Healing Touch Essential Energy - Joy as the True Reality
Originally published in Energy Magazine: The official Publication of the Healing Touch Program August 2010 Issue. Healing Touch Essential Energy By: Cyndi Dale
One of my favorite statements is this:
“Reality wins.”
Think the dog is going to walk himself? The bills are going to magically animate and pay themselves or better yet, sprout money trees? No—but there is a reality above, below, and throughout this one that transforms the mundane and even painful into something meaningful, if not pleasant or delightful. I was awed to experience this 
enchantment during the Healing Touch Program Conference on Joy, at which I was honored to present a talk and a workshop.
Joy is many things to many people. For some of us, it’s a broken cell phone and the ensuing silence, for others, a long-awaited outreach from a loved one. We might sniff joy in freshly baked chocolate chip cookies or inhale it through a roll in the grass. For healers, joy is the sharing of compassion, the smile—or tears—on a client’s face, revealing a heart mending, a soul stretching, a child budding wings that were not there before.
Joy is not always the happy feeling we get when we arrive at the destination, however. It is also the sense of the route, the grit of the journey, the survival of the trials. Because of this, we might say that healing and joy are completely interchangeable. Healing leads to joy and joy opens to healing — for both encourage a process that meets deep needs and desires. When sharing at the conference, I suggested that all of life is, in fact, about following the pathways to joy.
One of the chief pathways to both healing and joy involves listening to and respecting our feelings. Each feeling carries a message, which if responded to, encourages joy.
Anger insists we establish a boundary so that ensconced safely, like a turtle in its beautiful shell, we can get back to the joy of swimming freely.
Sadness reveals the “holes” caused by loss. Fill these holes and we return to the wholeness of joy.
Fear shouts—Stop! Go forward, backward, or sideways. Engineer a left or a right turn here, and safe again, you can give and receive joy.
Disgust is a body-based reaction to a poisonous or toxic person, substance, or situation. Rid ourselves of the offending agent and we return to a healthy state. Loving ourselves is necessary for joy.
Joy is the fifth feeling. Its communiqué is fairly easy to decipher. It says, “I want more of the same” – the same being love. To own our joy when it is clearly present is to accept the love that is always present.
Feeling our feelings to their natural conclusion frees us from the stress, negative programs, assumptions, and conditions that lead to all major and minor illnesses. It encourages the chemical, psychological, and behavioral activities that promote happiness, prosperity, and healing. But it also empowers our spirit, the eternal spark of self that knows that we are joyously connected to all other beings and that the Divine—the Source of All—is merrily sharing healing streams of grace with us at all times.
Have we not always, then, been moving toward joy? Perhaps reality is similar to a “joy map,” with coordinates and landmarks and roller coasters and bells and whistles that all lead to the center point of joy and its favorite companion – love. The job of a healer is to read this “carte blanche” (spiritual map) for self and others.
What if we were to assume a reality of joy, in a practical, not naïve fashion? Joy flourishes best with boundaries, companionship, security, responsible self-care, and the encouragement of love, — the various gifts culled from the major feelings. It also grows when nourished by FUN.
What was my favorite take-away from the Healing Touch Program Conference? It was FUN. It was fun to look deeply into others’ eyes and there discern acceptance and grace. It was fun to hear stories, some giggly, others painful, and sense truth. It was fun to watch the sidesplitting antics on the stage and thank God I was not up there because I could not have been so funny. The communion and yes, love, flew me home with a smile in my heart. One that kept on grinning despite the dust bunnies that greeted me and the teeth-chewed bills that had not escaped the wild maniac dog fast enough. Joy is reality, and you know, some of it really is fun.