The Spiritual Life - Peace and joy come from forgiveness and understanding.

Peace and joy come from forgiveness and understanding.

Peace and joy is one of the components of spiritual health. Rather than fear, anger, resentment, grievance, and/or bitterness does the person experience peace and joy in their life? If this factor is rated on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being 0% of the time and 10 being 100% of the time, over the last month what percentage of the time does the person experience peace and joy in their life? If a person were to give themselves a rating of 3 how could the person kick the rating up a notch to 4?

One action that can increase peace and joy in one’s life is forgiveness. The word “forgiveness” means different things to different people at different times. The definition suggested here is giving up making other people and circumstances responsible for your unhappiness. This means no longer playing the victim but rather taking responsibility for one’s own response to the people and circumstances in one’s life.

While we cannot control other people and often the circumstances in our lives, we can always control the response we make to them, the way we manage ourselves managing our relationships to them.

Deciding to take a nonjudgmental position and stand on the things in our lives or even better coming from a place of unconditional love engenders peace and abiding joy.

Further the development of an attitude of curiosity rather than judgement is a big help. Simply to ask “What is going on here?” and to formulate a hypothesis leads one to research by looking for data to confirm or disconfirm one’s hypothesis. This research is best done when it is done out of one’s own curiosity and not for other motives, and secondly that it is done in a playful way which engenders a sense of fun. The fun is a sparkling interest in learning the truth which enriches understanding. When that understanding is achieved, peace and joy descend from the heavens. The contributor to his experience of peace and joy, is the understanding which allows one to let disturbing and upsetting things go, and surrender to an experience of a Higher Power being in charge,

So to kick things up a notch when it comes to peace and joy, generate a hypothesis about what is upsetting you, collect your data, reflect and increase your understanding about what is contributing to the situation, and when satisfied, let it go.