Finding Joy, Allowing Joy

A very busy weekend, filled with much joy being with my family, friends, & sangha. Then last night I attended a memorial service for an old friend. He lived a good life, was loved, and helped others in their lives. Today I attended a funeral service for a colleague's mother. Much sadder, bringing back memories of my own Mother and the loss I still feel 25 years after her passing. I returned to work, and the regular situations and challenges were just a bit tougher on me today. I was relieved as I made my journey home.

After dinner, we took a walk along Sligo Creek. We had the path to ourselves as this had been a dark, dreary, & rainy day. I needed to hear the Creek singing her song, the crickets singing theirs, and the leaves rustling in the wind. Slowly my mood elevated. Returning home I filed my right hand nails as they were getting to long to be useful as a guitarist.

Being not quite ready to practice I decided to see if there was an older post from this blog that would guide my practice. I rarely do this, but tonight thought there might be something there. I found this post on Disrupting Habit from March. And then I knew how to begin my practice. I picked up on working with bringing my hands to the guitar after giving the AT directions to lengthen. I played with this a bit and then brought both of my hands to the guitar simultaneously.  This was once my habit that David Jernigan had disrupted in the spring. This action now had a different quality to it or perhaps this was another case of my faulty perception. I began playing with arpeggios at random and then suddenly began playing the first piece of music I ever had come through me. This was full of joy and exactly what I needed to continue shifting my emotional state.

Some more AT work with my hands and then onto playing Gathered Hearts . I just enjoyed the act of playing. The world became lighter. I moved on to improvising in C Hijaz and then took a break to write this post. Finding the joy of playing and allowing this joy to spread is important. The world may be dark. But no matter how dense the clouds on your darkest night, the moon, the stars, the entire cosmos - both inner and outer are available to us. My question remains - am I available?