The only place that joy is found?

Here and now, is the only place joy is found, people love to search for love, happiness, meaning, joy though no one who has gone on such a quest has ever found a destination to reach it, such things are only ever in the moment and within ourselves. However it can be discovered on a journey and that is why it is so romantic, it is the basis of many stories, there and back again is the plot line that rules them all, we believe that anything that is worth having should be worked for, it should not be easy, it needs to be hard or it can not have value, if it is free it is worthless. Our minds work in narratives, it tells the story of who we are by having binding moment of consciousness, that links the past to the present and foretells our future, it is a process that ties us to cause and effect, to the journey, so that we can manage our awareness of time and allow us to take advantage of our predictive powers, it is our edge in the survival of the fittest, but to thrive you must move past just surviving.

Survival does not care about our happiness it only keeps us in the game, it wins by being the last person standing, whether that person is happy is not an concern, if you are alive it has won, it has fulfilled it's purpose, and it is not even an intention purpose, it is just the outcome of something that can survive. Once the ability to survive exists it reproduces by definition like a chemical reaction, once it starts it has to finish, there is a cascade of cause and effect that results in a final state, but with survival there is no final state except extinction or the heat death of the universe. When that ball has started rolling it carries on, evolution is a certainty and it must increase in complexity as that is the internal pressure that is inherent in the process, any mistakes in copying must be an advantage or disadvantage, even if normally it is the later, it only take a fraction of the mistakes to be advantageous for that mutation to over run the population.

Evolution is a process that favours complexity because more information and your ability to be an independent cause of action is such an advantage in a world of cause and effect that is must dominate. That is why wherever you find prey, predators will merge because they have an advantage, however that does not bring happiness, indeed the hope of happiness itself is just another survival advantage, being able to compare one situation and another on the basis of happiness, then take action to make the better situation happen is the principle advantage of a thinking mind. Which does not mean it actually exist, we might pursue it as a constitution right but the hope of happiness does not make it real, that hope is based on the idea that it is a place we find, we search for and we believe it is real because our mind mistake the comparison for reality, but it is in fact the carrot daggling in front of our eyes, it motivates action and the mind will even give you a dopamine hit for achieving an action but that is not happiness.

Happiness is just the change in circumstances happening but once it has happened the mind returns to comparison, that is what it there for, to seek the change circumstances that improves your chances of survival. If you move to a situation where you had a million dollar, you would presume that would make you happy, but it is entirely dependant on your previous situation, if you were poor you would be happy but if you were a billionaire you would be depressed. It is not real it is just the change in circumstances that is felt as happiness just like a change in temperature a sunny spring day feels warm but the same temperature in autumn feels like the start of winter, and it feels different because we are so good at comparing and are intelligent in our awareness about the circumstances. Though the real problem with happiness is that it is not sticky, we do not change the temperature and enjoy a long summer of happiness, if your happiness does not continue to change you feel unhappy, you have to keep on getting happier which as you know is impossible, everything plateau, infinite growth is not possible even in theory, let alone in practice.

Which begs the question what should we pursue if not happiness, the good news is that whilst happiness is the weather, the climate is your point of view, happiness is a measure of your external circumstances but joy on the other hand is your internal sense of ease with your circumstances that allows the presence of joy. You can feel joy on a run, doing nothing except walking to work, you can be in peace even when the world around you is falling apart. It is what happens when you stop searching and instead live in the moment with presence, it is a deliberate step away from the thinking mind obsession with the future, you can not think yourself to joy because the mind is never in the moment. You can get a sense of joy by deliberately disengaging from thinking, any activity that can produce flow also produces joy, flow being the state of engaging in a task that is difficult and achievable (for you), there is a valley of difficult in-between easy and impossible, that must be tread but when you do, when you are fully engaged, you literately forget who you are, your sense of self shuts down because you are engaged, there is no mind power left for the self and it's comparisons, you must devote everything to the task at hand.

It does not matter what the task is as long as it is difficult, that is why meditation is so rewarding because it bring you joy, and if you are not feeling joy when you are doing it, you know you are doing it wrong. Meditation works because it gives you presence, the same presence as flow does but it also allows you appreciate that presence as it is happening, that is because meditation is stable attention with broad awareness, the same state that is triggered in flow. By having presence with the state of presence, you have to have awareness of your mind and body, as it is always there and if you are fully aware of your body, you have to feel joy as it always physically present in your heart (literately not figurately), it is there in the same way the breath is always there. Whilst the breath is loud and dominating in our consciousness, that is why it is used as an anchor for our stable attention, it not the only constant presence, joy is there always, it is just quieter, sit there being joyful, thoughts distract you from this simple presence, but you can force your attention there, to check that it is presence. You just become physically aware of that space in the centre of your chest, and you can hold it for as long as you hold it in your broad awareness.

That is joy, the only place that joy is ever found, it is not outside of you, it is not in the future or the past, it is in the moment, this moment and none other, it is now and the only choice that you have to make is whether you want to be joyful now. To be clear if you are not joyful that is your choice, you are making it now by not allowing yourself to feel that presence in your chest, and I admit it is difficult to hold it all the time in your broad awareness, that is why I practise meditation, because I want more joy, I want to able to spend more time in presence with joy and the only way to do that is by increasing my broad awareness, that is why meditation is joyful because you get to spend time with your broad awareness that has to include joy or your awareness is not broad enough, it is the ultimate guide in meditation because if you are not feeling it you are not doing it right.

Which is why meditation is so important to me, it is the journey to joy, both by bringing it in the moment of practising and by helping joy linger for a little longer every time I feel it. As I know where it is, in the spiritual heart and physical centre of my body, it is easier to stay with it, I try not to identify it with thoughts or label it, I just feel it where it's presence is, and when I remember I bring my awareness back to it at random point of the day, it is so refreshing just to spend a moment with joy even in a busy day, and once you know that there is only one place where joy is found, you stop wasting your time on pursuing it through time and space. It was always here and nowhere else, the only place is here and now, you found it right at the beginning, you just had to find your way back to the only place you could never leave, there and back again we have gone, but as I told at the start, the only place that joy is found, here and now.