living life, let alone becoming the person we long to be. We might forget how much we’ve grown and matured in the past several years, feeling stuck in old patterns and habits that keep us miserable.

    Ease is a state of adaptability to the changing conditions of life. It is not limited to the absence of struggle or pain, rather it is the ability to accept problems and pain and adapt. Ease arises from the ability to observe ourselves without judgment, accepting whatever arises and returning attention to what is most important to us. We can invite ease into our experience of daily life.

    One of the hallmarks of a master of a craft is the appearance of effortlessness and ease that arises from hours upon hours of practice and study. We rarely are privy to those hours of failed attempts and frustration, and we might assume that this ease and confidence is intrinsic to the person and beyond our own capacity. In a movie, the transition from amateur to expert passes by in a video montage of five minutes at best. Practice, failure, and re-attempting is not dramatic enough to entertain us, so we do not see it represented with accuracy. All we see is our own daily frustrations, loss of patience, feelings of overwhelm or anxiety, the bad days, the down moods, the nightmares, the feelings of defeat and failure. Sometimes we think we’re alone in this.

    Years ago, I had a job that required my cold-calling a few hundred people once per year. I dreaded this task as it approached, looked for ways to put it off. I felt anxiety when looking at the list, imagining all the ways the calls could go poorly. As long as those calls remained undone, they were a source of agony to me. I would tell myself that I could wait until I felt better about the calls before starting, but the anxiety never went away.

    What I learned, however, is that once I began, things weren’t so bad. Even the calls that went poorly were over quickly and I could move on. I realized that I simply had to make myself begin, over and over again, accepting that anxiety would always be there and yet I could do the task. With practice and repetition, I got better at the calls and my anxiety felt more and more manageable. What’s more, finishing the calls left me feeling more energetic, now that I no longer wasted energy worrying about it. I felt more ease, even though the anxiety never went away.

    Ease flourishes with discipline. Not self-punishment but the constant return to committing and following through. Telling myself that I will sit down and read the scary email, and then doing it. Accepting my feelings as they are, accepting even my resistance as it is, and moving forward allows tension to relax, energy to expand, and emotions to soothe. We might need to work harder at first, to struggle with new habits or sit with painful experiences, but over time this struggle unfolds into greater and greater ease.

  • What is Possible

    “All that you touch
    You Change.

    All that you Change
    Changes you.

    The only lasting truth
    is Change.

    God
    is Change.”

    -Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

    A life transition can be moving to a new neigborhood. A life transition can be the end of a relationship, or the beginning of a relationship. A life transition can be the beginning or end of a career, the change from student to working person, or changes in phase of life. A life transition can be the change from one identity to another, whether it be social, gender, or sexual. Life transitions are the space between chapters in a book. One chapter has ended, a new one begins, and all we really know is what has happened before.

    Life transitions stir things up.

    by Felix Burton

    We might not fully grasp it. With all the busyness and stress of, say, putting a house on the market, packing, finding a new place, moving, and unpacking, we might not have the space or time to see how the experience affects us until it’s all over and suddenly there is this strange heavy cloud that’s difficult to shake.

    Life transitions bring us back to core questions. Who am I? What do I want in life? Where will I fit? What are my needs, and how do I get them met? 

    Old ways of being may no longer fit, no matter how much we try to make them work. Our relationships change as we change; our friends and loved ones might not understand the change. Issues and problems we thought long-buried might rise to the surface. No matter how much we long to change, something within us may resist, something scared or angry, something that is unable to see what is possible.

    When I was young, my family moved neighborhoods and school districts in the middle of the school year. I went from being an outgoing, joyful kid to being shy and depressive, meeting other kids who did not immediately accept me in a household with conflict I did not understand. Much, much later in life, moving from the Midwest to Seattle, I felt excited but also overcome with anxiety, overwhelm, and inexplicable, ugly emotional displays. I became depressed after the move. With time and reflection, I realized that I became depressed every time I moved houses or went through a major change, even when the change was exciting and welcome. I realized that some part of me was still reacting to that difficult transition that happened twenty years ago.

    There is much that is possible. Every transition, every crisis involves a loosening of our habits and limiting beliefs about ourselves. If we create without consciousness or intention, we may end up re-creating the things that did not work.

    Life transitions are opportunities to grow up while growing down. We can look within to find what it is we truly value in life, not what values have been imposed upon us. We can look within to find what has been left out and what no longer feeds us. We can look within to find those echoes of the past that continue to limit us from becoming who we truly are. We can risk sharing ourselves with our loved ones with greater honesty and vulnerability, meaning greater intimacy. We can create a life of meaning, depth, and gratitude.

