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John Morton: Claiming, Creating, and Completing with Joy

Claiming, Creating, and Completing with Joy

 

This article by John Morton was first published in the New Day Herald in March of 2014.

Over the years, John-Roger has said that we are to have joy and to have it more abundantly. There is a reference in Scripture, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” [John 15:11]. I see that like a law. You could say, “It’s my right to have joy because God said.”

What’s important in experiencing the joy is to ask yourself, Where is your faith?  Where is your trust?  Do you claim your joy? If you do claim it, do you claim it in full or do you claim it only when you feel joy? When you don’t feel joy, do you still claim the joy for yourself?

Claiming the joy is a process that is part of our learning and part of how we can evaluate if we’re keeping the faith. Do you have the patience, to trust and to hold while you find the joy? Joy is a spiritual promise. It’s our natural way of being from the Spirit. This world has a way of knocking us for a loop every once in a while or maybe quite a bit, depending on how your life flows. That to me is just another way of saying we’re going to be tested. But the joy is still present always.

Consider what you are aware of in this moment. What are you giving your awareness over to? Do you give it over to fear and doubt, things that you don’t like, or things that bother others? Do you let those concerns be the focus of your awareness? If you do, then where’s the joy?

It may seem at times that joy is missing. It may seem to be asleep inside of us, taking a rest, and waiting to come awake again. The joy is never missing. Joy is always present. It’s up to us to awaken to it.

Have the intention, and that claiming of your joy, so it’s part of how you identify yourself. Claim to yourself, “I’m a joyful person. I create joy. I find joy in my life and my circumstances.” I find it’s along the lines of St. Patrick’s prayer about the Christ being with us in every way. Joy is in front of me, behind me, on my left, on my right, under my feet, behind my eyes. Joy is always there.

Claiming the joy is a movement. It’s rising up one more time to meet the joy. It’s taking the responsibility to create the joy in what you’re doing. John-Roger has said, “If you want to be happy, do happy things.”  So it follows that if you want to be joyful, do joyful things.

Claiming Your Spiritual Promise

To know yourself as a spiritual being, claim it. Identify with it. You are spiritual. It is your heritage. You can’t lose your spirituality. You may displace it. You may forget about it. You may act as if it isn’t yours, but it remains yours. You are always a spiritual being.

We really can’t mess with who we are spiritually. We may mess with ourselves, but who we are spiritually, that divine treasure, is held intact. It’s not tarnished. It’s not broken. So if we act as if it is, that’s when we’re off. And then our life is going to reflect that we’re off.

As John-Roger has said numerous times: we get sick and tired and then we get sick and tired of being sick and tired.  That’s around the time we let it go. Sometimes that’s with a sense of desperation, like, “I give up because I don’t know what else to do.” Amazingly, what may happen then is that at long last, you’re open. Because you were desperate, you created your openness. Now you’re reachable. You’re touchable. Your focus can be directed into who you are, rather than what you think you are or what someone else thinks you are.

Letting Go of Judgments

Would you like to shift your awareness from judgments to more awareness of your joy?  That’s fairly simple. Just change what you’re looking at. Change your focus. What would help you do that is to release the judgments.

A dynamic in a judgment is that something or someone should be different, including you. You might judge yourself that you should have more money, more things, or be more successful. If that’s the case, then I think if you look carefully at yourself, you’re going to find that you are the one who assigned those things to yourself. You created an expectation for yourself about what you should be accomplishing in your life, particularly around the results.

The reality is it’s just a dynamic where you are in conflict with the results in your life. You assigned an expectation to yourself. It could be an attachment. Sometimes the attachment is to where things were in the past. You might say, “I used to have this” or “I used to have this job,” and then focus on what occurred in the past. That then becomes a victim story rather than a story of learning, growth, and ever-increasing joy.

