Most families have the standard stories that get rolled out at birthdays and other occasions about any given family member: the attempt at flying, sticking things up noses and in ears… In my case the most frequently told story was the ‘Hokey Pokey’.
‘Hokey Pokey’ is a children’s song where you stand in a circle and sing, “You put your left foot in… You put your left foot out… You put your left foot in and you shake it all about…” You would include different appendages until it was your whole body that was put into the circle.
The story goes that I was a master of the ‘Hokey Pokey’. I would play with a level of joy that was unrivalled, throwing my whole body into each rendition. However, at some point in my life I stopped. My parents could not work out why my joy and abandon were replaced with caution.
Over the past two years of Universal Medicine retreats, I have discovered not only why I stopped, but also why I loved it so much in the first place.
You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.
As children this connection is simple, so of course I would “put my whole self in,” because it was what I was truly doing. I was playing with all of me, uncaring about what others thought, simply enjoying the feeling of my own body’s movements.
BUT… people watching this got jealous, and as a child, feeling that jealousy projected towards me I was left with a choice – maybe not a conscious choice, but a choice nonetheless. I decided it was better to tone down the joy than have people reacting to me.
Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction. The result was that I stopped doing the ‘Hokey Pokey’ and in the years that followed I became very shy, especially doing anything that involved ‘standing out’ and being ‘on stage’.
At last year’s Universal Medicine Retreat, we looked at how we change ourselves through not wanting to feel the jealousy of others.
At this year’s retreat, we considered the ways in which we avoid feeling our deep connection to life and others. We explored the potential that each person we meet holds and what it is like to feel this potential. We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.
Check out these three photos: one from the days of childhood, one from this year’s retreat and one in the middle somewhere.
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In essence, through my own choices, and the learning and inspiration from the retreats, I have learned to ‘Hokey Pokey’ once again (metaphorically speaking), to put my body into life and shake it all about, because that’s what it’s all about…
By Joel Levin (Western Australia)
Related Reading:
The Livingness before and afters
The Joy and Vitality of Living Life
Born to Sparkle
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
Beautiful to feel the Joy lighting up your body as an inspiration for all.
Yes Mary, to see and feel the joy in the photo on the left of Joel , along with a more recent photo from the 2016 retreat, is indeed joyous.
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.” God has been given such a bad rap in some religions and I agree that it couldn’t be further from the truth, as God is the source of the love and joy we come from. When I am touched by the Magic of God in how things play out in life it really shows the playfulness, joy and humour God has, it’s very beautiful.
Joel your face has changed but the joy that you’re exuding has not changed one iota. Beautiful to both feel and see.
Understanding how Joy can be part of life again and the ensuing appreciation we have for everything connected with God, giving us a true purpose in life.
Joy is a very natural part of life when life is lived in the way that it was intended to be lived. The fact that so many of us not only don’t feel joy but also feel bored, agitated, frustrated, irritated, angry, fed up, annoyed, restless and basically totally brassed off is in itself a clear indication that we’re not living life in the way that it’s intended to be lived.
How true, the reactions of others we make it ours and then we go into shut down mode, and we become someone/something else. If we all were able to keep that joy filled essence, by being nurtured and given the confirmation so we know it is innately within us always and from this knowing of who we are, life would be a different to place to live and be in.
Our essence and the joy we felt as children remains within. However, with all the happens around us, we get to be masters at hiding it to such a point where we forget how to bring it back to life again. However, once we do remember that it was there, then to bring it back does no mean learning a new skill as such nor having to make a huge effort to read and study about joy and essence, but what it is about is to let go and allow it to come back into full expression.
Once we know it is within us, we have to shed the things that don’t belong to us, which for some can be uncomfortable, and understandably so. And you know what? For me, It has simply been worth it. To know who we are, then pretending to be something we are not. It feels when we live from this, then life becomes more joy filled.
True, Henrietta, as we can clearly see and feel Joel has done in his life, equally shown in his before and after photos.
Joel, I love what you have shared and the pictures do say a 1000 words – the joy emanating from you as a child and what has now been brought back to life and expression again.
I love how you describe God
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.”
We are sold, told and have been saturated by a belief that God is vengeful, angry, tyrannical, controlling etc., basically it’s all negative and that we have to subjugate ourselves to his will. This has been passed down through the generations by religious people who claim to know him through their religious studies. But what if those religious studies were totally incorrect? What then are we left with?
Well I feel God is the total opposite of what we have allowed ourselves to believe, we have allowed ourselves to believe what we are told because then it takes away the responsibility to actually find out for ourselves who and what he means to us; we have lost our sense of curiosity to discover something that holds the key to life – how crazy is that!
