Emotional Wellness

Beyond Forced Happiness

Media teaches us that happiness should look like people laughing loudly, jumping for joy, looking perfectly happy. But those images aren’t real happiness.

You can’t force yourself to feel enjoyment. When you demand that you feel good right now, you’re treating your emotions like a circus animal. Trying to force happiness is like trying to grab a soap bubble. The harder you squeeze, the faster it pops.

Real enjoyment is connected to awareness, and awareness is quiet and delicate—like noticing the first star appearing in the evening sky.

Your Two Worlds

Feeling good doesn’t require perfect circumstances. What it requires is awareness of both your outer world (what you experience with your five senses) and your inner world (emotions, thoughts, intuitive wisdom, and sacred essence).

Real enjoyment happens when you combine awareness of both worlds with patience. It evolves over time—like a flower opening its petals to the morning sun.

Moment-to-Moment Awareness

Each moment becomes interesting when you notice how it flows from the previous moment and evolves into the next. Imagine watching a river. If you glance at it once, it’s just water. But if you watch for a while, you notice how it ripples, swirls, catches light, constantly changes. The fascination is in witnessing the transformation.

When you’re trying hard to be happy, you’re missing the subtle shifts happening right now. This is why so many people think they need a special reason to be happy. They’ve lost touch with their natural ability to experience enjoyment.

Benefits of This Practice

• Reduce stress and anxiety naturally
• Become more emotionally stable, centered even when life gets challenging
• Feel empowered, no longer dependent on external events
• Develop wisdom as you see beneath surface appearances
• Discover your inner peace as an ever-present resource

Practice 1: Multi-Sensory Awareness

Find a comfortable spot for 10-15 minutes.

Deeper Seeing

Take three gentle breaths. Notice you’re here, alive and aware. Look around and notice shapes—a rectangular phone, a round cup, a cylindrical pen. Explore shapes with gentle, curious focus, like a butterfly exploring a garden.

Notice colors. See how many shades you can detect. Even a ‘white’ wall has subtle variations—cream here, blue-gray there, golden where light hits.

Observe light and shadow. Where is light pooling? Where are the darker spaces? Feel yourself seeing. You’re actively, consciously witnessing the world.

Deeper Hearing

Notice obvious sounds: traffic, talking, a phone notification. Then tune into subtle sounds: a clock ticking, wind rustling leaves, your refrigerator humming, your own breathing, maybe your heartbeat.

Notice the layers of sound. Some near, some far. Some constant, some come and go. Experience each sound as a vibration—without labeling. What qualities does it have? High or low? Rough or smooth?

Can you sense the silence that holds all sounds? Between the sounds, underneath them, there’s a quality of stillness. This stillness is always here—like the quiet depths of the ocean, undisturbed even when waves crash on the surface.

Deeper Feeling

Notice the temperature. How does the air feel on your skin, face, hands? Feel the textures touching your body. The chair beneath you. The fabric of your clothes. The floor under your feet.

Notice the quality or ‘feeling tone’ of your space. Every room has its own presence. Some spaces feel open and airy, some cozy and protected. Trust what you’re sensing.

Everything has an energy or ‘vibe’ that you can sense. Your imagination is one way your deeper knowing communicates with you.

Combining Your Senses

Notice what you see—shapes, colors, textures, light and shadow. While looking, include sounds in your awareness. Don’t shift your attention away from seeing. Just expand your awareness.

While looking and listening, add the felt sense—the vibes, the temperature, the textures, the quality of the space.

Let all your senses blend into one rich, multi-layered experience. You’re experiencing reality itself—alive, vibrant, full of subtle information. Keep breathing gently. Feel your heart beating. Feel your breath flowing.

Rest in this awareness for a few minutes. Just be here, sensing, breathing, alive.

Practice 2: The Sacred Connection

This practice helps you discover that you’re not separate from the world. Everything is alive with intelligence and presence.

Place your hand on your heart and take three slow breaths. Choose any object near you—a chair, a plant, your coffee mug, a book.

