NobleSouls.Net

In conversation with PJ Francis last week over a cup of coffee we discussed the importance of joy in the pursuit of the spiritual path. P J Francis is a clinical psychologist and an heir to the teachings of Anthony de Mello with whom he worked for many years.

Joy as represented by The Trickster in the Path of the Rebel Soul, seems to me to be the very essence of spirituality in this plane of existence. When one experiences true Joy it seems that all things flow, that we are in synch with the beating of creation, that we transcend the ego and are completely in that moment of being. Nothing stands in the way when one experiences Joy. There are no obstacles and all things are possible. We are at one with the world and bear no malice towards any creature.

I believe that all beings seek Joy - that it gives us energy and life and is part of our right of being spiritual creatures. However, we have been led into believing that it is only the material accomplishments of life that bring Joy. It would appear that elements such as the media and ’society’ conspire to crush joy in our workplaces and society. They want us to be ’serious’, to follow the rules, to obey. Why?

Is ’society’ afraid that joy is liberating, anarchic, creative, frightening - is the idea of unrestrained joy a power that ’society’  fears?

But what Joy exists when one looks at one’s children talking excitedly about a new discovery or a lover’s face or when we take the time to reflect on a sunset or the complexity of a flower? ‘Simple’ Joy comes from the ability to take stock, to take time out of the world and begin to really see and experience the simple things that surround us and the heightened pleasure that they can bring when we slow down to work at a pace and speed at which the world is really unfolding itself and not the artificial speed of the current age.

Joy is a spiritual birthright but we have lost the eyes to see it and the spirit to experience it. To reclaim it we need to see the world through eyes that are renewed and a willingness to break out of accepted patterns in our lives.

Far back in pre-history woman was deemed divine.

She was the provider of children - a magical and mysterious thing for those who did not understand the science of creation. She sustained the tribe. Any wonder that the Earth became a Goddess who brought forth bountiful sustenance to feed our bellies and keep us nurtured? She provided the fruit and the creatures that kept us alive.

Came the gods of the arid desert and the power of the feminine waned as the power of the masculine grew into the ascendant . The time for the new male religions of Christianity, Islam and the Jewish sole masculine, paternal, god myths had come - with masculine energies of power, domination, competition, success, protection, technology and obedience. (Not that the power of the Goddess was not also destructive and fearful (the Goddess Kali and the Crone aspect of the Goddess in the West).

The Maya talk about the end of ages in 2012. It is an end - but not of the world, merely of a time. The age of masculine in the ascendant ends and the age of the feminine begins. The Maya could not comprehend a time when women would be in the ascendant but it is only the natural cycle of the ages.

We have seen the rise of women in the suffragette and liberation movement, in business and in all other aspects of society and now the increasing reclamation by women of motherhood - now by choice and in search of personal fulfilment. They are reclaiming their true power and bringing the feminine values of community, communication, networking, strength of endurance and nurture into a world that is now suffering from the ravages of having been disconnected long enough from Gaia the earth mother.

Welcome to the new age.