When we fully connect to joy it certainly is a whole body experience.
I love the fact that the serious Joel is sandwiched by the hokey pokey Joel because it illustrates that our playful essence has never gone anywhere, it is us that mask it as we react to life and what it presents.
A very powerful example of how children, our children, feel everything and yet, unless we the adults understand the energetic interplay that is happening, we will not be able to build a bridge for their expression, and so we will have another human who doesn’t feel it is safe to express
That is true cjames2012, if the adults don’t have the expression or relationship with energy in their bodies, then it is harder for them to support their children to express what they are feeling and build a bridge to their expression.
Most of us have shut down to such an extent that we’re simply not able to consciously feel the energetic interplay of anything and so our poor kids, although they do have a choice to stay the delicate and beautiful beings that they are, feel an enormous amount of unseen and unspoken about pressure to twist and contort themselves into ways of being that are simply not in keeping with their true nature and this dreadful sequence of events is what’s deemed as ‘growing up’ for most.
Very true cjames2012, so we end up with a society of shut down individuals, and all the consequences of that.
This show that the joy never leaves us, we leave joy. And when you return – as you have done so joyously – it is there waiting to explode from our bodies. To shake it all about.
Playful blog, Joel ! That is true. I find it at times easy to seek for distraction away from being in the present in the moment, but I always feel that always makes you feel shorthanded afterwards.. that is where I am learning that it doesn’t pay to check-out from being in the moment !
A great reflection of the difference between being connected with our innermost and when we are not, beautifully reflected in the three photos and so easy to see when you are holding back from being all that you are.
What’s difficult is that most of us are holding back the enormity of who we are are so we don’t have any true reflections of what it’s like to not hold back. We have taken those who are ‘high achievers’ to be the ones who are not holding back but this isn’t true, ‘High achievers’ are a mis-formed representation of not holding back but because not holding back in truth has nothing to do with what we achieve and everything to do with the quality of who we’re being then those who stand out for their achievements are also those who are holding back the enormity of who they are.
“put my whole self in,” A beautiful invitation to rejoin the circle and put our whole selves in and feel the natural joy of knowing who you are.
So true Mary, “putting my whole self in’ could be used as a saying for life itself – how about if we “put our whole selves” into life with the joy in all its abundance with no fear and no matter for how others reacted? Something we all crave to do (unconsciously perhaps for some) as it is our natural way of being, and yet we do tend to struggle so much with this and find it hard to put into practice. Hence reading a blog such as the one Joel has written is very inspiring as it effortlessly re-ignites the same joy within us all – and then it is a choice for each of us to keep this going or to go back to keeping the lid on life and our expression.
I would say that there are only a handful of adults worldwide who actually put their ‘whole selves in’, most of us offer others a very tiny portion of ourselves and more often than not that small section of us isn’t even the real us, it’s a doctored portion that we’ve manufactured for effect. More and more I am increasingly more able to put the whole lot of me on the table for full viewing and it feels fantastic, not because I am a super polished and perfect person, not at all, more because I’m happy to be seen and that includes what others would deem as my faults. There’s something incredibly freeing about being ok with anyone seeing anything about me, I don’t need to consider what it is that I’m ‘putting forward’ because it’s all on display all of the time.
“In reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction” – this is so true and reveals where we go wrong in learning to be responsible, and how we end up associating ‘responsibility’ with a burden/limitation.
What we need to do is bringing back our principles of our true origin, that is our love that has it all. Power we have as our responsibility.
Aaahh what a great one to read again Joel and yes you can see in the three different images how Joyful you were and are now but the one in the middle is showing such. Being un-apologetic for being who we are, enjoying this and expressing this to the max is exactly what we all can be doing. You’re a great inspiration Joel.
How wonderful when we are able to stay living this way, ‘ I would “put my whole self in,” because it was what I was truly doing. I was playing with all of me, uncaring about what others thought, simply enjoying the feeling of my own body’s movements.’
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.” It’s so rare to hear the truth about God shared this way, quite a change from the view of some institutionalised religions and the vengeful, serious, judging and condemning God that is portrayed. I know for me that the more I connect to my soulful essence the more playful, fun and light I am, it’s s very natural part of being connected to God.
Yes, it is lovely to hear the truth about God, ‘You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being.’
Yes that is a great reminder: to not change ourselves when people react to us when we are truthful, joyful, very loving or understanding because when we do we will have one less inspiration for others to come back to our natural way of living.
