Hi! I'm Joanne Cary. Welcome back to Embodied Soul, a multidimensional space intended to support you in living, being and thriving as the embodied soul that you are. In today's episode, I’m really going to talk about joy as our secret sauce, and why I think it's so important for our ascension process. I'm going to speak to the number one question that I was asked by spiritual teachers that totally triggered me and kept me feeling stuck for a really long time, and I'll walk through how I worked through it, and it might be something you're experiencing now. I'm going to walk through, how to avoid the dark night of the soul that so many spiritual teachers say we must have. I'm going to speak to why, I think that joy is actually more important than purpose, and how to start finding your joy now, and living from that frequency of joy even when your world goes a little upside down. So if you're ready to join me, please pull up a comfy chair, invite in your Soul, and be open to receive exactly what you need in order to live, be and thrive as the Embodied Soul you are.
Alright, so let's begin by rewinding the clock a little bit to when I was awakening, and when you were awakening to the truth of who you are and what it was that you started to think before you knew that you were awakened. As I was living, what I began to feel more and more was “there's got to be something more”. There's got to be something more to life. There's got to be something more than working Monday to Friday and living for the weekends. There must be something more. I would love to know if this is something that you experienced.
Because we wanted to know? Like, why am I here? What is my purpose? What? What? Why am I here? If there's something more, what is that something more? And it was a little bit elusive. Right? So this led me, this leads me to the number one question that I got asked by Spiritual teachers. Because here's the thing, as soon as you start asking that question, your reticular activating system starts bringing you the answer. So I started to wonder what this more was, and all of a sudden. I was approached by podcasts and peoples and teachings and learnings that got me in front of people, in front of spiritual teachers. And when we start talking about our purpose, the 1st thing they would always ask is “What's your passion? What are you passionate about? What lights you up?” Blank screen Nothing, Nada Zilch. Not even crickets. I didn't know. I had a major block. Every time I got asked that question I got asked it over and over again, I just got more upset. And why did I get more upset? Because I felt I wasn't enough? Why didn't I know what my passion is, what lights me up. If that was the my purpose, why didn't I know? And it made me feel kind of stupid because I was, I felt, anyhow, or I interpreted their response to be, that everyone else knew what their passion was. Everyone else was joyfully going along, understanding what lights them up. And then that triggered inside of me, the aspects of me like, I'm a good student. I got good grades. I'm used to having the answers. And because I didn't have this answer, then the curious part came out, and the investigator and it's like we're going to get to the bottom of this, to the bottom of this problem? Right? We're going to answer this question.
And where that got me is, why is it? Why is it that I don't know, especially if everyone else knows already.? And it's because I had been living by all the things I was told. I was living my life doing everything I was expected to do, everything I needed to be successful, to be a good daughter, to be a good girlfriend, to be a good worker, to be a good all of the things. I didn't need to think or self reflect on what brought me joy, because I was too busy living the expectations of society, of my parents, and those that I took on, of things that I should do. Why did I need to follow my joy? I was very busy doing all of the things that was going to bring me satisfaction.
And yet, that’s exactly what brings us down to the, to the Dark Night of the Soul. Right? If we go back to a few a few weeks ago and we think about the episode on mastering your thoughts, when we are living on autopilot, doing what everyone else expects, doing what you think you should do, then you're just a cog in someone else's life. You're living someone else's life. You're not living who you are, and the more you aren't living true to you, life is going to start feeling harder. And for me when I think back to it. Like I started to hear the whispers. I started to hear, you're dying a little bit inside. You're not happy anymore. You're not doing the things that you used to do. And it was like, Yeah, yeah. And this was primarily focused around career. And I would say, probably for the last decade of my 20 year career I was starting to feel the hit. I was starting to hear what I now know to be the call of my Soul. But I didn't understand it at that point. I didn't have the frame that I lived my life within. I didn't. I wasn't religious. I didn't have that context for Soul. And so my brain, my mind, wasn't even letting into the frame that I live my life through to say that this whisper is something beyond me that's actually trying to guide me to why I came here. And so what, what I did instead and this may resonate with some of you. Well, then, I just