  • Beyoncé: Flawless Evolution, Part 3

    “***Flawless” might be the core text of Beyoncé: a show of rage disguised as pop, a triptych of pieces about femininity, femme, race, and womanhood, seemingly lacking in coherence but expressing a plurality of voices. The first part begins with the artist singing to her fans and followers: “I know when you were little girls / You dreamt of being in my world / Don’t forget it, don’t forget it / Respect that. Bow down, bitches.” After this declaration of matriarchal dominance, the song slows into a tense quiet as a sample of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche speaks of the inequalities of expectation and socialization put upon women, in which women are taught to be less sexual, less ambitious, and less competitive than men; any competition occurring between women for marriage partners. After Adichie declares a feminist as one who believes in the “social, political, and economic equality of the sexes,” the song shifts into a series of chanted pro-femme mottos: “I woke up like dis / We flawless / Ladies, tell them say / I look so good tonight.” The artist almost frantically honors the gifts offered by each member of her family; the confidence, courage, and validation.

    All of this is bookended by clips from the artist’s appearance on Star Search as a member of Girls Tyme competing against an all-white, all-male, rocker-looking group Skeleton Crew. The audience is aware of the dramatic irony that Skeleton Crew wins with four stars over Girls Tyme’s three stars, given that we have no idea who these guys while the artist continues her media domination.

    As an anthem, the call outs “I woke up like dis” and “I look so good tonight” are spells of femme empowerment. Self-validating, these words declare one’s self a preternaturally beautiful and flawlessly put-together being while masking the labor and heartache that goes into one’s look. Within the larger context of the artist’s surrender of perfection, flawlessness becomes less about external standards and more about an attitude, a style of being and confidence that owns its own space. Adichie speaks of the messaging that teaches “girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller,” and this is the artist’s answer—to become bigger, to demand space, to insist on her own excellence.

    This pro-femme anthem seems contradictory to the song’s initial declaration of hierarchy, the artist commanding respect and submission from all would-be competitors who are growing up and thinking of taking on the Queen against her throne. Adichie’s bridge offers a context that broadens the scope of the song’s message. She speaks of socialization compelling women to vie for male attention “rather than jobs or accomplishments, which I would think a good thing.” She further asserts that are taught, “you can be successful, but not too successful, or else you’d threaten the man.” Part one of “***Flawless” keeps competition within the realm of women, the artist presumably speaking to other female artists to pay homage and respect. This occurs within the wider media culture that pits women artists against each other and isolates music within gendered scopes, echoing back to the 1994 Q Magazine interview with Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, and Björk, in which Amos says:

    It’s funny for women because journalists pit women against each other. If you think about Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton they were all much more similar to each other than we are. We have tits. We have three holes. That’s what we have in common. We don’t even play the same instruments. It really disappoints me when some sort of competition has to be manufactured for their little minds and fantasies.

    Anger toward the patriarchal restrictions that narrow women’s opportunities to a gender-segregated channel seems to simmer within the context of the song. The video itself shows the artist participating in moshing, posturing with ferocity, giving her best femme daddy.

    Still from “***Flawless” video. The raw rage last seen in “Ring the Alarm” distilled and refined into a blade, pointed subtly at the racist patriarchal structures that impede the artist’s further development. Notice the conflict in her body, legs close together evoking the feminine socialization to take up less space in contrast with the arms reaching out to control and expand the space around her.

    Returning to the Star Search bookends, the three asterisks in “***Flawless” call back the three stars given to Girls Tyme. The song allows us to sink into its anger, its pride, its fierce declaration of the power of women, and then take in the reality that no matter how flawless they are, Black women only get three stars in a culture that awards White men four stars as a matter of course.

    In this way, the song is a journey of expansive consciousness, starting from thinking from a place of power scarcity, in which women have to compete for what limited power is available, moving through feminist analysis, and emerging with this sharp-edged honing of identity and exaltation of femme consciousness. This may point toward the direction this evolution will continue with the artist as she moves from five, the experimental expression of self-actualized energy, to six, the meeting of new opposition. The individualizing being, increasing in confidence and a greater sense of purpose, must continue to expand in scope and capacity, meeting and defeating all oppositions. As she was able to divest herself of the limitations of perfectionism, her next step might be well to take on the larger social barriers that inhibit her success and creativity.

    Complete Jungian readings of Beyoncé’s work:

  • Beyoncé: Flawless Evolution, Part 2

    Still from “Partition” video. The mirroring does not suggest an unconscious shadow, rather the surrounding darkness allows the balanced self to come into clearer illumination.

