Why Can’t We Create Joy?

 

Photo Credit: Good Housekeeping

Why Can’t We Create Joy?

We should learn to live in a climate of divine delight, breathe in it. It is only a question of remembering, and it comes. And we can do it very easily. We can easily become miserable; we can easily become blissful; bliss is one’s own creation.

And once we have learned the fact – that it is our own creation, heaven or hell – then there is no point in being miserable, no point in choosing hell. We go on choosing hell because we are not aware that we are the creators. We think we are forced to be in it, somebody else is doing it, and we go on finding scapegoats. We go on avoiding the real factor that is behind it: it is us. When we are in misery, remember, we are its creators, and we can uncreate it immediately because it is just imagination. So, we can attain inner realisation if we sincerely follow these three steps.

Firstly, recognise that misery is our own creation.  People are such great artists in creating misery – they have become so skilled. That’s all that they create; they don’t create anything else. And naturally, life after life they have been in the profession of creating misery for themselves; they have become proficient. They are not amateurs; they are professionals.

Once we recognise that misery is our own creation, with that very recognition it starts disappearing like smoke. It is no more solid. How can it be solid when we see that we are creating it? How can we go on creating it when we recognise the fact that we are creating it! In that very recognition something clicks; the misery becomes separate from us. The bridge is broken. And that is one of the greatest steps.

The second step is that we can create our joy, our delight. If we can create misery, then why can’t we create joy? That follows like a shadow to the first. In fact, to create misery is more difficult than to create joy. If we can do the difficult job then the second is easier, far easier, because it is far more in tune with our nature; that’s what we desire.

We don’t desire misery and yet we create it. It is against us, so if we can create that which is against us then the second thing is child’s play: to create joy, delight. That is the second step – when we create a climate and we live in it; we create our own world. We paint our own world; we sing our own song. For the first time we become individuals and for the first time we become free; now nobody can disturb us. If we want to get disturbed, that’s another thing; that too is our choice. But we are never a victim again so we never make anybody else feel guilty for it.

The final step is when we have understood that we create misery, we create joy; then we must be separate from both because the creator cannot be his own creation. We can paint a picture but we cannot become the painting. We can write a novel but we don’t become the novel. We can sculpt a beautiful statue but we don’t become it. The creator can’t become his own creation.

Thus, misery and joy both disappear… then there is utter silence. We can’t define it as joy. No, not even that is possible. It is so much more than joy, it cannot be confined to the word joy, bliss, no. No word will be able to express it; it is just a wordless silence. 

Ecstasy but with no movement. Nothing moves in it because nothing is in it. It is total silence, total absence. First misery disappears, joy, delight arrives; then joy disappears, the witness arrives, and finally the witness is gone. That is moksha, that is the great nothingness.