The end of life, of which our short span on earth is but a presage of the eternal life to be known fully in the hereafter, is to be so united with the Lord and giver of life, the Holy Spirit, that one is in intimate fellowship with all that lives. This unencumbered communion with the creation in union with the Creator is the essence of joy. Joy is the soul's unending song as it goes about God's business in unselfconscious delight; this business is the healing and transmutation of all that is distorted and awry so that it may be re-formed in the divine image in which it was originally fashioned. When we work in effortless alignment with the cosmic flow, in unpremeditated collaboration with the divine will, with the exquisite precision of creative ecstasy, we know joy. Joy issues from the soul that is aware, free and creating new life under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Joy is of a different order of excellence from pleasure or even happiness. Both of these depend on the material state of well-being of the person and are related to the circumstances of his life; neither is permanent. It is hard to be happy when one is ill, in financial distress or surrounded by social turmoil or political upheaval. Pleasure is even more evanescent than happiness, depending as it does on an agreeable physical stimulus. Happiness may endure for a considerable period, but in the course of time its even flow and warm radiance are certain to be disrupted by bad tidings. Indeed, a state of undisturbed happiness, if it were to persist indefinitely, would impair the growth of the individual into a full person, someone of the stature of Christ himself. Job's happiness had to be completely swept away before he could come to a deeper understanding of his nature as a preparation for his great vision of God. The soul has to be stripped of all its vestments before its full stature can be revealed; these enveloping adornments are the favourable outer circumstances on which our happiness depends. The soul has to be rendered naked of all possessions, to have nothing but its own being, before it can know the presence of God in that intimate relationship which is the source of all love and wisdom. This was the final requirement that Jesus demanded of the rich young man who had fulfilled the commandments of the Law but still clung for security to his wealth. Anything that shields the soul from its ultimate encounter with the living God is an incubus which has to be shed. Happiness can therefore act paradoxically against our knowing ourselves fully and being open to the self-revealing love of God.
Should we therefore not seek happiness for ourselves and for others? Assuredly, but only after the greater gift has been attained: a knowledge of the love of God. In the words of Christ, 'Set your mind on God's kingdom and His justice before everything else, and all the rest will come to you as well' (Matt. 6:33). It is an unfortunate fact of life that most of us cultivate a state of self-absorbed comfort; this often has to be shattered by a disaster before we are impelled to start the great journey of the mind to God's kingdom and His justice.
The soul that is naked of all encumbrances, including those that would serve to adorn it, can lay itself open to the pervading radiance of the Holy Spirit in trust and self-giving love. In the story of the Creation our two primaeval ancestors Adam and Eve are both naked, the man and his wife, and they have no feeling of shame towards one another (Genesis 2:25). As soon as they grasp after individual power that comes from a human knowledge of good and evil separate from the love of God, which alone raises knowledge to the stature of wisdom, they find their nakedness a cause for shame. In other words, sex is deprived of its primal quality as a gift of intimate, self-giving relationship between one person and another. Instead it becomes degraded and contaminated with lust, so that one person uses it to dominate another for his own pleasure. The I-Thou relationship with God as its centre becomes an I-It relationship with human desire at the centre. Once the soul is disembarrassed of all desire except to do the will of God Whose presence is known in its centre, or spirit, it returns to its radiant nakedness, and its beautiful song can once more peal forth in sounds of exultation as it was at the beginning.