    Can we read the artist through the work, even when the artist is the Work? These questions permeate the album, particularly the intimate portraits of “Drunk in Love,” “Jealous,” “Rocket,” and “Mine.” The artist here expresses more comfort and confidence with sexuality than had ever come through in earlier works—no matter how much she performed sexuality in the past, there was never anything like the sheer joy and shame-free announcement,“I can’t wait till / I get home so you can tear that cherry out.”

    We think we are allowed some insight into the “real” Beyoncé’s marriage to Jay-Z, who is the guest rapper in “Drunk in Love,” but again we face the question of “real” reality versus the images presented. One wonders why the rapper would equate himself Ike Turner and assert “No I don’t play / Now eat the cake, Annie Mae,” evoking a scene from What’s Love Got to Do With It? in which the singer emotionally abuses his successful wife. The opening lines of the (gorgeous) “Mine” teases the audience with a glimpse of marital conflict and a seemingly biographical observation by the singer that “I haven’t been myself since the baby,” only later to have those biographical parallels dashed by the singer’s declaration that “We should get married,” as those who follow the star couple know they were already married when their daughter was born.

    As Beyoncé shatters and reconstructs long-nurtured assumptions about who and what the artist is, the audience witnesses a re-crystallization of the artist’s span of history and career. Throughout the album we see images of the artist at various phases of life, seeing the early victories and defeats, never knowing “who” she is. At the opening of “Yoncé,” we hear her calling the audience to say “Heeeyyy Ms. Carter”—referencing her spousal relationship while refusing the traditional title of “Mrs.”—then name yet another facet of self through the hyper-funky, sexy “Yoncé / All on his mouth like liquor.”

    The bonus video “Grown Woman” encapsulates the artist’s work of integrating her life to date into a new center of gravity. Not offered as pure audio, the video requires us to re-experience this reconstitution with every listen. The video flips between modified home video recordings, the lyrics of the song written into young Beyoncé’s mouth, with reconstructed adult performances of the home videos, all the while interspersed with the adult artist in a sexy, casual, somewhat disheveled appearance confidently surrounded by trophies. Here is the pageant queen post-”Pretty Hurts.” She has gone through perfection and discipline, gone through the journey of meeting and marrying her shadow, gone through reconciliatoin of warring parts into a grander Self. Now her past is not a passive, unchanging set of stories that forever limit her, it is raw material creatively constructed into new form. She rewrites the past to create her future.

    Complete Jungian readings of Beyoncé’s work:

  • Beyoncé: Flawless Evolution, Part 1

    According to McLean’s rendering of the alchemical sevenfold process, the manifested work at 4 progresses toward an experimental expression of its energies at 5, from the static square to the dynamic pentacle. Beyoncé, the artist’s eponymous fifth solo album, certainly meets the criteria of a work of experimental expression. Released without warning, following a secretive recording frenzy, the album exploded into public consciousness with such force that it was nearly impossible to separate the sheer enthusiasm of the public from critical experience of the work itself. I listened to it incessantly, with a sense of excitement. I felt vindicated, as though I had believed all along she was capable of this quantum leap in artistic expression. Having read her so intently, the force of her first two songs felt profound in the extent to which they shook her public persona free of its earlier constriction.

    Here is Beyoncé, renowned perfectionist and self-disciplinarian, who has spent almost her entire life performing in front of an audience—evidenced by collected footage interspersed through the work—opening her fifth album by singing the Sia-penned declaration, “Perfection is the disease of a nation.” Here is the artist in that opening video, performing the role of pageant queen, performing the cracks and dis-ease underlying our culture’s obsession with flawless surfaces, performing the woundedness and vulnerability she had never before allowed in her public persona.

    As soon as the audience begins to consider the implications, the album immediately shifts from powerful ballad into the dark and lush electronic soundscape of “Ghosts/Haunted,” a sound unlike anything the artist has ever done. Here the singer declares, almost casually: “Reap what you sow / Perfection is so… eh.”

    Is this the birth of an entirely new stage of consciousness for the singer? A declaration of freedom from the personality and cultural complexes that have formed and impeded the individuation process to this point? Are the lyrics critical of record labels and the need to “work 9 to 5 / just to stay alive” an evolution in the consciousness of the artist toward greater social concerns? As the individuation process reconciles the painful contradictions and limitations of the self, more energy becomes available for outward concern. Simultaneously, the individuated person increasingly comes to see how her history, her family, her community, and her nation comprise facets of self that must themselves be confronted, integrated, or transformed. In the video for “No Angel,” the artist herself is invisible, instead directing the camera and audience toward a community in Houston typically held in media margins, as discussed by sheridf at Crunk Feminist Collective. She is decentralized from the image, but her passion shapes the images we see and experience.

