Multi-Dimensional Mastery - December 2016 - Santa Fe

Joy for Absolutely No Reason at All

By Dr. Judy Scher

Now that we have arrived into what is called "The Season of Joy," I reflect on how, throughout most of my life, I had a longing for joy, but that experience had been mostly elusive. There have been moments of happiness: when I was with dear friends, or re-visiting early childhood memories where laughter seemed to go on endlessly around the kitchen table. But, as I got older, there were long empty spaces in between these moments. 

 

In pre-adolescence, and then adolescence, I don’t think I found happiness all that often; the dominant feeling was more like a hunger that could never be satiated; a hunger that there was never enough - never enough love, never enough attention, never enough of the feeling that I belonged, never enough self-worth.

 

A permanent weight established itself within my chest, solar plexus, and belly; a feeling that I was always carrying a heaviness that I couldn’t shake, no matter what I did.  That heaviness led me to an early engagement with poetry, exploring that deep sense of being wounded. In those early years, I could only write about despair, loneliness; about not being enough, not feeling loved. On and on, I expressed my hopelessness through words. Ironically, there was a side of me that thought by feeling so existential about life and living that I was, in some way, being cool. On the other hand, the truth of my experience was extremely painful. I fought with my demons every day.  It seemed there was no relief in sight.

 

Around that time, I began to hear a new voice rise within me, coming from my very depths. That voice said: this can't be the only way to exist; there must be another way to feel, to live. I didn’t have the answer, but my soul put me on a trajectory of exploration that has lasted decades.  

 

And here I am today, in my fifties, with a smile on my face, because I now feel something daily that my younger self would have thought an impossible miracle. It didn’t happen because of doing anything specific. Paradoxically, everything was necessary to bring me to this very moment, this empowered alignment of my being. I am here now, receiving the confirmation of a life where I am opened to learning, willing to listen, and accept everything as the path to living an awakened life. 

 

I am sitting here and simply feeling joy. Joy for no particular reason. It is simply what is. 

 

Joy for absolutely no reason is the evidence that life is on our side, bigger than we could ever imagine. Our pain is asking us to wake up, to go beyond our small identity and story, and to realize the love that we are. Our pain is asking us to experience our interconnectedness with all things, to surrender that which doesn’t serve, to have compassion when things feel hard and allow ourselves to soften into the fullness of our own hearts.

 

In this Season of Joy, my wish for you is to stay the course.  And to know whatever your inner experience is of life, there’s more.  And just like breadcrumbs marking the path, having Joy rise for no reason at all, tells you that you are on the right track. 

 

Judy Scher, D.C. is Director of the Scher Center in Santa Fe since 1992. She is an international teacher, workshop leader, and keynote speaker. The Scher Center utilizes cutting edge reorganizational healing tools including Network Spinal Analysis Care. For more info go to www.schercenter.com

or call 505 989-9373. Live Wild. Live Wise. Celebrate the Magic of an Integrated You.