TO THE AWAKENING LOST JOY WITHIN

People talk about springtime as a time of renewed hope, rebirth, regeneration, and growth—a time when the rain and snow give way to sunshine and warmth.

But what happens if those things offer you less than the desired or expected outcome of joy?

How do you get back the joy you’ve lost along the way?

If you’re like me (as I was) or many of my high-sensitive clients, the sensation of joy can be an elusive emotion. As one woman recently told me, “There we were in the Bahamas on vacation, sipping piña coladas on the beach and watching the waves roll in, and all I felt was emptiness. I knew I was what I was supposed to be feeling, but there was nothing there.”

It’s as if the ability to experience joy has been turned off by the pain of a past, present, or even anticipated future reality. As if that reality has shut us down…has shut us off for good.

When you have learned over the years that the only way to survive is to block off your feelings, it’s a lesson that tends to stick. There is simply too much at stake. The potential risk of ridicule, harsh critique, or banishment. If you are someone experiencing abuse, often there is a very plausible element of your survival at hand

When we seal ourselves off due to necessity, we normally do not realize how much else we are shutting down because those protective devices, the defensive stances, and the armor of stability we have constructed are solidly built walls born of that necessity. Necessity without which it feels we would surely suffer. Or die.

Fear of such a death, whether physical, emotional, and/ or spiritual, is not something to be taken lightly. Not only does it spur us into action in potentially difficult situations, but it can drive us to access courage we never knew we had.

However, when fear does not create courageous action, when it does not inspire new ways of production thought, it has the potential to destroy the very thing that makes life worth living.

The joy of being alive. Because everything has an energy, a vibration of its own, we cannot discount the energy behind any fear we hold and the way it can seep through the cracks of our barricaded being.

I would like to share something that occurred recently. I have a large, magnificent piece of pale green calcite that my husband gifted me before his passing. Like all my crystalline rock-like pieces, I keep them in a special location. Since I moved to my new home last year, it has sat on my fireplace mantel in a place of honor.

A new friend had come over with her two teenage girls. Both girls were curious about everything they could see and touch in my house. When they asked about the stone, I joined them at the mantel to share its origins in my life.

As we looked, we all noticed at the same time some areas where yellow particles had collected on the calcite’s surface. I went to brush off the particles, but they would not budge. They were not powder or particles. They could not be moved.

This had happened once before, years ago. I had gone to dust the stone, once again believing the yellow substance on the surface to have landed there, perhaps by a flower in the vicinity, and let its pollen grain fall. When it did not wash off or flake off with a flick of a finger, I felt as if it had grown out of the crystal…and kept my thoughts to myself.

Now, it had happened again. The yellow particulate had appeared out of the stone as if by magic. As if the rock, hard and closed, an inanimate object, impermeable, impenetrable, and unyielding, had produced from its very core a substance that was alive.

How could it not be alive if it had literally grown out of the rock?

My research has not uncovered anything to explain how or why this substance appears periodically on my beautiful chunk of calcite. For that reason, I choose to see it as a message from Spirit to remind me that even out of something (or someone) with a hard, defensive, shut-down exterior, life can indeed flourish.

I have learned that calcite is a powerful amplifier and energy cleanser to remove and releases negative energy that prevents personal growth; considered a chakra healer and a healer of the heart’s pain.

It is often suggested that when we undertake meditative practices or are searching for more joy in our lives, we go back to that place when we were young—before we learned that we had to aspire to perfection, to be right, to do things in the right way, when we played without need to address the outcome or result. But what if you don’t remember that time? How do you get “back to that place” if you’ve never been there?

This hunk of calcite sprouting yellow particulate teaches me how. No matter how closed down, locked up, or radically constructed our walls of protection, the energy of a loving Source that exists inside us is always looking for a way to climb up through the cracks of those prison-like walls. We don’t have to know how it will get out, how it will manifest, the route it will take, or the form it will take. What we do need to know is that it lives.

Because where there is life, the potential for joy lives as well.

Heidi Connolly, The Celestial Professor, is a purveyor of down-to-earth s pirituality. She has authored a number of books, including Crossing the Rubicon and The Gateway Café, as well as her upcoming, Elevate Your HSP-ness: How to Live a High-Frequency Life that Amplifies Your Vibration, Celebrates Your Sensitivities, & Uplifts the World! Heidi is an intuitive coach and medium who works with those who wish to communicate with loved ones on the other side as well as Highly Sensitive People to develop their sensitivities and intuition. A spirit-guided musician, Heidi’s flute recordings are renowned for the healing power of their encoded frequencies. Heidiconnolly.com hspness.com harvardgirledits.com theobitwriter.net