Instead of focusing on what once was, connect to where you are in this moment. Ask yourself “How am I?” Look at your life as it is. Look at what you’re wearing, where you live, where you are right now, and what’s present with you, here and now. Take notice and claim the joy already present in your life. It’s a good idea to update yourself regularly so you’re in tune with your life as it is now, rather than wishing it was different than the way it is.

Although it’s fairly common to judge ourselves, it’s a source of dis-ease when you do that because you’re out of alignment with who you are. When we become aware and connected with who we truly are, we often find it’s a good story; a story of success, abundance, and prosperity. There’s a lot for us to be thankful for. As soon as you start that process of waking up your thankfulness, you’ll start feeling better because joy follows naturally. Gratitude is a good attitude. It lifts us. So if you want to experience more joy about your life, move into your thankfulness.

Manifesting the Joy

As you become more aware of your judgments, you can change your focus.  If you think, “I should have more money. I should have nicer things. I should have a job I enjoy more,” you can change that from “I should have it” to “I can have it.” Your life isn’t over. It’s still being created, and you are a co-creator with God.

As you choose into the joy that is present, there is a practical aspect that has to do with manifestation. Consider what you want to create in this world. What do you want to make your life become? What results are you looking for? Energy follows thought. So the more you can be specific, the better. If energy follows you in some vague, general concept, then the results will match with unclear results.

Consider that even if you were in a garbage dump, you could be happy, content, and at peace. That’s possible. In fact, you might not even want to change that situation for yourself. But if you do, if you’re aware, “I do want to change it. I want a nice house. I want a nice car. I want a job that’s interesting to me,” then energy starts to follow your lead. And there’s a responsibility to bring it forward.

I suggest you put in writing your intentions because that has a way of concretizing it. If it’s difficult to put it into words what you’re envisioning, it can be done with pictures. You can envision an ideal scene, where you cut out pictures from magazines and create a collage of what you want to manifest in this world. Put it in a place where you can look at it and focus upon it.

Perhaps you have an ideal scene from a long time ago. Is your current vision the same? If it hasn’t materialized as of yet, you might need to update it. Maybe it needs to be re-energized and re-done so it matches your intentions here and now.

The most important part of envisioning what you want is your energy. So if you don’t have energy on what you want to create, then you’re adrift. You’re kind of at the mercy of whatever winds are blowing. Those tend to be karmic. So if you want to set a new course and change the karma, ask yourself, “What do I want to focus upon?  Where am I in relation to where I want to go?”

Overcoming Distractions

When we are faced with distractions or things that annoy us, we can choose to increase our awareness.  It may be a toothache or a headache, a jackhammer, a noisy store, or any number of things that bother you such that you register, “I don’t like that.” Actually, it may be more like, “I don’t really seem to have the opportunity or the willingness to change it.” So now what?

You can overcome distractions through your observation and the willingness to embrace whatever it is rather than resist it. That’s a key over and over again for all of us in this level. Can you embrace what it is rather than move into some form of resistance where you’re contracting? Can you let go of protesting and judging?

It’s a choice point to accept or reject whatever is distracting you. Rejecting and resisting the annoyance tends to add to its persistence and even increase its magnitude. Acceptance starts creating a lesser annoyance and allowing for greater enjoyment.

We always have the opportunity to take distractions on as a kind of puzzle or riddle that is already solved. God already solved it. God loves the annoyance, so you can love it too. You can even enjoy it. Let’s consider God knows that, so God says, “Your turn. Your move.” If you know that you can solve the puzzle because it’s already solved by God, then you can move to the loving and joy of whatever is that experience.

Because of our intention, we can find a way to find the good, to find the joy and upliftment in any distraction. It may take our patience and our willingness to endure. I encourage you to have that willingness, like “Okay, I’ll hang in there. I’ll use whatever this is as a process for my upliftment and learning.”

