Maximum Joy, Minimum Drama!

I'm cleaning it all up!
I'm looking deep inside
at how I created drama throughout my  life as a distraction form joy
I used to think pleasure and happiness were synonymous with joy
but now I know there is something else.
Pleasure is ego satisfaction and is based on whatever pleases me
not necessarily the best thing for me, I indulged in pleasurable fancies most of my life.
I thought I was happy because I knew what pleased me,
I did as I pleased, and enjoyed other pleasure seekers.
they were my model of happiness.
I always knew something was missing though.
Pleasure and happiness  were THINGS to pursue,
but I started seeing that Joy  and Faith were holy.
Joy and Faith are ways of being that have a spiritual base and create a balance in life.
We pay for our pleasure and receive intense dramatic responses to feeding our egos
The drama reinforced my desire for seeking pleasure and was the reward
and attention for being a pleasure seeker.

Joy on the other hand attracts peace and balance
Joy prepares me for genuine happiness, in that
it is coupled with peace.
The drama of being a pleasure seeker brings gratification rather than genuine happiness
and a need to be refilled with pleasure  over and over, like a drug, to maintain
the gratification .

The cycle created by this took me away from joy , genuine happiness and , balance
all ingredients for faith.....

As I transform my pleasure seeking to joy seeking,
I release the drama and insecurity of riding the gratification roller coaster
and find that I take joy in my connections to the people in my life  (not what they do for me)
in being present and in bliss ( I will talk about bliss later)
and having balance and genuine happiness ( for the first time in my life)

This was not taught to me as I grew up and took painstaking trial and error to understand
Take this in and feel the words!
I would like to hear how it resonates with you......

BD
Thu, Sep 5, 2002
8:09 AM
maxjoy@briand@creativechildren.org