Heartfulness – Joy Meditation

Transcript

This is a heartfulness meditation on joy. The aim of this meditation is to incline our hearts and minds towards experiencing the simple feeling of joy. We will do this by noticing pleasurable sensations in the body. And by using an anchoring phrase.

Let’s begin by settling into the sitting posture. Sensing your body, and the space it takes up, allowing your sitting bones to fall towards the earth and your spine to straighten towards the sky.

Inviting the body to relax. May the body relax, sensing the breath moving in and out.

Taking a couple of deep breaths into the lower belly fully inhaling and exhaling. Then allowing the breath to return to its natural, simple rhythm. Moving all on its own, within the body.

Now see if you can sense pleasurable sensations. Perhaps these are in your body, perhaps it’s within your breath. See where your attention is called. What happens has you inclined towards pleasure? Perhaps there’s grasping or clinging. Maybe you even try and push it away. You don’t even think it exists. Allow all this to just be there and relax. Returning again to sensing simple pleasure. Breathing, sitting.

It is possible to use your relationship to pleasure as a doorway to joy.

The simple feeling of being here, breathing, sitting, can lead to an ordinary joy. That’s actually more sustainable than most kinds of pleasure that we typically think of, TV, movies.

This simple ordinary joy is available, yet we have to continue to incline towards it, and allow it to arise and pass.

It may be helpful to use an anchoring phrase, may joy arise. Dropping the phrase in with the breath and letting it go. May joy arise.

Remember, you can’t force it to happen, or make it last any longer than its natural ebb and flow. The trick is to learn to recognize it, it’s so simple and enjoy.

May joy arise.

Sometimes joy can be so subtle. It’s like blinking our eyes, may joy arise.

Notice if there’s any stories or themes of your thoughts that keep arising as a response or reaction to joy. You can use this as a mirror, and perhaps what is keeping you from this simple ordinary experience, may joy arise, along with the breath as we sit here.

May joy arise. Here amidst the beauty of simple pleasure.

This is a meditation, written and recorded by meditate IO. I’m Emily Horne. If you found this valuable, you can find more resources for training in the digital age at meditate.io.

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