Completing Karma with Joy

If you find yourself envisioning and starting to manifest but you stop part way through rather than finishing, you may have a habitual pattern of not completing what you started. Because it’s familiar and because you know what it is, then it tends to run like a course.  It’s as if it has its own track. It just repeats itself, which in and of itself can be disturbing. You might ask yourself, “Why would I recreate and do over and over again something I don’t really like, where I get disappointed and frustrated? Why would I go half way instead of finishing?” Instead, ask yourself, “What would change the pattern?”

The answer is for you to continue. At the point where you might want to stop, you don’t stop. You keep going. Notice markers along the way, such as how you got closer to the finish. Remember, we’re not trying to do everything all at once. If you can, go for it. Sometimes we can resolve something instantly. But many times it’s a gradual process and it’s important to note and honor our progression.

Part of what brings us happiness and success is having a willingness to be gradual, to do what’s available now and appreciate it as a gain, improvement, or advancement of some kind. Celebrate your victories in the action cycle. If you’re done with what you wanted to do, but you don’t acknowledge it, you don’t celebrate it, you don’t thank yourself or whatever helped you including God, then you’re missing something. You’re missing out on appreciating what you’re doing with your creation. So part of completion is celebration.

If you have a reference point from your past actions, where when you finished something and then you were harmed or betrayed in some way, that experience tends to set up in the unconscious a sense of, “I don’t want to finish because I just get hurt.” If you experienced it as a death experience, where you carried it over and it wasn’t finished, then it can hold as a pattern of fear into this lifetime. You may then say to yourself, “When I’m successful, I lose. Something is taken away from me or they give me greater responsibility. So now I have expectations that I just had my first success and now they want me to do it better. And I don’t even know how I did the first success.” That’s a fairly common thought process in which people feel set up negatively by finishing and creating success. It becomes something that is registered as an experience that didn’t work for you rather than an experience of joy in your process towards completion.

It’s important to realize that you’re growing and maturing as you gain your life experiences. You don’t need to let things that happened to you when you were younger and less experienced govern where you are now. Have the awareness that the right thing to do, the correct approach, is to keep going. Choose to finish in ways that are complete and in celebration.

Even if it isn’t accomplishing what you originally set out to do, choose to come into a completion and celebration, which can simply be an inner experience of satisfaction. That’s one of the ways to work the karma, make sure it’s complete inside of you and not just done outwardly. Often what is done in the world doesn’t mean it’s complete within. That’s where the acknowledgment comes in.

Being complete means you’re clear. You can move on. There’s a next step available to you, and you can move to that next step. You’re not being held back or stuck. You are complete.

In this path with the Traveler, we are actively finishing the karma. We are completing the karma so that we can make our move into the oneness and the love of God that’s available. That means that whatever we created in our past actions, which we often refer to as karma, we need to work out and clear. Whatever we’re carrying as the karma surfaces, and it can surface on all levels: physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychically. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the way your lifestyle is and what you’re doing is bad, wrong, or needs fixing. It may just mean to have some patience with yourself. Your karma is at work, so things are surfacing to be completed and cleared for your highest good.

Whatever you’re working through from past lives is being delivered at a rate you can handle. If you’re studying with MSIA, then you have a wonderful support system with you and around you. The MSS and DSS classes give tremendous support and remind you how to keep going and how to work through and clear patterns of judgment. So when you need help, when you need support, call out.  That’s what friends are for. That’s what we have in our ministries; heartfelt reaching out to one another. Clearly that’s going to help. Part of it is to do some of that yourself, to take care of and minister to yourself first.

We are born with the blessings of health, wealth and happiness, abundance, prosperity, and riches. They already are in us. Yet we need to learn how to claim them for ourselves and then stand up so that we create them. We express them in this world and wherever we go in our creation, so that we’re in a place that’s finishing the karma. Choose to be happy and healthy with what you have. If you can create more that helps, then do that. But we can also have some contentment and appreciation for the blessings that already are.

Karma is addressed in some way in just about every Discourse. The focus is on the law of cause and effect. What is it that we need as experiences for our learning and growth? We need experiences so that we balance out whatever is off, where we’re not in harmony and understanding the divine plan.