started watching more TV. And I started drinking a little bit more, and I started to numb out that that annoying kind of voice that kept on asking me something that I didn't have the answer to. And this, if you don't recognize it, is the beginning of the spiral to the Dark Night of the Soul that most spiritual teachers say you must have before you fully crack, open, and have to rebuild your life in alignment with your Soul. Well, here's the thing. It's actually not a Dark Night of the Soul, because our Soul, frankly, is happy to learn through everything. Everything is experience. Everything is joyful and delightful to the Soul, but not so much to the human that the Soul is embodied in, because we're living it in the physical right? And so and, and don't get me wrong. We are one with our Soul, but our Soul also is outside of the physical. Isn't feeling the tangible experience that we are. And so Soul doesn't care. Soul's going to learn it anyway. So it really is a Dark Night of the Human, and we don't need to experience it. If anyone tells you, you really have to experience the Dark Night of the Soul in order to be awakened and move forward on your purpose. Don't buy that. Don't buy that bill of goods. Just, just don't, because you don't have to. And why not? Those are just signs as we start going down, and we start hearing the whispers, and we start feeling the pressure, the contraction right like I experienced it, and I know many of the people I've worked with have experienced it where it just, you know, it's like our Soul’s tapping on our shoulders going “dude, you're not…you’re not following…you’re not following your joy. You're not moving forward on the path. You're sort of staying stuck. You're staying in the same spot”, and then we don't listen. And so then it feels like we get hit with something else that feels a bit like the 2x4 or our whole life collapses. Our Soul is trying to learn the lessons, we are trying to learn the lessons, we came here to learn, have the experiences that we came here to have. But if we don't listen, the Soul is going to make it more difficult, more challenging for us to exist, to ignore the call, to ignore the call.
So how do we stop the spiraling down to the Dark Night of the Soul? How do we start finding and living from joy? Because that's how we stop it. We start finding our joy and living from that place of joy. Because we're all here trying to find our purpose. We're all we're all here on Earth, we want to know why we're here. We want to follow our Soul’s plan. And yet that whole idea of purpose, at least for me, was a bit amorphous. It's so big. Okay, well, I know that I'm here to help people awaken to the truth in themselves, and I think we're all here on the broader spectrum to do that. But that's kind of like facing. It's kind of like trying to eat the elephant whole instead of one bite at a time. Because what does that look like? So say, you do know you're here to help others on their awakening journey, to awaken up and help ascend and involve in consciousness, what does that look like? And the beauty is our guides, our Soul built into us, into our cells, into ourselves, joy as a sign, as a guidepost, that's leading us towards all of the lessons and our purpose here on Earth. And so the beautiful thing that as we do this, as we find the things that bring us joy, and we live those things we hold that higher frequency of joy and then that makes us more connected to our Guides, to our Soul Self to our own innate wisdom which then accelerates us up further and further, more joy, more further down our path, more excitement that comes to us. And the beautiful thing is, you open up the things that you didn't even know were possible. Ask me a number of years ago if I thought I was going to be a channel and do bring through light language transmissions and support people. I'd be like, you're crazy. I didn't even know what that was. And I think that's the, that’s the joy of joy, versus focusing on our purpose. Because I could have decided, if I had actually known what my purpose was, then I would have said, “Okay purpose, how am I gonna do it? I'm gonna do it this way. And then I'm gonna step forward and I'm gonna have an action plan. And I'm gonna do that. And all of a sudden I put myself into another pretty box. I've put myself into a nice spiritual box this time, that I can now live within. But it's not about that, right? It's about the journey, it's about the exploration. And so when you focus on the joy that you're feeling in every moment, giving yourself permission to reflect and say, are the things that brought me joy before, yesterday even, still bringing me joy? You might find the answer is no. I found that recently some things that were really joyful, are like, ehh no not anymore. And that opens you up to the next thing that brings you joy as you take the step of one thing that brings you joy that opens up like three other doors, that you can then find more joy through things that you didn't even know were possible. As I've heard like. It's that new menu. We're always ordering off of the old menu what we think we can have based on what somebody else has done. But by not putting us into the box of what has already been done, or what even we think that we can have, we open up the potential for the infinite possibilities. And isn't that incredible?