    Social concern sets the stage for the later video, “Superpower.” We follow the artist through a slow-motion journey in an apparent call-out to the Occupy movement, gathering young people and activists into a climatic charge at the riot-clad police officers, stopped at the last moment for a triumphant stand-and-stare from the artist herself. Were this scenario to play out in a contemporary city, it would end in tear gas, violence, and arrests. Here she aligns herself with the activist youth, counter the policing forces, envisioning opposition without violence.

    Beyoncé by GxStep

    Complete Jungian readings of Beyoncé’s work:

  • 4: The Joy of the Individuated Self

    According to Adam McLean‘s commentary of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, the alchemical sevenfold process reaches its material manifestation at the fourth station. This is the nadir of the spiritual process, after the “involutionary arc” in which the initial spiritual impulse descends, meets with opposition, synthesizes the impulse, and finally emerges into materiality. Jung saw the number 4 as indicative of the quaternity, symbolic of wholeness—four Western elements, four cardinal directions, four corners of a square or four points in a circle. Throughout the course of the artist’s work, we saw her solo emergence of Dangerously in Love, her encounter with her nemesis and beloved in B’day, the internal division and synthesis of I Am…Sasha Fierce, and now we see her forged into a greater whole: joyful, proud, and celebratory.

    Beyonce Tag II PSD, by RenkuFX

    4 is the reconciliation and stabilization of the inner process of solve et coagula within Beyoncé’s persona, dramatized in I Am… Sasha Fierce. The fiercely sexual and wanly vulnerable halves of self have married into a greater whole. 4 is the wedding reception for this hieros gamos. Qualities of joy, celebration, and pleasure permeate many of the songs, particularly “Party,” “Love on Top,” and the ecstatic “End of Time.” The audience bears witness to the singer’s empowered confidence and self-worth. “Finally / You put my love on top,” the singer says to her Beloved, recognizing the recognition of her worth. Many pop romantic tropes emphasize images of incompletion without love and partnership—the Spice Girls sang that “2 become 1” in the romantic and sexual union, where Beyoncé distinguishes herself by emphasizing completion and partnership, declaring “I know 1 + 1 / Equals 2”.

    The only sour note in this reading is the song “Rather Die Young,” an ode to the exhausted and problematic trope of self-negation-as-homage-to-love. Developmental processes are always incomplete, always containing encapsulated, unintegrated fragments of past and cultural complexes. “You make me feel like I’m seventeen,” she sings, noting that this relationship has activated an old complex not fully integrated into the mature self.

    Individuation does not mean a departure from submission or servitude, but an enlivening of these innate qualities within the person. The artist’s work has always include a value of service toward her beloved, and songs such as “Dance for You” show this quality remains rooted within her love and art. She repeats over and over how she’s going to “show” her lover how much she appreciates and values his love and offers her dancing as gratitude and connection. There is no contradiction for the integrated self to be “a woman in the street and a freak in the you-know-what,” to recognize the value and worth of her sexuality and wield it in gratitude.

    In “Girls,” the album’s first single, the singer brings her exaltation to her entire gender, asserting “My persuasion / can build the nation.” The former Virgin Queen has integrated her qualities of power, sexuality, and capacity to bear new life, noting that woman are “strong enough to bear the children / then get back to business.” Bearing children is one of her many capacities, but who she is is larger than any task, responsibility, or role, as she suggests in “Schoolin’ Life”:

    Beyoncé 4 – The Collection, by ValentineSobeit

    I’m not a teacher, babe
    But I can teach you something
    Not a preacher
    But we can pray if you wanna
    Ain’t a doctor
    But I can make you feel better

    Through this refrain if “I’m not, but I can,” the artist claims myriad potentialities and integrates them into the I from a place of self-empowerment, not subsuming the I into an archetype or role. This is a hallmark of the individuated self, able to take part in the world without being defined by it, in touch with the foundational core of essence, who she truly is at heart.

    In this reading, both the artist’s music and public persona are the alchemical workings that the artist is bringing to bear. Because life and art is process, neither she nor we can dwell forever in this space of celebration and achievement, or else it loses its value and freshness and begins to turn. From this nadir of the alchemical process, the manifested work now moves in an evolutionary arc, which mirrors the involutionary arc. The next stages are the experimental manifestations of the work’s energies, the difficulties encountered in expression, and the last mature expression of that initial spiritual impulse. From 4, the stable square, we move to 5, the pentacle of shifting and transformation.