Absolutely, stay true to who we are, and let other people deal with what that brings up in them, ‘Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction.’
When during growing up, we reach the conclusion that it is time to let go something, we do it in a radical way as if that was never there to start with.
It really is possible to return to that profound and beautiful state of innocence.
And if people do not like to feel that beauty and amazingness in you, then that is their choice, we just continue to shine no matter what, ‘At last year’s Universal Medicine Retreat, we looked at how we change ourselves through not wanting to feel the jealousy of others.’
It really is wonderful to return to that sense of commitment and, ‘ all in’ that Joel is writing about.
Commit in full, like a child does with not a worry in the world. We know how to do it, and just need to peel back the layers that have gotten in the way since.
And these layers are actually not that thick when we start connecting to our essence it is just right there.
This blog really allowed me to see how much I have let go of that natural playfulness that I have, but also to feel how even as a young child I was not really that joyful except for the times I was alone immersed in Nature or playing by myself, where it was easier to feel my connection to me and to God. Although, this reaction of withdrawal to the harshness of the world will never bring true joy or contentment, as we need each other to share this joy truthfully.
I love this call for more ‘hokey-pokey’ Joel, a playful way to inspire us to return to our joyful, true selves.
The Hokey Pokey, bringing your all with your whole body into every part of life 🙂
That sounds like a lot of fun Melinda, and when we connect to our whole body we also connect to its divine intelligence.
To have fun, committing to life and living who we are in truth, ‘We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.’
Love it Joel, put your whole self in, commit in full to life and appreciate how everyday lights up with both new learnings and new beginnings.
Exactly Suse…. everything lights up with commitment.
For me it depends what we’re committing to that will determine whether or not we’re lighting up or dimming down. Anything that uses pranic energy to commit will ultimately dim us down even if we feel that it is lighting us up (spirituality, strenuous exercise, excessive fasting), whereas commitment that is fuelled by the firey consciousness will light us up like a Christmas tree!
There is absolutely nothing like really committing yourself… Whether it be in something simple in your daily life, or for example in singing, or even, in the Hokey Pokey 🙂
On both levels – what it feels like inside to be unreserved, and in the outplay to feel what it is like to bring our all to something. So simple.
Life is all about living with purpose for the full potential of returning to the joy of knowing who we are in step with God.
I just love watching children move with their whole body. The fluidity, the rhythm and vitality all make perfect sense and I can see and feel how at ease they are in their body and the effect this has on themselves and others. Like I am being touched by the magic of God.
Yeah Monika I so love watching this in children and what I am even loving more is feeling me going back to this innate quality and feeling my body move in this fluid and easy quality. Life is much simpler and more profound than ever thanks the the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom as presented by Serge Benhayon
Awesome you connected back to ‘God, actually the ultimate playful being’, and are putting your whole body into life again with the ‘risk’ of people being jealous. If we all allow ourselves to feel the God’s we are, there wouldn’t be any jealousy.
It’s so refreshing to hear God being referred to as ‘the ultimate playful being’ because so often he’s portrayed as being a rather dour stick in the mud who’s prone to dishing out punishment when things don’t go his way.
I just recently heard some wisdom about life and living in it, instead of withdrawing, shutting down and not committing. The key is to put everything into it i.e. participate and be part of all that life is. This will successfully give all that you need.
Haha very cool, I love this Joel- put your whole body into life and shake it all about.
Jealousy is a strong force that like Sauron’s eye in ‘The lord of the rings’ becomes very focussed on those who exhibit the pure delight of living their connection with God. It is one of the strongest forces that opposes us continuing to live the joy and fullness of who we are as kids. How inspiring to see the before and after photos and see the inner ‘hokey pokey’ back.
“it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction.” – I know I do it, I know other people do it. But reading this today didn’t make any sense to me…Why would I take on the responsibility of someone else reacting when that is their choice to do so?
I agree Leigh, I have also come from feeling I am the one that somehow needs to change when I experience jealousy and bullying, but as I begin to explore this whole area I can see there is a lot of growth on offer to simply observe, to not take others reactions personally, to see the bigger picture at play and allow others the space to not be their true loving selves – and to also allow me to be all I can be without attachment to how others are.
The ‘hokey-pokey’ is such a gorgeous analogy for commitment to life; for when we truly do commitment to life, life is fun.
Lovely to read this again and be reminded that, “God …. is actually the ultimate playful being.”
Lovely Joel welcome back.