Notice its physical qualities: shape, color, texture, presence. Experience it without labeling. Just experience it as it is—pure, simple, present.

Close your eyes. Imagine or sense a gentle light or warmth in your chest—your inner light, your divine essence. It might feel warm, peaceful, glowing, or spacious.

Open your eyes. Imagine the object also has an inner light or presence—a gentle glow at its center. Every thing carries this spark of divine intelligence, this life force.

Notice a connection between your light and the object’s light. Imagine a gentle resonance between them—like two tuning forks vibrating together. This connection is real, even though it’s subtle.

Speak these blessing statements (out loud or silently):

• ‘I support this plant’s right to exist, and this plant supports my right to exist.’
• ‘I find something fascinating in this plant, and this plant finds something fascinating in me.’
• ‘I enjoy this plant’s presence, and this plant enjoys my presence.’
• ‘I bless this plant, and this plant blesses me.’

Feel the harmony between your inner essence and the intelligence within that object.

Everything has consciousness—a kind of awareness or presence.

Be quiet and receptive for 30 seconds. Notice if you sense warmth, peace, connection, or quiet joy. You’re experiencing the real energetic exchange when consciousness recognizes itself in another form.

Expand your practice. Look around at other objects. Try the blessing statements with them. Notice how easily the inner light within you can share and communicate with the inner light of those objects.

Understanding Energy and Intelligence

Everything is alive with intelligence. Everything participates in the great web of being. Everything is made of the same creative energy—the same divine source—expressing itself in countless forms.

When you bless an object, you’re recognizing the consciousness within it and allowing your consciousness to harmonize with it. Think of it this way: A piano string vibrates when another string of the same note is played nearby. They resonate together. Your consciousness works the same way.

This is you accessing your true power as a conscious being—the power to bless, to heal, to harmonize, to bring love and awareness into any situation.

The Bigger Picture

Many people feel separate from reality—disconnected, isolated. This disconnection creates suffering, anxiety, depression. It makes people feel like happiness is always just out of reach.

When you tune into the subtle energy of your world through your senses, when you bless and appreciate it through your heart, when you feel the sacred connection between your inner light and the light in all things—you’re healing that separation.

You’re coming home. You’re remembering what your soul has always known: you’re not separate from life. You ARE life, experiencing itself in this unique form.

The Sacred Feedback Loop

Every time you tune into the subtle energy of your world and bless it, that practice also heals you. Because whatever you offer to the world, you experience yourself. When you bless a plant or a coffee mug, you’re simultaneously blessing yourself.

What you put your attention on grows. What you appreciate, appreciates. What you bless, blesses you in return.

Your Practice Going Forward

You can enjoy this moment when you stop trying so hard. It happens when your subtle senses are engaged and awake, when you discover the harmony beneath surface appearances, when you bless and recognize the sacred in yourself and in all things, when you rest in your own divine essence.

This is your meaningful experience. It’s quiet, subtle, profound, and real.

Daily Practice (5-15 minutes)

• Take a few minutes for the Multi-Sensory Awareness Journey. Wake up your senses. Notice the subtle shifts.
• Practice the Sacred Connection with one or more objects. Let your heart speak. Feel the resonance.
• Notice how you feel afterward. Are you calmer? More peaceful? More connected?
• Throughout your day, take a moment to notice one sense. The colors. The sounds. The feeling of your breath.
• Before sleep, place your hand on your heart and thank yourself for this journey.

Remember

Genuine enjoyment is subtle, patient, and real. It doesn’t require special circumstances or perfect conditions. It’s waiting for you in this very moment.

All you have to do is notice. All you have to do is be present. All you have to do is allow your awareness to rest gently on reality as it actually is—and discover the sacred beauty that’s been here all along.

Your inner peace isn’t somewhere else, waiting to be found. It’s right here, right now, in the center of your being. It’s your true nature. It’s who you’ve always been.

Welcome home.

May you discover the joy that lives in this moment.

May you know the peace that you truly are.

Joel Bruce Wallach