Joy.

I witnessed the last sunset of summer 2010 with my toes in the sand and guitar in my arms. The sound of the waves drowned out my voice as I played every song I wrote this summer on my baby taylor and ended my little tribute with some sanskrit. And as I turned around to walk back home the harvest moon rose from the east in perfect alignment with the sidewalk I was on.

I woke up this morning unusually early feeling a happy buzz in my head from a conversation the night before and a sense of an energetic shift in the air. Something was up. Sure enough in my planner a full moon was drawn and I got an email from Risa informing me that not only is it a full moon it's a super harvest moon that happens only about every 20 years. A full moon on the equinox. I just took another peak at it with Jupiter also shining brightly.

I learned a secret on Monday night: "The secret of joy is giving."

Makes enough sense to me. I watch so many TED talks that I lose track of who is who but I remember one speaker who talked about a study done where participants were given $100. Half were told to spend it on themselves, the other half were told to spend it on others. Results showed the people who spent the money on others were happier, and had more fun spending the money.

So I asked myself, what is the biggest thing I've ever given and how much joy did I actually feel? The first thing that comes to mind is the guitar I gave away earlier this year in Bali. It was a cheap guitar I bought in India that I drew all over and it didn't sound very good really but its sentimental value was tremendous. I played it everyday at the ashram and carried that baby around southern India, Hong Kong, Alaska, and Bali. It was played on mountains, in trains, on beaches, on porches, in homes, in hotel rooms, and in airports. When I let it go to Ketut, a polite teenage Balinese boy, the look in his eyes made me so happy I could have cried. I was also happy that I could now go off to India again with truly only what I could carry on my back. And I am still happy to know that guitar is not hanging on my wall collecting dust and looking pretty but that someone on the other side of the world promised me he would practice what I taught him.

But there has got to be something bigger than that, and it comes to mind that the biggest things we give are not things at all. To me, time and energy hold the most value in how I can contribute to this world. TIME especially is so precious to me and I am very careful as to how it gets distributed. Probably the largest act of time and energy I've given is when I interned full time without pay for 6 months in an inpatient rehab facility. But even when I do get paid I still feel like I am giving of myself, especially in my line of work where I provide services and experiences.

And that bring me to something a former yoga teacher once told me..... that the act of helping people makes you feel good because as you do endorphins are released in the brain. This "feeling good"sensation can be similar to a high induced by substances (though obviously healthier). Funny guy that he is said something like, "so I realized I'm not helping people selflessly, I'm doing it to get high!" So that is my dilemma with "the secret of joy is giving." If we know that giving will bring us joy, and if we give because we want to receive joy, isn't that selfish?

Luckily for me I was able to ask the question out loud to Turiya who introduced me to the concept of "spiritual selfishness." A good reminder that things are not black and white. Not all selfishness is bad, there is a proper way for it. And I now realize I certainly shouldn't feel guilty for wanting to feel good about giving. It is okay to have an intention to receive joy as long as its not loaded up with expectation. So what if I want to feel good about what I do, so what if I want joy in return for putting in my best efforts, so what if I've used this blog to brag about the things I've given....... maybe if we were all more spiritually selfish there would be more joy in this world. It also makes me think that selfishness itself is not all that bad. One things I've learned in my years of work is that you have to take care of yourself before anyone else or you are not doing anyone any good and in my case if I'm not taking care of myself I am being a hypocrite.

Perhaps our individual experiences of joy do add to a collective, and to be a part of that collective we have to give. Give to ourselves and others.

Ending this with a shout out to one of my favorite people in the universe, the beautiful soul Benny Luttrell who started a blog and will be documenting his upcoming trip to India. We met there last year and now the she calls him back. He is also the founder of the Maha Mountain Movement in Colorado. So proud of him.