The Tension of Emergence: Thriving in a world that remakes, not breaks

Amplify Joy (A Practice) with Jennifer England

• Jennifer England • Season 3 • Episode 20

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Does joy sometimes feel hard to access? Ever find yourself focusing more on where you’re suffering or experiencing pain? Or perhaps you find it easy in this season of your life but want to experience joy even more? 

In the last micro-episode of Season 3, Jennifer guides you to amplify joy on three different levels: the gross, subtle and causal. She encourages you to enhance the experience of joy, even amidst pain and includes a suggestion to explore the Buddhist practice of Tonglen if you’re facing difficult times. 

If you play with this practice and have an insight you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! 

Links & resources—


Gratitude for this show’s theme song Inside the House, composed by the talented Yukon musician, multi-instrumentalist and sound artist Jordy Walker. Artwork by the imaginative writer, filmmaker and artist Jon Marro.

S3. Ep 20 Amplify Joy (A Practice) with Jennifer England
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Jennifer: so I am going to offer you a practice inspired by my conversation this week with trauma informed expert and Mobius executive leadership co founder, Amy Elizabeth Fox. And she and I talked a lot about how to embrace pain and how to remember joy, in a way that allows a fuller range of experience in our human lives and our leadership lives.

And so I'd love to double click on joy in honor of summer. So here's a practice for you. And I'd Invite you to play with this throughout the summer months or if you're in the southern hemisphere to take this into your deeper winter months and

we're going to Experiment with the experience of joy on three different levels the gross level, the subtle level, and the causal level. And what I invite you to do is to first take a couple of days and do an inventory of where you're experiencing joy, easefully, naturally. And I'm curious whether you're noticing joy on one of these levels or more, and how you know joy in your own direct experience, in your body, in community.

So here's some examples of where you might experience joy. On the gross level, 

we're looking at where we're experiencing joy day to day in our material lives. So, for example, it might be as simple as the joy of taking a cold shower on a hot day or a hot shower on a really cold day, having a cup of tea when it's raining out, enjoying a barbecue with friends, reading a beachy novel and just doing nothing all day, snuggling up with a loved one on the couch.

Or playing a favorite game, cards, or doing your favorite sport that brings you so much contentment and joy.

And at the subtle level, here's some other examples. You might feel the experience of joy when you're feeling really grateful for something. It can be the exuberance of just existing.

Jennifer: That sense of joy that, has less to do with what you're doing in the moment. And just this really felt subtle experience, this joy of being, you might feel this as you're walking through town, and you feel a joy on a subtle level, you love your community, you love the place you live,

it might be a degree of contentment that comes from a deep satisfaction of, hard work all day, whether in the fields, in your garden, in the kitchen, or on a really hard file at work. There can be this level of joy or contentment that comes from this experience more in the subtle realm.

And then the causal. realm of joy might be that experience when you're lying on your back under the stars and you look up in the cosmos and you just feel this subtle connection to something bigger than you and It's at this causal level, almost like your joy can't be contained by your body or even that particular moment, but expands in and through in the unfolding of the universe itself.

And if that feels further away from your experience, maybe think back to memories as a young kid or at other times in your life where you can sense this joy that is coming from this reciprocal experience of being connected to something so much bigger than you.

Maybe it's love, the divine.

unified presence. We have many different names for what cannot be named or described. And so the first part of this practice is to notice these three different levels of experiencing joy and to do an inventory this week of where are you noticing joy showing up in your It might be a lot in the everyday, the gross realm, the everyday joy of just being human, it might be in the more subtle realm, where you feel gratefulness, deep contentment, equanimity, relief, 

and the joy that comes from more subtle experiences and dimensions of life, versus the joy at the more cosmic, causal level, where almost your self dissolves, and there is no boundary between you and the bigger unfolding universe. And yet there's this distinct sensation of joy when we can taste it.

So after you do that inventory, the invitation this summer is to play with how can you amplify joy. Where can you bring your awareness and your attention into the moment of joy? And as I shared in the conversation with Amy, where can I join with and not resist the joy that's unfolding in the goofy moments of being with my kids?

The beckoning of the lake. The joy that comes with finishing a whole bunch of work and just taking the moment to really appreciate that or the joy that comes from just the felt exuberance of being alive. And my hope is with this attention and practice of noticing, of being fully present and joining with the joy, that the experience of joy will be amplified in your life.

And as we feel more joy, we can also be available to being with more pain. And if all of this feels a little bit too far away for you, if you are experiencing a lot of heartbreak, or you're going through a really difficult time, what I might suggest is the Buddhist practice of Tonglen may really support you this summer.

And feel free to look up Tonglen practice for more guidance. But the essence is you're breathing in pain, whether in your own individual experience or that of someone else, and you're breathing out joy. And so that practice may , for some of you, be a first step. It is a more subtle, more challenging practice, but it also may support this capacity to amplify joy or peace in the midst of pain. So that is the last practice I have for you in this season.

I hope that these practice pairings with these deeper dives with beautiful guests has been supportive to you. I would love to hear your feedback, so I encourage you to email me at jennifer at sparkcoaching. ca with any questions or suggestions for next season. My final words for this micro practice episode. Thank you for being here for your willingness to play for your dedication to your own growth on behalf of the collective. I'm so grateful you're here with me. A few final words about practice. Practice is different than a tool or a technique or simply a mindset shift practice is like an ecosystem unto itself. It's more like a world that invites your playful curiosity. It invites you to pay attention differently.

What can you learn, see, feel, sense from a new doing, a new action? What you'll experience will be different than me or a friend who does the same practice. It's experimental. It's designed to be fresh and alive, dynamic, and relat. And what I emphasize is practice is a gift of learning from your own direct experience, not from experts, coaches, sages, teachers, but from you.

Practice centers, you as the awake, and attuned one that you already are. Practice is the invitation.

And direct experience is your greatest teacher. I'm Jennifer England. Thanks for practicing and being on this journey on the tension of emergence