Taking Care of Joy

Dan Oestreich on self-care and leadership today…

…am I living this joy today or have I covered it up in my search for accomplishment, in my devotion to my causes?

He continues on about responsibility, how it can take us outside of ourselves, away from ourselves. Alternatively, we take it too much into ourselves. The sensations show up for me as deflation and collapse, pressure and stiffness, grabbing or resisting.

Joy, on the other hand, is something that I find naturally arising, whenever I can come back to myself and restart the pulsation. I come back to a view that sees me and my surroundings, me and my job, me and my relationships, as simultaneous but distinct. Dan quotes Pema Chodron on the sensation of softening.

If I understand correctly, the choice to soften to the world lets the two, me and the rest of everything else, pull apart a bit, mind settles releases its grip. Body settles. Rest becomes possible. Muscles slacken. Tissues stretch. Fluids and joints move more freely. I embody the resiliences Dan’s stories illustrate. In mutuality terms, I let myself be as real to me as is everything arising outside of me, work, relationships, interests, all distractions.

This is related to why I’m about to turn down my fifth and sixth chances to move to a bigger cell here. I find that there is no room in this smallest cell for anything but me. The rest of the Centre stays outside. I am held closely, inside, and solidly, distinct.

My own habit in work is to make my field of awareness quite big. Sometimes I get wispy and thin in the middle. I sense the whole of this building complex, paying attention to everything a little and to myself almost nothing at all. Then I come back to my cell, and come back to myself.

I wonder now if that is the same effect as is provided by an internet connection. Distinct because distant, while wired still into the web? Joy as a binary pulse? Everybody wave.