I find joy is one of the things that causes jealous reactions in adults more than most other things they see in kids. As adults we can see what we abandoned as kids and feel the resentment that a child is able to express it when we have lost this natural joy in life. This setup reminds me of how apprentices can be treated (bullying, initiations, made fun of etc), with the justification being that the older tradesmen went through it, so why shouldn’t the apprentice suffer as they did?
Thank you Fiona for your comment and expanding the conversation, if we allow ourselves to be knocked down by jealousy and bullying we too can then become part of that same negativity playing out by directing those same energies at others. The initiation process you wrote of is an awful process of knocking others down to the same level we have accepted, which is to live much less than our true selves.
There’s a part of us that’s soothed when other people are not doing so well, it’s like we can lay low and take a breath, whereas when people start to fire up and become joyful it rocks our boat and brings up the discomfort of why we’re where we are and the choices that we made to be where we are. For so many of us it’s basically annoying when other people are joyful because it’s a reflection we’d rather do without.
Super cool Joel. You shaking it all about inspires the rest of us to shake off the dust that we can sometimes allow to settle on our shoulders, weighing us down like lead! Gosh, we get so serious and stiff sometimes don’t we? When we really look at it, we’re absolutely wasting time, time to be enjoying life and just having fun with it.
Gorgeous example, gorgeous relevant picture displayed. A profound way of coming back to who you are and bring yourself into life in a way that is your natural expression, as we so dearly lost that! Gosh, every time I see a child I see often a playfulness that I am now thank God coming back to since I chosen for the Way of The Livingness and be a student of its teachings – from inside out. I discovered within myself this joy and playfullness again, that was still there, all I needed was a simple tool to come there.
I love the sense that God is the ultimate playful being. Playfulness feels very natural and is surely innate in us all.
Jealousy is an ugly energy that paralyzes us when it is directed at us for the mere fact that we are being us and choosing to move with us. For someone who has chosen not to do this, our freedom to feel joy is simply too much. The reflection they get is totally unbearable. So, we are confronted with a choice: whether to continue because we honor us and how we feel or to stop to help them out to continue swimming in their misery with no reflection that disturbs them anymore. The problem with the second option, of course, is that we turn the light off in ourselves.
And end up swimming in the same muddy puddle – how does that help inspire someone to be more?
Beautifully shared Eduardo. It’s better that someone experiences the mini earthquake of their own reaction shaking them out of their comfort and their illusion by the reflection of someone living soulfully in love and joy, than to stay where they are and believe that ‘this is it’. Though jealousy is directed at the other person it’s really their own self fury related to their own relationship to evolution.
Isn’t life so much more fun and joyful when we put our whole body in it and not leaving any part of ourselves out? From experience, the answer is, YES.
When we tap into our inner playfulness we not only connect to God, but we also connect to the all. Our connection to joy is found in our movements and then this allows us to express our joy in any moment, so we can “hokey pokey,” to our hearts content.
When we are listening to our own inner “Hokey Pokey” we remain in the joy and simplicity of being connected to our Inner-Most!
Jealousy feels horrible on the receiving end, and I’m sure many of us have toned down parts of ourselves so as not to be targeted, but what if the world needs a reflection of another way of living, of us being joyful, powerful, and loving?
I love this sharing and reminder, ‘You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful’, time to let our playful and fun side come out again.
To be able to dance, sing, to move, to have fun and to be silly,… Our bodies, our hearts, our very being just loves this.
I agree Chris, it’s a natural part of our being.
“We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.” Your photos say it all – the contrast is tangible. I love the hokey pokey analogy. Let’s all ‘put our whole selves in.’
Love what you have shared Joel, your stories always put a smile on my face and a joy in my heart.
Jealousy is such an awful thing to feel, particularly as a child. However, discovering through Universal Medicine that our learnt protection from it is to suppress our true nature and connection with God is even more horrible. Realising this the hurt from the jealousy no longer has the power
I always love what you write Joel, I find your writing conveys important truths in a joyful and fun way.
I sit here reading this and am amazed at how life has changed from my first experience of Universal Medicine at the retreat in 2011. Life is amazing and I’ve learnt that theres no need to hold back and not ‘shake it all about’ – shake off the misery and seriousness and feel the joy thats there underneath!
Joel I look at you photos (not the one in the middle) but all I see and feel is joy and that committing to putting your whole whole body in and shaking it all about, brings that very joy.
So true Jennifer, the emanation from those two photos is amazing. And may I add so is Joel in real life!!!
Commitment is only true when we commit with our whole bodies. If we only commit with a part of us then for all intents and purposes there is no real commitment. Saying yes has to be said unanimously with our whole bodies, otherwise it’s a no.
