By Noura. Follow: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Joy is the state of mind that remains when there’s no fear or suffering.
Sometimes, joy shows up in our lives in the most unexpected ways. I always remember that night when I was working on a project that involved a lot of numbers and calculations for which I was using an excel spreadsheet. I had been working on it for a few days and yet, there I still was, working late because the deadline was fast approaching. I was tired and frustrated because nothing I tried was working.
After a few hours of deep frustration, it suddenly occurred to me that even though I had no choice about working on the project, I had a choice about how I was going to do it. In that moment, I decided that I was going to commit to giving my best no matter how long it took and nothing more. The immediate result of this choice for infinite patience was peace.
The contrast of going from deep frustration one moment, to deep peace the next moment, was so startling because I never thought that just changing my mind, could have such an immediate impact on my experience of the moment. I was still looking at the same spreadsheet, but I was seeing peace instead of conflict.
I still had not solved the project but I was no longer upset about it. A colleague and good friend of mine was also working late that night. He was a very brilliant man who loved to solve challenges. I enlisted his help by asking for his input. We had a lot of fun trying to solve the project, and by the end of the night, we figured it out. The irony is that even if we hadn’t solved the project, I would still have been happy because I solved my attitude, which was making me unhappy. Since the cause of my unhappiness was not the outcome of the project, solving it, or not, would not have mattered as far as my happiness was concerned.
This was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. I learned so much and yet it didn’t happen in a spiritual place, it happened in the middle of the grind of my daily life. From this experience, I learned that all moments offer equal opportunity for learning. Learning is not conditional on a special book, a special person, or a special place. What’s primary is cultivating the conditions in the mind that make learning possible.
Peace is the primary condition for learning because when the mind is filled with the noise of conflict, we can’t hear. Making the choice for infinite patience, produced the immediate result of peace, which helped me to learn about the meaning of joy. I learned that joy is not an attribute outside of me that I get from someone or something. It is the state of mind that remains when there is no suffering. Suffering comes from our interpretation of what our physical senses report to us.
In my particular experience with the project, the fact was that the spreadsheet was not working. Then there was my interpretation of that fact, which created conflict and suffering in my perception. Below are few things I didn’t realize I was believing:
- I could not be happy if my spreadsheet didn’t work. Was that true? Why didn’t I question this?
- I didn’t question it because my sense of self was tied to the outcome of the project. If the project didn’t work, it meant that “I was a mistake”, which was not acceptable to me.
- The correction was “I made a mistake” which could be corrected. I was not a mistake because the project had nothing to do with who I was, it was just something I did. There was no longer any fear or need about the outcome of the project because I saw clearly that it had nothing to do with who I was.
- I still cared about doing the best job possible, but I was able to get myself and my needs out of the way so that I could allow the project to unfold as it would.
- The project had nothing to do with who I was in the sense that what I thought about it didn’t change it in any way. It was what it was. However my thoughts about the project had an impact on how I experienced it, and I could do something about that.
- I thought I had no choice about how I was feeling. This was because I had forgotten my mind and the power of choice that’s in it. The mind is about how we do things. It’s about the state of mind from which we act.
The practice of mindfulness is not about being in a peaceful state all the time, it’s about remembering the choice for peace when we find ourselves caught in conflict. Even if we can’t choose peace in that moment, if we can at least begin to remember that there is another way to look at it in which there is no conflict, that’s a great step forward. You can read more on meditation in this previous article: The Purpose and Meaning of Meditation.
When we’re not aware that there is another way of looking, we have no choice. When become aware that there is another way of looking, then the choice for conflict becomes a temptation. When we have undone all the false beliefs that prevent us from enjoying the moment without conditions, then there is no choice because peace is the only option we see. There is nothing else to choose.
Going from conflict to peace is a process where we begin by seeing conflict and nothing else. Then we transition to seeing that there is an interpretation that produces peace, and there is another one that produces conflict. In the final stage, conflict has completely disappeared and no longer exists as an option.
Conflict disappears from our perception when we solve the problems of the mind. There are always two parts to solving a problem. There is the mental aspect, which is our attitude, and then the physical aspect which could be that my car is not working today. I could solve the problem by taking it to the mechanic. But if I don’t solve my attitude, I’ve solved only half of the problem because my attitude stays with me. If I don’t solve my internal problems, life will keep bringing them to the surface until they are resolved. A positive attitude will allow me to see these challenges as opportunities to heal myself.
Part of solving the mental aspect of a challenge is to be aware of how we are approaching the challenge. When we have judgements that say that life should be a certain way or not, we can no longer be flexible. This doesn’t mean we accept things as they are. This means we meet life without resistance, and then we act from this place of peace. This is about making peace with where we are so the mind doesn’t generate conflict. Then we can be mentally efficient by focusing our energy on what we can do rather than arguing against that facts of a situation.
Part of learning how to remain calm is watching how we give power to events to disturb our peace. This helps us to begin to flip our perceptions of peace and joy. Rather than starting from a place of lack where we see peace and joy as things to get from someone or something, they become states of mind we can choose and keep by not giving anything the power to take them away from us. This empowers us to take charge of our mindsets rather feeling victimized by external events.
When I begin to realize that I am my own problem, this puts the power back in my hands because this means that I am also my own solution. As the Buddha said “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.”
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