    Complete Jungian readings of Beyoncé’s work:

  • After Victory, Governance

    The Emperor from the Etruscan Tarot

    Managing a chosen course has both richness and tedium. Once the householder has succeeded in acquiring a house and property, they must choose how and when to maintain it. The spiritual seeker develops most when learning to return to prayer and meditation on a regular basis, yet faces moments of excruciating boredom and stalled progress. Development is serpentine: we need integrity and discipline with adaptability. Some times I do not want to go running even when I know it will energize me. Some times I avoid contact with people for whom I like and care very much because something in me feels it is too much work or energy or some such thing.

    When we experience life as a lack, that absence of what we think we need can irritate and interfere with every moment until it resolves. We think we need stability, security, a marriage partner, the right job, and we get motivated by the quest. What is hard to appreciate while questing is that victory does not automatically complete us. Ruling a nation is very different from fighting to conquer it. Whatever we have avoided by focusing on lack is still there. Perhaps we have childhood wounds that awaken in the context of a loving marriage. Perhaps we have persistent existential questions of meaning that flourish in a “perfect” career. The urge to debauch arises even when we feel happy with life.

    The Emperor from Deviant Moon Tarot

    These unresolved challenges can threaten the accomplishments we fought to gain. This is not inherently a terrible thing, but it offers us the opportunity to look again at ourselves. Why do I seek this thing, whatever this thing is, that I want to destroy when I have it? What am I trying to get from the outside that I need on the inside?

    How can I bring the passion and vigor of the search into the diligence and responsibility of governance? Or how can I bring diligence and responsibility into the passion of the search? Any great work requires some balance of both. Creating something truly great needs dedication and the constant return to doing while remaining open to inspiration and guidance. We can make greatness in our lives.

  • Courting Joy

    I have written about the tyranny of positivity and I emphasize suffering consciously as a path to healing. Yet with all this, I believe my work is about cultivating joy.

    We each bring our own personal and cultural associations to particular words, and so my use of “joy” and “happiness” might differ from yours. J.D. Salinger wrote, in his short story De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, that “the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.” In that context, I believe the image was communicating that joy is more transient, leaking out quickly, where happiness has a hardy, enduring quality.

    I experience joy as a natural response to acceptance of one’s life as it is. My critique of the culture of “be positive!” is its fixated nature, where admission that one is not happy all the time is tantamount to admitting that one is somehow a failed, flawed person without a strong enough will. Joy does not replace other feelings, but accompanies us as we feel exactly what we feel in the moment. In the depths of grief, I have felt profound spikes of joy, because both emotions rise from the same well. Joy is that affirmation that we are alive, that life is a worthy task. When we get stuck in avoiding pain and clinging to happiness, or avoiding happiness and clinging to pain, we lose the capacity for joy.

    Three of Cups, from the Greenwood Tarot

    For some, joy waits at the bottom of a mess of painful memories and experiences. We might have to allow in a great deal of discomfort to make room for joy. Not suffering for the sake of suffering, we can aim to simply allow ourselves to feel what we feel in the moment—pain in the back, a sweet smell in the air, warm clothes.

    We can also court joy in our lives. We can choose to approach life with a joyful attitude, ready to celebrate whatever comes our way, and not experiencing life as a series of hard lessons or some conspiracy to keep us complaining and unhappy. This might feel facile or uncomfortable for folks who see the pain and weight of the world and believe pleasure and joy are unworthy responses. Again, grief and joy can coexist in the same heart. I would go so far as to say that they must, because grief is the necessary cost of love.

    Here’s a recipe for cultivating joy: Slow down your breathing, filling your belly with breath and exhaling completely. Notice your senses. If you can see, what can you see? If you can hear, what can you hear? If you can feel, smell, and taste, what do you notice? Breathe with this for five long breaths, allowing yourself to revel in sensation, even if some of it feels unpleasant.

    What are you grateful for? Do you have clean water? Warm clothing? Do you have a place to sleep? Do you have any or all of your senses to drink in these sensations?

    If you feel stuck, imagine that your heart is an open cup and pour out that which feels stagnant. Continue breathing in sensation and gratitude, imagining that these can fill your cup with joy. Practice radical acceptance—whatever arises within, whether it feels good or bad, respond to it with “Yes. And this. And this.”

    Joy in Being Alone by Lokiev