Several years ago, I was doing some reading and research into a 13th century Irish fragment known in English as The Cauldron of Poesy. The document talks about the kinds of experiences that we have which awaken the inner creative energies of our lives. One of those experiences is the experience of joy. 

We live in a world where people do not often refer to joy. Not much at all. I think of myself as someone who values joy very much, and yet if you were to have pressed me back then for examples of joy in my life, I would have sputtered around trying to come up with an answer. What I discovered about myself back then is that there was, in fact, plenty of joy in my life, but I had almost no regular experience of naming it, of sharing the word and experience with other human beings or other human beings who felt comfortable doing the same with me.

Where is the joy in my life? After spending a considerable amount of time pondering this, what I discovered is that there is a portal for me, an opening to joy. This opening allows me to connect my life right now with what are truly experiences of joy. That portal or opening is gratitude. Have a look for yourself.

Stop wherever you are, and take a moment to open the portal of gratitude. Look around, inside your life, in the immediate area around your body, and find ONE thing that you feel gratitude for. Keep going back to it–why are you grateful for this thing? As you allow yourself to feel grateful for it, where do you feel it in your body? What does this one thing connect to in the rest of your life? Keep going over these connecting points of gratitude. Take maybe 2 or 3 passes over them, reminding yourself of why you are grateful. And then. Notice. Has something shifted inside? Are you feeling a little lighter? Has any of this made you smile, or relax, or breathe more deeply? These are waves of joy beginning to flow over the shore of your life. 

If that ancient document is right, that experiences of joy feed our creative energies, then it may be that as modern people, by failing to connect with joy, we are starving ourselves of our best, most creative moments. Here is this simple way back to finding our joy: open the window of gratitude. 

~Robert Patrick

If these kinds of questions and experiences sound familiar, you might find spiritual direction a good way to explore them.  Here’s how to get started.