Hi, welcome back to Day Five

of this meditation challenge

on Coming Home to Yourself.

I really hope you enjoyed

yesterday's session with Melli,

where you were exploring, moving

from longing to belonging.

And I hope that connected you to,

um, your inherent self-worth and gave

you an ability to access more of an

experience of belonging, if that's

something that you've been lacking.

So, uh, I'm really excited

about today, where we're going

to be exploring awakening joy.

Awakening, joy.

Now there's a quote that comes to

mind when, whenever I talk about

joy, it's by Alan Cohen and he

says, "Don't postpone joy until

you've learned all of your lessons."

Joy is the lesson.

So notice how that lands for

you at this point in your life.

You know, I, I, one of the things I've

found in teaching about joy And practices

that inherently cultivate joy, is that

we have a lot of obstacles to joy.

Not just external, yeah,

those can be there, but I'm

talking about mental obstacles.

A lot of reasons that we don't feel

like we deserve joy or we're not worthy

of it, or we can only have joy when

we fix that or fix that, or somebody's

going through something difficult so

how could I possibly experience joy?

And I think the invitation I want to

make to you today to, to start, um,

is just the, the potential, opening to

the potential that it would be okay to

experience joy amid everything going

on in your life and in the world.

And that, perhaps it's one of the greatest

acts of rebellion and also the thing

that is most needed, because in order

to sustain ourselves for the work that

we're passionate about, the healing

work that we're trying to do, taking

care of other people who are suffering,

we need to be able to experience joy.

It is the thing that rejuvenates us, that

restores us, that that fills our energy

reserves to continue to show up for a

lot of suffering that is in the world.

And so if we're putting it off until

this gets fixed or that it gets

fixed, or there's no problems left,

we're going to go an entire lifetime,

because there's always something more.

There's always something that

can be better, that can be

changed, that can be more just.

And we have to do that work for

sure, but it's also okay to be

open to the pockets of joy that are

available to us when they're there.

So I hope you can take that in.

And also as a practice, as you're

going throughout the day, you can

start by just exploring for yourself,

what is your particular flavor of joy?

Because a lot of times we think it's

this big ecstatic experience, or we're

just going to be totally overwhelmed

with a smile and bursts of goodness.

And that might not feel

as accessible right now.

Maybe it is, and that's great.

But yours might be more of a flavor of,

uh, we could say self compassion or a

sense of ease, ease, or peace or balance,

or even neutrality can be experienced

as, uh, a feeling of joy when we really

allow ourselves to appreciate that.

Oh, there's nothing happening right now.

And this also represents the

absence of all of the things I'm

often pushing away or don't want.

And when we do find our flavor of joy,

which, you know, once this is over in

the meditation, you can assess throughout

your day of like, where do I find some

joy and how can I find more of that?

And since there are an infinite number of

permutations of what that can look like,

I'll, I'll leave that journey for you to

explore, to take some time to understand.

But once you identify a few things,

the real key thing is letting

yourself take it in because a

lot of times we just pass by it.

As Rick Hanson says, the brain

is like Velcro for the negative

Teflon for the positive.

But what he suggests is giving yourself

about 20 to 30 seconds to really feel

the experience of a positive emotion,

really feel the experience of happiness.

And what this will indicate to

the brain is that this is an

experience worth paying attention to.

This is an experience worth

taking in when it's here.

And that is what will rejuvenate us.

It will restore us.

So we'll, we'll do some of this

in our meditation today, giving

you the opportunity to feel into

some joy and cultivate some joy.

But as you go about your day today,

see if you can notice like first what

your flavor of joy is and where it

shows up for you, where you can help

facilitate more of it and really let

yourself take it in when it's there.

Thank you for your practice and let's

settle in for today's meditation.