This return to innocence is of a different order from the pristine innocence of childhood; it is a purity of perception informed by compassion, fertilised by love and crowned by wisdom. In other words, the various misfortunes that brand any human life are not simply to be dismissed as the fruit of error, as events that need not have occurred if only the person had been less foolish and more obedient to the law of life. They are, on the contrary, to be seen as the way of purification, the means of sanctification. The mission of Christ was to set fire to the earth. He had a baptism of death to undergo, and great was the restraint He was under until the ordeal was over. Far from establishing peace on earth, He had come to bring division (Luke 12:49-53). Until every aspect of the personality is revealed and brought to the light of full consciousness, it will emit a confusing miasma that will obstruct the person from fulfilling his destiny, from doing the work God has set before him. That which acts with evil intent has first to be unmasked and revealed; then it is to be accepted and understood. Its intent can be changed to good only when it is loved and given to God in prayer. The good that such an incubus, now healed, can provide is a compassionate understanding of other people's defects and a growing concern for all life. This shows itself practically in being more effective in our service and more open in our love for all beings than we were in the days of our spiritual blindness, when we believed that our character was clear of all frailty and that the peace we knew was of God when, in fact, it was simply a smug complacency. No one in the company of Jesus could continue to harbour such an illusion. Likewise, the naked soul of a truly holy person acts as an unclouded mirror in which those who come to him for spiritual guidance can see themselves clearly and devastatingly, and yet with acceptance and forgiveness.
The naked soul sings its paeans of joy as it knows the Holy Spirit directly and can respond with rapt attention and total dedication. It has lost all selfish concern in the light of a truth so absolute that it is illuminated by the Spirit of God that dwells in its own spirit. It is indeed one in spirit with God. This unity is no longer merely a theological affirmation; it is a fact of existence proved by the transformation of the personality effected by the Holy Spirit. As the soul reflects as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord, so it is transfigured into His likeness from splendour to splendour. This is the influence of the Lord who is spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). The moment of joy is precipitated by a direct vision of the divine. To be sure, the totality of God is beyond the compass of the human mind, but even the least of us is privileged to have shafts of unimpeded spiritual awareness in which the divine energies impinge themselves directly on the soul. In other words, God, though transcendent of all categories of human thought and described more fittingly in negative terms than in words of discursive intelligence, comes to the naked soul in a personal form of caring and blessing. He lifts up our faltering hearts to the peaks of aspiration; He infuses our spirit with the glory of His effulgent radiance, so that we know Him as we are raised up to His benediction.
The vision of God's presence is preceded by an inner cleansing of the portals through which we perceive truth whether in its intellectual mode, its aesthetic utterance or its altruistic thrust. To speak of truth in categories other than the intellectual would seem to be an unnecessary extension of this word. But in God; as made manifest in Christ, the way, the truth and the life are one. All that leads us to a quickened perception or heightened awareness of divine reality is of the nature of truth. This may be a scientific discovery or a philosophical understanding that suddenly illuminates the mystery of material existence in a new way. It may be a masterpiece of art that reveals in aesthetic intensity through the logic of form the exquisite radiance of the world around us and the mind of God that unceasingly fashions that world. It may be a moment of self-giving love which tears away the citadel of the ego, thereby removing all that is obstructive and predatory in the personality, rendering the soul in its inmost recesses naked in innocent openness to God.
Whenever the inhibitions of fear - a fear based on insecurity and self-distrust - are torn away, the soul is freed to express its true nature, which is joy, in the light of the Holy Spirit that illuminates it from within its centre as well as from beyond all tangible, intelligible limits. The soul's limits are indefinable in their depth and extent, but in personal consciousness we tend, by our egoistical preoccupation with the world around us, to contract into a hard ball of uncommunicative matter. This apparent contraction of the soul serves to limit the extent of its participation in life, and to occlude the light of God from impinging fully on us. In this way the soul is immured in the dross of personal desire. It lies concealed behind rubbish, and prevented from attaining full psychic communion with our fellow creatures. As a result it becomes shrunken, opaque and desiccated, as the blood and water of life are squeezed out of it, and it contracts into an inert shell.
But when the light of God breaks through into our feeble consciousness once more, the soul revives, breathes in the power of the Holy Spirit, and responds to the world's call for help and love. Then we live again. As St John puts it, 'We for our part have crossed over from death to life: this we know because we love our brothers' (1 John 3:14).
