What Drives Evolution? The Answer May Surprise You!
I have become completely captivated by a marvelous truth the world seems to have kept secret: Great Joy drives evolution.
This truth began its masterful unveiling at the start of the New Year, when I spent 30 days of creative, adventurous solitude in Morocco. Arriving home after what was the most consistently joyful and creatively generous month of my whole life, I thought, "While everyone has always emphasized the transformative power of suffering (with which I do not disagree), why has no one emphasized what for me has been even more transformative: the power of joy?"
My experienced truth felt so scandalous (especially to an enneagram 4), I was hesitant to speak or write of it too much. However, Reality seems insistent on me grasping this, and has continued to highlight that this is not just a truth for me, but for us all.
The morning meditation series I offered during Lent featured the writings of Hafiz, as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky. This poetry is saturated by joy and the invitation to joy. At one point, Hafiz/Ladinsky insists:
God wants to see
More love and playfulness in your eyes
For that is your greatest witness to Him.
The thought that my joy might be my greatest witness to God stopped me in my tracks. I had been taught that my greatest witness to God was my willingness to suffer, an art an enneagram 4 is inclined to perfect. Hafiz challenged that, and his insistence had, as Howard Thurman would say, "the sound of the genuine." In my bones, I knew it to be true. The sustained joy I experienced in Morocco had changed me. It had imbued me with courage and a sort of holy invulnerability to the fear and despair so understandably and rapidly overtaking so many in the wake of Trump's inauguration.
Still, I felt almost ashamed to speak of its power. Personally, I reverenced and continued to steward my joy, but how could I speak of joy as democracy and the hope of collective flourishing seemed to be being systematically dismantled? Each day unfolds with new body slams.
Early this summer I encountered The Hope: A Guide to Sacred Activism by Andrew Harvey (scroll down here to download your FREE audio version). In it, Harvey has a chapter entitled, "The Law of Joy." Speaking of the Great Joy known to all authentic mystics he writes:
...through such joy, you can endure any ordeal, transmute any difficulty, and surmount any obstacle. The power of this Great Joy is the power of Sacred Activism. Sacred Activists' most holy and beautiful responsibility to themselves and others is to live as much as possible in this joy with its generosity of tenderness toward all beings and all things.
He goes on to claim, via the Taittirya Upanishad, that this Great Joy is the . . .
power behind evolution itself. It recognizes that this Great Joy is the power of Divine Love that, in its passion for self-discovery and self-giving, has created a universe that is constantly evolving in and from itself, transforming and resurrecting it in every moment out of an ecstasy of creativity. The vision of the evolutionary power and ecstatic creativity of the Great Joy is the gift of the Divine Feminine, who draws us at once ever upward and ever downward, to birth in us the union of opposites through which a wholly new power of transforming action flows in a river of Divine Grace.
I began to entertain this potential truth. While it seemed too good to be true, I committed to notice if my experience would lend credibility to such an outrageous claim.
Well, Soul Friends, the evidence has been pouring in, shoring up the foundation of my experience in Morocco. Here are just three pieces of such evidence.
First, I've been seeing a new therapist. As I sought to unravel and find freedom from traumas from early mothering, my therapist recommended we try Flash Technique. For most of the hour I sat in her office describing the painful memory related to our oldest son's illness in infancy. She asked good questions and thereby opened up some connections to present day challenges I was facing. While it felt good to be heard and to make some new connections, none of this felt newly transformative. It was what we did together in the last 10 minutes that created shift.
Rather abruptly my therapist invited me to name a very joyful event. I chose our daughter's wedding day. She then described how she was going to ask me questions that would allow me to relive the joys of that day, and while she did that I was to mirror up and down movements with my hands, and then, when she gave the sign, to blink my eyes fast 3-6 times. Over the next few minutes I described how blown away I was by the generosity of family and friends who made significant sacrifices to join us for this celebration. I told her how the dancing was such a blast, how even my super conservative (and often judgmental) father-in-law lost himself to dance with his granddaughters. I told her how beautiful my daughter looked in her gown and how lovely were the vows she and her husband exchanged. Every once in a while, my therapist guided me to blink my eyes.
At the end of it, she asked me to retrieve the painful memory. I struggled to do so. I couldn't really see it in my mind's eye head on anymore. It felt fuzzy. "Great!" she exclaimed, "That's what we want."
"Okay," I thought. "I guess I'll see if it makes any difference in the dynamic that brought me to her in the first place." Well, I didn't have to wait long. That night we spent the evening with our oldest son. and what has long been a snag in the relationship had loosened. Further, as time went on, as I recalled other unrelated painful experiences, they didn't seem to imprint on me in the same way. My mind spontaneously suggested a quick pivot to also noticing how full of joy my life is.
Second, some days later I went to visit my dear friend, Gayle. She studies and reverences creatures like no one I know. When I shared my experiments relative to joy's power, she immediately told me how rabbits illustrate this very principle when they binky.
Have you ever seen a rabbit binky? They'll be just casually hopping when suddenly they spring and start doing these fancy 180's and flips in the air. It's a complete joy to behold.
Gayle told me how the dopamine hits they get from this joyful practice are part of how the Life Force encourages them to practice the very strategies that keep them safe from predators. Those flips and twists and turns allow them to evade hungry hawks. Further, binkying in rabbits is a sign of health. The healthier they are, the more they binky. The more they binky, the more protected they are!
Soul friend, how are your dance moves coming along these days? Need some support? This tune by Daft Punk always gets me moving! Just 5 minutes to "Lose Yourself to Dance?" Try it. You can thank me later.
Third, consider this story, shared recently via Richard Rohr's daily meditation. Desmond Tutu would likely argue that losing ourselves to dance isn't just fun, but comprises a powerful spiritual practice. In the linked story, the author describes how one Easter Sunday in apartheid South Africa the government sent armed soldiers to Tutu's church, where he regularly preached against apartheid. Standing along the walls, their bodies slung with gun power, the soldiers threatened violence. The congregation could hardly breathe as Tutu took to the podium. Would he preach as he always had against apartheid? If so, surely there would be violence. Would he silence himself? The surrender of truth would be devastating. Tutu stepped into this koan with dance. Silently at first, he began to bounce on his heels. And then he began to laugh. His joy was infectious. His congregation began to laugh. In the presence of evil and the threat of violence, they laughed. A joy-filled defiance of empire! A joy-sourced courage to be genuine. And some of the soldiers —just boys, many of them—began to laugh, too. He preached that day, as he always had, against apartheid. And there was no violence.
Evolution was afoot. Literally.
This was no childish naivete; this was living from the Source, that great wellspring of union with Life itself. That wellspring that reshapes the terrain according to its flow.
Soul friends, we have not yet fully surrendered to this power, available to each of us, through each of us, for the benefit of all of us. But living from this Source is living from Life's very blueprint, most true Word.
Consider these words from Hebrews 12:2:
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame . . . .
Or, maybe, it was the free flow of joy springing up through him, from within him —his connection to the Source and Wellspring of All Life— that powered and protected him. What if it was the JOY of Jesus' union with The Birther that so radically affected the terrain of his own body? That resurrected him? After all, ecstatic movement always draws us upward! It is resurrection itself.
Back to my question at the start, "Why have so few ever proclaimed to us the power of joy?" The powers that rule our world intuit Great Joy's power for freedom. They fear it and have taught us to do the same. Not trusting the veracity and goodness of our connection to Source, conscious and unconscious slaves of empire, capitalism, patriarchy and fear and shame-based religion all seek to shut down joy. Don't succumb, Soul Friends.
Get your binky on! For the flourishing of all!