High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘joy’

“All theologies are straws His sun burns to dust;
Knowing takes you to the Threshold, but not through the Door.” ~Rumi

Before they inhabited their earth-forms– the strong, tublar stems, the sleek, slender leaves–the grass spirits thought that they knew exactly what lay ahead.

They were, after all, well-schooled.  They knew about the life cycle of the grass forms, about the vicissitudes of weather, the varieties of soil. They had learned about birds and bugs, caterpillars and butterflies, and about the host of plant forms they might have as neighbors.

Yes, they felt quite prepared as they set out on their adventure.

So imagine their surprise when they actually felt the powerful drive inside them pushing them to split open their seed casings and sprout through the moist soil, when they tasted the fresh air and drank the sparkling rain, when they felt the warmth of the sun, the caress of the breeze, the magnificent song of it all and the motion and splendor of sky!

What teaching could have told them of this beauty?  What words could contain this grace?

When their earth season had run its course and they rose from the forms they had worn, leaving them behind in lovely heaps on the earth mother’s floor, they were filled with unspeakable joy.  And they sailed on it, higher and higher, giving thanks and singing hymns of praise.

Look at it whirl!  Galaxies and electrons, cells and seas spin and splash and swirl.  Tongues and tails wag.  Butterflies and eyelids flutter.  Giraffes teeter-totter across the plains and the plains dance, too.

Hearts beat.  Lungs pump. Thoughts fly, and the moments that give rise to them.

Even the slow things dance.  Elephants and turtles lumber.  Buds unfold.  Rocks turn to sand.

It’s all one ever-changing, glorious dance, my friends, to the song of the Yes, played in the key of infinite joy.

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Both he and his wife, she told me, were avant garde pianists, gifted with a remarkable and rare ability to read random visual patterns as if they were sheet music.

They would sit at twin pianos and someone would project on the wall a photo of some colorful abstract painting or design.  Immediately the two of them would begin to play, translating the piece into wondrous melodies that perfectly captured its mood.  She had heard them herself, she said.

I thought of her story when I saw the berries, their reds sprinkling the woods with cheer.  So bright and merry were they that I could almost imagine how their melodies would dance across a keyboard, joy notes, ringing out their sheer delight in being.

Maybe on other dimensions, they read the patterns of our lives as music.  Do you suppose?  Just in case, let’s write long passages of wonder and of joy for them—little love notes, in celebration of our being.

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Past what we know, beyond the measurable edges of things, the Watchers dwell, enfolding all they observe in their love.

Nothing escapes their notice.  The rising and falling, the coming in and going out of things, all that occurs within time and all that transcends it stretches beneath their gaze.

They see the patterns; they comprehend the meanings.  Every movement matters and is a part of Being’s bliss and is always fresh and new.

And they take it all in, and it adds to their joy as it unfolds and unfolds and unfolds.

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful.”  ~Mahatma Gandhi

One day, an old tale goes, God was walking in His garden when He bent to peer at the waters of a beautiful, still pool and saw, for the very first time, the perfect reflection of His own face.

Immediately, He gave out a great laugh, and it rang, booming, throughout infinite space, creating worlds upon worlds as it rolled.  And that’s how the universes came to be.

That one, booming laugh still vibrates today, bountifully birthing all the shining worlds and all that fills them.   And every dancing particle partakes of God’s nature, creative and loving, and mirrors His endless joy.

Hidden in every moment a pallet of possibilities awaits.  A flicker of thought, caught, can change everything.

Forget the routine.  What is your heart calling you to do?  To feel?  So see?

What if you turned up the light just a little?  Decided to add a dab of play?  Stretched a line out in a new direction?

Take a chance.  Push the limits.  Transcend the expected.

Don’t let can’t hold you back; attitude is everything.  It makes its own rules. Reach for freedom and joy.

In the end, you get to choose.  With all these splendid colors before you, how would you like to paint the day?

The winds of change swept through the trees, exchanging their greens for red and rust, yellow, crimson and gold.

It was such a small price to pay for such magnificence.  The leaves had served so faithfully the summer through.  They deserved the reward.

They reveled in their new pigments, of course, and shouted them to the sky and to the lake below.  Birds sailed on the colors.

And the lake, filled with the luminous peace that births all beauty, stilled herself and reflected their joyous hues back to them in celebration of their glory.

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For a full week October had worked beneath leaden skies, rain veiling her artistry.

Now she could hold back no longer.  And so, when morning broke, it broke with great light, revealing a landscape of crimson and gold.

Its brilliance was almost too much bear.

Who were we to be blessed with such gifts?  What was the meaning of all this splendor? This unbridled, radiant joy?

Overnight, it seemed, the world was transformed into a sphere of glory, reviving us, uplifting us, filling us with wonder and with hope.

“Here,” sang the breeze, “this is for you.”

And the leaves danced in the warm air all around us and fell laughing at our feet.

All the way from the core of the infinite Yes it comes, up through the swirling pathways of starlight and atoms, curving, bending, pushing outward and outward into the form of these particular petals and leaves.

Here, beneath the autumn sky of this particular planet, on this particular day, it sings itself into expression, tenderly unfolding breath after breath after soft golden breath.

How amazing that this pattern of light, this long dance of the Yes, can leap synapses inside our brains to create in our minds a perception of beauty, in our hearts a response of joy.  How amazing that we can walk by and not even see it at all, and still it breathes its grace and dances golden in the sun.

“One who tries to imbibe the qualities of gods and brings them into practice, they are automatically blessed with radiance and good-fortune.” ~Sam Veda

Theirs, of course, was the mission shared by all flowers—to bring joy and beauty to the world.  But the chrysanthemums were advanced students who had mastered all the elementary skills.  So to them went the honor of closing out the year’s review.

In order to prepare, the mums got to spend the entire summer at the elite School of Glories where they were bathed in celestial symphonies and admitted to exhibits of the finest arts of the spheres.  Speakers from the furthermost dimensions came to hold intimate chats with them about the nature of harmony and order, and of the virtues of gentleness and strength.  They learned the subtlest secrets of the colors and to listen to the colors’ songs.  And they drank it all in with great humility and pleasure.

Then one morning, beautiful September appeared, golden and glowing, and said to them, “It is time.”  She led them to the Hall of Mysteries, and one by one they entered, and one by one they drifted down to earth to indwell their forms.

Feast on their loveliness when you see them, these last flowers of autumn, for it is heaven-sent and their radiance is intended for your joy.