We came here to experience it all, and we are just hitting the, mmm, the juicy bits. We're just beginning to open up, and it just keeps getting better from here. So why would we limit us (by) trying to put a label on ourselves that just puts us in a box? If we focus on the joy, we’re going to have all the experiences we need to have, we're going to have, we’re going to fulfill our purpose by being that full, unique being of light that we are. There may be a million of us, a billion of us all supporting this ascension. I suspect everyone's here in one role or the other to support the lifting and shifting of consciousness of humanity. We're evolving as a species. But every single person's gonna do it differently. So you can look around at what's possible by other people. But I would say, follow the things that are lighting you up. What are you being drawn to? What are the things that are calling you forward? Because that's your path. That's your purpose. That's what you came here for. And then the more you then merge with your Soul, and you begin this beautiful dance, more and more opens for you, and it just becomes more magnificent every day becomes more magnificent.
And so some of you are sitting there like right on, you’re right cheering along right with me, and then some of you are going like, but I still don’t really… I can't get to joy right now. So let's talk about how you can start finding your joy and living your joy so that you can experience all that you came here to experience, even when you're going through some challenges, even when you're in that constriction, even if you've been spiraling down the spiral towards the dark night. Let's stop it now. You don't have to go through it. You do not have to continue. Go back to last week's episode on choices, and the week before that, on mastering your thoughts. Do those fundamental practices, and again, you get to do this, start to reflect on these questions:
What brings me joy?
What would, what do I enjoy doing?
What would I do if I could do anything?
What would I do if I had all the time and all the money, that those were not issues that I had no obligations. What would I do? How would I spend my time?
What hobbies do you have? And if you don't have any hobbies, because here’s one thing that I found, all of the hobbies that I had gardening, taking photographs, reading all of those things mysteriously, began to disappear without me even noticing. So you may find yourself doing the numbing thing, indulging in TV because you've actually lost all the hobbies, the things that you loved.
Anyhow, continuing, what? What is? What are your hobbies? What did you do earlier in your life that you really enjoyed doing? What did you enjoy even as a kid? What did you think you wanted to be or do? What parts of your life are you really enjoying right now?
And then once you've got a number of things written down. I'm going to ask you to get little pieces of paper, and I encourage people to do this, is to write each one of those little things that bring you joy. And so maybe it's reading a book. Maybe it's meditation. Maybe it's going for a walk. Maybe it's taking photographs. Maybe it's playing with your pet. Maybe it's going out for a beautiful cup of coffee. Maybe it's playing an instrument.Whatever it is, take one piece of paper and put one thing on each piece of paper. Get yourself a jar and put that into the jar. So you're creating what I call a joy jar. And this is a jar of all of those things that you've consciously reflected on, that bring you joy right now. And the reason I ask you to do this is that when we are, when we are having a challenging time, when we're frustrated and angry and upset and feeling stuck. That's a pretty low vibe energy, right? And it's really difficult to tap into what actually brings you joy. But if you then go to your joy jar, and you select one thing, and I suggest putting things that don't cost money, because that can be another stress that we have in our lives, then do that one thing, because the more joy you infuse into your life, the more things you do for the sake of joy, the more easily it'll be to connect back to that energy. And when you're given something that brings you joy, and you choose to do it, you have to choose to do it, or you can sit around and wallow, or you can sit and just let the feelings flow until they're finished, and then do the thing that brings you joy. But if you do the thing that brings you joy, you're going to lift your vibrational frequency. Maybe you're going to go to the gym. Maybe you're going to work out. Maybe you're going to go play some sports, whatever it is for you, whatever that thing is on your joy, your joy sheet. Do that thing because that's going to lift your vibrational frequency. It's going to bring you closer into connection. You're going to all of a sudden start having those ideas. You're all of a sudden going to start feeling better. And then that's going to begin to spiral you out. And that joy jar, as you identify what brings you joy, you have availability of your joy jar so that even when things aren't feeling good, you can still bring yourself closer to that state. And even if you say, “Oh, this isn't going to bring me to joy.” Maybe not. But it's going to bring you one step further up the spectrum of emotions. It might bring you from anger to sadness. It might bring you from sadness to neutrality. It might bring you from neutrality to a bit of lightheartedness. What is the thing that you can do, do that joy step, that will bring you one step closer to joy.
So let me know whether you're going to embrace the joy jar and also let me know whether you've got joy down, hands hands down, flat out, that you are awesome when it comes to joy. I always love to hear where people are at. And if you've enjoyed this episode of Embodied Soul, please like it, share it, turn on notifications and subscribe to my channel. And if you're listening to this in your favorite podcast app, please follow, share, and leave me a 5 star review. It really does help get the message out, get the energies out to support people at this incredible leap in consciousness, and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Embodied Soul.
