Good morning! Congratulations, you made it to Friday! One last 8-hour truck through the rat race and you’re home free. I get to see my dog nephew this weekend, so I’m very excited.

In other news, our mini series on stepping into the unknown comes to an end today (☹). I’ve had a lot of fun exploring this topic and munching on it with you all and I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well. So let’s feast on the sweetest thought breakfast, which is the Joy of Mystery.

Today, for our main course, we’ll grub on a couple excerpts from Alan Watts and Meister Eckhart that have certainly left my own mind-belly full. On the side, we’ll look to Viktor Frankl’s paradox of Joy. To top things off with our book nook, we’ll take a gander at The Book of Joy featuring His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and narrator Douglas Abrams.

Personally, my mind is hungry. So let’s dig in! Thought Breakfast is served!

We have talked so much this week about this “mastery of knowledge” idea. This notion also doesn’t solely apply to existential truths of the cosmos, which is where the conversation had led the past couple days. It applies more to how we grow as people.

For instance, as far as ethics is concerned… In your younger years, you might subscribe more to Aristotle’s virtue ethics and align your decisions to bring yourself closer to representing certain virtues. However, you will grow up and have kids one day. Having kids should shift your alignment from virtue ethics to consequentialism, a whole different school of ethics that concerns just the outcome of your decisions. This series isn’t strictly about ethics, but it’s a good example. It shows how stepping into an unknown, asking “what does ‘good’ even mean?'“, allows room for growth and transformation.

It’s truly a broad concept to try and capture in words, but luckily our friend Alan Watts breaks to the center of what I’ve been trying to convey throughout this series. In his book, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Watts delivers probably one of the most important insights you’ll hear.

Watts says, “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

This is the heart of it all. It’s not that possessing knowledge, being wise, or just being generally smart is a pretentious thing. The danger comes when the joy of it is lost. When we use what we know as absolute, and leave no room for mystery, we lose that spice of curiosity. That’s why children are generally so happy. It’s not because they don’t have to pay bills or get to live in blissful ignorance. It’s simply because reality, to them, is still undiscovered. They can’t cling to what they know cause they’ve yet to find out. As we grow and learn new things, we cling to answers for security.

By doing this, we’re treating the universe as a machine that needs to be reverse engineered to be understood. Rather than having this view of things, we have to see the universe as a playful child. When you tell the child to stop playing in order to understand them better, they’ll get upset and subsequently you’ll begin to suffer.

This brings us to some insight from the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart. Eckhart writes, “God is a great underground river that no one can dam up.” In other words, God’s creation is fluid. We try and grasp what’s ungraspable. Instead of building a dam to stop it in its tracks, swim in it. Bathe in and drink from it. Enjoy the moving water as it comes and goes rather than trying to stop it.

Eckhart and Watts bring us back to last week’s theme of East and West. Watts, representing eastern philosophy, tells us not to pause the cosmic music and let it play. Eckhart, representing western theosophy, tells us to stop trying to control of the flow of God’s creation. Both of them tell us that letting go creates joy.

So, what is the joy of mystery? It’s the feeling when you release the need for everything to make sense in one way, all the time. It’s the freedom that ensues when you realize that understanding does not equal peace. It’s the relief when we realize that we don’t have to overcomplicate everything.

We can close this week’s mini series by simply accepting that we’re not meant to solve the mysteries of life, but we were meant to actively participate in them.

Viktor Frankl writes, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

In other words, you only find joy when you stop chasing it. Frankl in A Man’s Search for Meaning argues that joy, meaning, and happiness arise only indirectly, as the result of purpose and love; not as the object of pursuit.

There are other writers who touch on this notion as well.

John Stuart Mill says, “Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.”

C.S. Lewis says, “Joy… is never in our power.”

Our favorite, Alan Watts, says happiness arises from non-grasping.

So as we can see, many great minds have battled with this idea and all came at the same conclusion. A paradoxical one, but it works… and thats the beauty of it all.

The perfect way close this week out is by taking a passage from The Book of Joy.

Narrator Douglas Abrams says on Day 1, “We are left with a paradox. If one of the fundamental secrets of joy is going beyond our own self-centeredness, then is it foolish selfishness (as the Dalai Lama would say) and self-defeating to focus on our own joy and happiness? The Archbishop had already said that we could not pursue joy and happiness in their own right, so is it not a mistake to focus on them at all?”

Phenomenal, this one passage covers today’s whole edition from the concept of joy down to the paradox of it all. It is true, though. This idea gets bended and twisted every which way. Some argue that focusing on your own joy contributes to focusing on the joy of everybody. Some argue that focusing on the joy of other’s will naturally make you more joyous. Other’s might say everyone is responsible for creating their own joy. After all, even the Declaration of Independence states every man has the God-given right to pursue his own happiness; regardless of what that entails.

I personally don’t think there’s an answer to this question. After everything above, I think that joy simply just happens when it does. Sometimes, joy doesn’t happen. Other times, it will happen. That’s my two cents.

Let me ask you: What do you think? Besides the Joy of Mystery, where might joy come from? How might it ensue? Is there ever a point where joy becomes permanent?

Munch on that for today. Have a great and blessed weekend. And we’ll see you again on Monday for a steaming hot plate of thought breakfast.

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Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast

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