Making Meaning: Counseling Psychology & Buddhist Practices to Create & Live the Life You Want by Sasha Raskin

Making Meaning: Counseling Psychology & Buddhist Practices to Create & Live the Life You Want by Sasha Raskin

Author:Sasha Raskin [Raskin, Sasha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sasha Raskin, LLC
Published: 2021-09-26T22:00:00+00:00


Near and Far Enemies of Joy

The near enemy of joy is overexcitement, which can easily be mistaken for joy. Too often, people try to experience and show joy as an excited, euphoric state—even a feeling of being “high on life.” However, this perception does not connect us with others but keeps us separated, or as Chodron phrases it, authentic joy is a state of “appreciation that allows us to participate fully in our lives.”

When I experienced overexcitement, I often felt that I was not excited enough, that I needed more joy to feel fulfilled. At some points, I experimented with drugs and alcohol as a means to achieve this false joy, to increase and multiply it, or even get it going when I was miserable by not creating what I wanted in my life and not working on my self-growth. I would consume more and more in a futile effort to sustain the feelings.

The effort you put into sustaining and augmenting joy can also be very subtle. Sometimes during meditation, I will obsessively start making plans and inventing projects. I’ll decide I want to build a table, or reorganize my music studio, or even start a new business. Those thoughts get me excited, and my thoughts race. These fantasies also have magnetic force of their own. I think of more details, feeling high. Soon, however, I am not able to stop thinking, and I feel restless and uncomfortable in my body. When this happens, I usually get up from the meditation cushion.



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