The Sphere of Joy (In Image Format)

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Overview: The Sphere of Joy

The world and sometimes our own lives often seem filled with troubles. How often do you find yourself thinking that everyone else is the problem, or wishing that you could just make everyone behave correctly and treat you right?

If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, we don't have control over other people in most cases. Although sometimes we can persuade others to change, trying to force someone else to change against their own choice generally engenders only conflict.

So what can we do? We can each decide to change ourselves. But how? Where do we start?

The Sphere of Joy is that part of all human activity that is the primary locus of where we start. The emphasis on the personal in this sphere tells us that the path to appropriate and effective change, change that works, change that sticks, starts with the activities in this sphere and builds outward.

Few of the choices of our lives are as important as the choice of how to seek to have more Joy in our lives. Are we going to choose to move toward or away from the Divine Spark that lies in our core? What choice could be more fundamental than that?

Further, that choice determines the particular set of actions that we will use.

Let's examine these sets of actions in more detail and explore some of the more general concepts and consequences that result from each of them.

Details: Actions That Create Joy (Pure or Warped)

A Review of the Choice Associated with Joy

In Everyday Desires and Choices, we first described the principal choice we each make when seeking our human desire of Joy. That choice was to seek Joy through Ennoblement, False Joy through Corruption.

Remember: If you don't know how to choose a positive destination, any destination (good or bad) will do. If you don't know where you truly want to go, how can you possibly hope to get there? If you don't know how you "should" act in your daily life in the Now, how can you possibly know if your choices and actions are helping or hurting?

Well, this is where you start: Choose the Path of Ennoblement or the Path of Corruption.

Remember also: You cannot achieve a good end by using bad means. Your choice of the path you take in the Now matters.

Choosing to seek Joy by following the Path of Ennoblement simply means that the person has made the choice to seek Joy by lifting himself and others up to a higher level of Being or of functioning. The highest joy is in connecting to the spark of the Divine at our own core and then helping others find and connect to that spark in themselves.

However, every choice has another side to it, and this one is no exception. In this case we have to recognize that it is possible to choose a negative path toward a false kind of Joy. In this case the negative path is to choose to force or tempt or seduce oneself or others away from Beingness, away from the internal spark of the Divine in each of us. When a person obtains his pleasure from addictions (which are lies) or from dragging other people away from the Divine, he is obtaining a false form of Joy.

Finally, remember that any choice is only theoretical until one selects a particular action and takes that action in the world. The commission of a specific action collapses the possibilities into one actuality.

In seeking Joy we face a major choice with two basic possibilities that are far apart in their quality. Each of these two possible paths has a myriad of possible actions associated with it. The actions in a set of actions may seem wildly variant.

What we will find is that all the actions in a specific set partake of the quality of the chosen Path.

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Conclusion

How many times have you had someone tell you that they are in effect following the Path of Ennoblement when their actions clearly show that they lie to other people, hate someone, hurt a neighbor, or enjoy it when a successful rich man falls into bankruptcy?

By examining the quality of the action you are about to take, you can begin to see the actual nature of the choice of path that you have made. If the act partakes of corruption, of addiction, of lying, of seduction, of temptation, then it is indicating to you that you have chosen the Path of Corruption. You either have to acknowledge your choice and own it, or engage in hypocrisy, saying you are doing ennobling things when in fact you are doing corrupting things.

On the other hand, you may want to change paths and shift from the Path of Corruption to the Path of Ennoblement. If so, then the key to altering your behavior, and the key to bending your course through Life upward into a better direction and goal, lies in lifting your conscious awareness up out of the exigencies of the moment and seeing your apparent choice and imminent action from a higher perspective. From that perspective, you can decide not to take that action, but rather to back up to the choice again and start over.

If you find that you are taking actions that partake of corruption, just stop. You can't go in a different direction, a better direction, if you don't stop going in the corrupted direction you have been taking. The means that you choose to attain your goal matter: those means are the direction you go.

"Just Stop" is not an easy admonition to follow when you are addicted to a lie, or when you habitually create your own sense of self by gleefully dragging other people down to your level, or when you are tempted to adopt corrupted or murderous means to get to some future Utopian Dream of Ideal Perfection.

Just stop. Then start doing it right. Start being a good example. Start choosing Ennoblement. Seek the true forms of Joy, and you will find them everywhere you look.