This is our first glimpse of resurrection, when the consciousness of inner concern moves from its customary focus within us to extend towards the periphery of life, in order to embrace someone outside us. This moment of new life articulated by the soul is what we experience as joy. It is not dependent on what we are receiving - as are pleasure and happiness - but on what we are giving. The source of joy is witnessing the beloved - who is potentially everyone - growing into a deeper knowledge of God's love, as it is transformed radiantly in the love of God. To see understanding enter a child's mind as it is taught its first lessons, to witness the subtle interplay of recognition as it plays over the face of an alienated person who was, until then, separated from all outer concerns, to watch sight return to the blind and those without hope renewing their trust in mankind following the devoted service they have received - all this is a source of joy. Joy is shared between the one who receives the gift and the one who witnesses its advent in the life of the other. It is mutual and spontaneous. It is a sudden recognition that God's providence illumines all things and directs all events, so that they are rendered new and full of meaning, that each points a way of direct access to the advent of full participation in the divine nature.
It is the privilege of those concerned in the counselling process to lead the client to the joy of recognition that all is well for those who put their trust in the creative potentiality of life, who are open to God's self-revealing providence. The counsellor's soul should radiate that joy; he should be so far outside himself and the limitations of his own understanding that his vision can glimpse the glory beyond rational definition. In that state he can communicate directly with the soul of the one who comes for help. Joy kindles the fearful personality with trust that issues forth in fruitful endeavour, so that its soul blazes triumphantly in a new work enlightened by the spirit within. To be sure, this noble intent of starting a new life has to be implemented by a renewed, strengthened will, deep understanding and acceptance of what has occurred, and the humility to learn from previous experiences as well as from the insights of other people, even those whom one might previously have dismissed summarily as being of little account. Joy is contained in a rare glimpse into the ultimate future, which is also the eternal present, that all is well and that the path of life has a direction, a destination and an end. It is the inspired answer to the contrary proposition, often only too plausible after a disheartening day's work that 'life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'. The refutation of this view is not philosophical. It is afforded by the soul's vision, articulated in hope and consummated in loving service to the world.
Joy is the second fruit of the spirit (Gal. 5:22). It follows love, which is God's revelation of Himself to us; together they bring peace. This is an absence of personal striving for rewards and recognition, so that one can be wholeheartedly about God's business in perfect alignment to His will, bringing love and joy to all who are open and willing to receive them. When we are so centred and grounded in our own being that we can accept ourselves as we are and then forget ourselves, we can entrust ourselves to God's will and start to do what He has prepared for us. This is joy, to be eternally about God's business which brings release from bondage to the ego and freedom to be oneself in the image of Christ. Therein lies healing: this is the end of the work of counselling. We remember the words of Dame Julian of Norwich, 'He did not say, "Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be afflicted", but He said, "Thou shalt not be overcome". He willed that we take heed of these words, and that we be ever strong in sure trust, in weal and woe. For He loveth and enjoyeth us, and so willeth He that we love and enjoy Him and mightily trust in Him; and all shall be well' (Revelations of Divine Love, chap. 68). Those are the words of joy that issue forth from the centre of the soul of the counsellor. How different in tone and import they are from the glib assurances that are uttered by the unfeeling tongue! The personality behind such encouragement is like a dead body.
Joy prevails even when circumstances are threatening and failure seems certain to crown all our efforts. Even if this world were to go up in smoke, joy would not end. For God creates new heavens and a new earth so that the past will not be remembered and will come no more to men's minds (Isa. 65:17). In the new dispensation there will no longer be any sea (Rev. 2I: 1). The sea symbolises evil; it is also the symbol of the unconscious with its multitudinous repressed complexes and their potent emotional charge. In the new Jerusalem there is no need for organised religion, no temple cultus, since the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple (Rev. 21:22). The unconscious is now fully conscious and its destructive elements are redeemed and transfigured by God Who is no longer concealed in the spirit of the soul, but radiates from the substance of the personality and brings light to all those in its proximity. In the new Jerusalem, which itself is a symbol both of redeemed humanity and the enlightened human soul, the city does not need the sun or moon for light, since it is illuminated by God's radiant glory, and the Lamb acts as a lamp (Rev. 21:23). That light serves to fulfil Jeremiah's earlier central prophecy about the new covenant God will make with Israel: He will set His Law within them, writing it on their hearts. Then He shall become their God and they His people (Jer. 31:33-4). Religious instruction shall fade away before the presence of God immanent in the soul, Who is the source of all understanding, the fountain of all wisdom, the seat of all counsel. He is the life that is the light of men, a light that shines on in the darkness which has never mastered it (John 1:4-5).