God created it all perfectly. It’s all in perfect order so that we’re never in a place that’s actually lacking. All the circumstances and the conditions that we ever encounter have something that we can use for our upliftment. One of the aspects of the karma that we all need to realize is it is set up for completion, and that completion would register as a loving consciousness that’s honoring, blessing, forgiving, and not holding againstness in any way.

The essence there is that God sets the tone for all of us by loving what it is. Consider that’s the truth and not some theory. God’s love is real, and it’s real for every single person, place, and thing.

Discover the Blessings in Your Creatorship

We’re all working out our creatorship. So this is the level where we discover and expand our creatorship as divine beings, however long that takes. The more we’re doing it as a form where we take the divine energy that comes into us and we issue it forth as an energy, that goes to whatever we’re looking at, wherever we are, and whatever we consider, we can attend to things in the world in ways that are uplifting, honoring, and respectful, rather than something negative like a bother or irritation. Negativity often reflects our ignorances. Those are also opportunities for us to wake up, pause and hold while we discover the blessings that are present.

John-Roger gave us one of his great directives about the soul and Soul Transcendence which is to look for the good in all people and things and leave the rest to God. I’ve said that for me, blessing is simply greater good; taking the unmanifest good and being a vehicle, channel, a person who has the intention to make something better. When we do it through us into the world, that same energy field comes to us from our divine source within, so we too become a greater blessing as we co-create with God.

Blessing of Wealth and Joy

Lord, we are Your family and also we are Your friends. So we gather here for Your blessing.

We just ask that once again You show us new experiences of Your light, Your love, what You’ve called us to do in this moment in our creation.

We take advantage of the opportunity that we have gathered with those who are on this path with the Traveler for the blessings of fulfillment, the wealth of going home to God, the wealth of having that spiritual promise fulfilled in this lifetime, the wealth of being amongst those who will come to our aid at our time of need, and that we would be those who would also do that in kind, the richness of our life, the abundance of our opportunities, and the prosperous ways it’s manifesting, so we can be thankful for the little things and the great things all at once.

Remove whatever scales may still be on our eyes, so we may see with the eyes of the Christ and the Beloved the richness of every moment, that we can notice that You are in the details. There is no detail that is not infused with Your blessing.

We forgive ourselves for whenever we castigated and discarded whatever You brought to us as the blessing. We step in to a new day, a new opportunity, our intention to follow, to cooperate, to step into this life every day in greater appreciation.  We ask to be those who exemplify Your bounty. We can call it forward into the world in ways that people may realize that we are all in a field of glory, a place that has been infused from the beginning with great and ever greater blessings.

We take a moment to open ourselves to receive. We let go of whatever we have in this moment, that we offer it up in whatever ways. You may use what we have created for gain so we may receive in whatever we are to be given and bestowed within this time and this place.

We know You are our beloved Father, Mother, God, and we are those who follow in Your way until it is done.

Baruch Bashan

3 thoughts on “Claiming, Creating, and Completing with Joy”

  1. Thank you John for this extraordinary rich and nurturing sharing.
    I will savor this for days as I work to bring more joy in moving through
    the stress I am experiencing in my life. The message is already helping
    me feel lifted from the “burdens” I have created.
    With a heart full of gratitude and blossuming joy,
    Loving you,
    Carol

  2. Thank you for the Loving Each Day quote of 3/28/2020 which led me to this article, which resonates so wonderfully with my experience. I am so joyfully grateful to God for answering every prayer, and my intentions are prayers, delivered in perfect God-timing and for the highest good of us all. I am commenting during the time of Covid19 social distancing and quarantine restrictions. I am experiencing this as a time of God’s outpouring of good coming forward upon the earth. I will wait upon the Lord, and rest in the Beloved. As always, I pray for this or something better, and with Love leading me.

  3. Thank You John for reminding us of the sacredness of Joy. May God Bless You and All You Do, Always in All Ways. Karen Avalon

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