I’ve had two readings in a row where Archangel Michael has made the same request of me: Be joy! Perhaps I can share my reactions to this request because I think those reactions say a lot about how it is that some people can resist the light. Because I myself resisted it.
The request brought up a lot of “stuff” in me. The first time he made it, reading before last, I laughed and was not even up to considering it seriously. This next reading, I got that he was actually serious and spent some time looking at why it was so hard for me to even consider this request.
What being joy flushed up for me was the fact that I’ve never adequately grieved the loss of my mother. The obstacle for me in being joy – and this may say a lot about why some people experience the rising energies as an upset – was that it came smack up against my unacknowledged and unexperienced sadness and grief at the loss of my mother.
Hey, I’m up for experiencing for the sake of the collective. I can take on experiencing grief. This one’s on me.
Admittedly this is not the kind of blockage that would see me go out and do something crazy or malevolent. But it is the kind of blockage that shows why, while some people respond to increased light with anticipation and satisfaction, others may respond to it with dread and irritation.
Now, the times being what they are, I don’t think it’s necessary to break down and become a whimpering mass to experience one’s grief any more. We seem to be getting a great deal of help in processing our upsets these days from the other side. (And every upset seems to be coming up to be processed.) I think it’s only necessary now to acknowledge one’s blockage and be with the feelings that result to see it lift.
So here I am acknowledging that I still feel unexperienced sadness and grief at the loss of my mother, lo, these many years ago.
And as I allow that sadness and grief to move through me, I feel the first joyful thought arise in me. It’s actually a memory. I see myself sitting in a ten-day Vipassana workshop with A.N. Goenka intoning, “May all beings be happy … happy … happy … happy.” And his voice trails off. Anyone who’s ever sat a ten-day with Goenka will remember how he says that sentence in a state of half-consciousness, half bliss.
And I see, as I listen to my inner Goenka, that I’ve always taken a very serious view of my life, that it was always about creating a world that worked where the world of my childhood did not work. So I didn’t have time for joy because “I was on a serious mission.”
But now I see that a world of joy is a world that works. Being joy is the way to contribute to a world that works. If all the world were joyful, this world would work.
So, even though it looks silly to me, irresponsible, and air-headed to consider that being joy is somehow a contribution to having the world work, I do now admit that it probably is.
For the first time in my life, I take a breath and say to myself, “May all beings be happy,” and the breath encounters no resistance. I think of all the people I’ve considered airheads because they felt amazing joy. And now I just may be one of them.