To know that light is mystical illumination, to bring it down to the world of matter is joy, to be its agent in service to that world is freedom and peace. The end of the counselling process is to set before each person the truth of his own being, that God lies within him, and that he needs no help outside God to bring him to the freedom of a fully actualised person. The traditional psychotherapeutic process with its analytic overtones can reveal and clarify much unconscious material, sorting out the debris and organising the psychic life into a coherent pattern. Orderliness is a primary function of the Holy Spirit.
But then comes the work of transmutation, in which the therapist or counsellor takes on the burden of the psychic disorder of the client, and is the agent of substitution, exchange, healing and restoration. The problem is not so much disposed of as transfigured in the light of counsel and love to a radiance of universal health. It now becomes a sign of healing for many who are oppressed with their own burden. This transfiguration is effected in the place of the soul where the inner light of the spirit burns. The joy radiating from the place of light accompanies the power and love that potentiate the healing process. The transfiguration is instantaneous in its action, but its effects show themselves only by degrees in the life of the person rising from affliction to health.
Few of us could bear a sudden, complete psychic healing. The burden of absolute health would be intolerable in the responsibility it brought with it; the change in life-style would be too dramatic to accommodate all at once. Furthermore, the healing power of the Holy Spirit has to quicken the entire frame of the physical body no less than every perverse thought and destructive emotion that is released by the unredeemed, ailing psyche. As health emerges unobtrusively from the depths of the purged personality, so does joy hesitantly radiate from the open soul, now cleared of egoistical barriers and cleansed of the effect of adverse conditioning. The emergence of joy is like the slow advent of the rising sun on a distant horizon: it starts as a delicate, suffused glow that seems gradually to gain the courage of momentum until its light fully heralds the dawn of a new day. This joy is a confirmation of faith made real by God's mighty healing act and fully established in a life of health. Joy is the end of the healing process, but it also initiates healing under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
Joy grows under adversity inasmuch as suffering strips the soul naked of all outer accretions. Joy grows in intensity through the work of counselling and healing other people: the more we give of ourself in selfless service, the more we receive of the Holy Spirit. Eventually we become an immaculate instrument for the work of the Holy Spirit - as we get ourself out of the way, so the personality is transformed and our very presence becomes a focus of blessing to all in our vicinity. The joy of this enlightened presence kindles joy in the depths of all who come into proximity with us; their difficulties seem to fall into place and can be dealt with positively, while at the same time the natural healing power of the body, now freed of emotional strain, can correct the minor disabilities that life in the world brings with it.
Joy therefore cannot be cultivated. It is evoked as we attain the freedom necessary to establish our true identity, that of a child of God, made in the image of Jesus Christ. The more we grow into what we are to be, the more all our disabilities fall into place in the scheme of our life's unfolding, and each contributes, in its healed aspect, to our full life in God. When we are nothing, we are everything, for then we know Him as the supreme No-Thing from Whom all that exists finds its creative source. He is known to us as love, which is exquisitely personal in its concern, and we respond with the soul's song of joy. The end is peace, to do God's will in harmony with each other in His presence. The soul that has found its rest in God, to return once more to St Augustine's thought, is at peace with God, with its fellow and with itself. It does as it wills since it is moved by love. And that love brings all sentient beings into fellowship with each other in God. The cosmic music of joy is the eternal celebration of this love and peace, this goodwill among men, and the resurrection of all things to full spirit.