Committing to the hokey-pokey, committing to life… a great movement forward… and evolution of re-connection
Joel, I love your pictures, and the smile from the retreat matches the same joy you were expressing as a child. I don’t see the same joy from the photo in the middle.
Just looking your photos I can feel the joy. Great that you came back to it again!
A lovely playful blog full of wisdom – there is indeed true joy when we commit to life and express our all.
What a gorgeous story of returning to the joy you had as a child. When you talked about God being so playful and how kids naturally have that same playfulness as they are literally living in union with God, it made me realise how natural religion (our relationship with God) is. Kids don’t get embarrassed, deny or hide the fact that they are in the sandpit with God. Why would you when this is our nature? It’s only when we feel the false versions of religions and judgment from others that we question or doubt this.
What a blessing for the world Joel, that you have re-discovered your inner ’hokey-pokey ☺
Oh the pure joy of it all!!!Thank you for sharing Joel I can feel the joy dripping off the page and the photos say it all!
I am feeling the joy Joel, what a blessing. I love being playful and have noticed that even in my own home it presses buttons because at school you simply do not make a ‘fool’ of yourself. School squashes so much of our playfulness. I can see it is my duty to keep that playfulness rolling though now! Thanks for the reminder Joel.
Who doesn’t like to play, seriously who? and yet so few adults play unless they’ve had a drink or are on drugs. There’s a playful side in us all and yet in so many of us it feels dried up and very long forgotten.
I realised recently how after moving to Europe the spark of joy and ease and openness towards simply laughing and having a bit of fun was somewhat reduced and it actually feels less ease here to naturally express this way! I did not realise just how much I have adjusted my expression to what I feel from others around which was a lot more than in New Zealand. The choice to dull may be subconscious but it is definitely a choice nonetheless. A choice we can change at any moment.
It’s so important to realise these markers, to know what is natural to us so we can assess when we drop how to support ourselves to come back. Our love and joy is simply precious.
Love it Joel, you certainly do put your body into life and ‘shake it all about’. The freedom of movement and joy just in your photos (young and most recent) captures exactly that.
Jealousy is a veritable kill joy and destroyer, especially of children’s innocence and very natural exuberance and boundless vitality and playfulness.
Thank you Joel, you have reminded me of the joy of simply being ourselves.
There is a simple joy in just being ourselves but the trouble is so few of us are just ourselves, we’ve re-interpreted ourselves so many times that most of us don’t bare any resemblance to who we originally were as kids and that, in a nutshell is why most of us don’t have any real joy in our lives.
Wow Joel, your photo’s say it all. You have the same joy-full radiance now as you did as a child. An incredible inspiration to see that throwing our whole body joy-fully back into life is true medicine.
I agree Kim, the most recent adult photo is very like the photo of Joel as a boy. This is something we give up on living as adults, the joy and exuberance we felt as children. As Joel shows, it’s actually very possible with the support of Universal Medicine.
It’s amazing how we abandon our natural selves in order to not rock the boat. But understandable too, for jealously from others can be very difficult to withstand, especially when it comes from people we think or expect should love us unconditionally. So, mastering being OK with what triggers others into a jealous reaction needs to be high on the personal development agenda!
Thank you Joel. It is about our whole body inteligence – only than we are truly inteligent.
In this most recent photo of you Joel you can feel your joy and lightness shining through – how powerful is it to live in the world unaffected by the jealousy and attack from others and to reflect true love and brotherhood with our every movement.
You can feel your re-commitment to life Joel. All in for whatever the universe has to offer. Like with children its a beautiful quality that is hard to resist. We know from our friends, colleagues, and those around us who is still up for it, and who has withdrawn to a safe place and tempered their expression of who they naturally are. Yet we always carry it with us, and the choice to reconnect is never lost – always just a step away (be that the left foot in or the right foot in!).
Thanks Joel… It is possible to have that sense of fun and innate joy in our movement even as we get older… It is possible to restore that innocence, that sense of just simply enjoying ourselves move… And when we do it is the most wonderful feeling
It is too easy and comfortable to stay in one place – put life in the old body and shake that grace out for all to see.
The key to our relationship with God is this: ‘You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.’
And a killer of a sentence of truth is: ‘I have learned to ‘Hokey Pokey’ once again (metaphorically speaking), to put my body into life and shake it all about, because that’s what it’s all about’
You just offered us the keys to change our lives forever.
Joel the photos really highlight what you have shared. The same cheeky ‘Im all in’ smile is evident in the photo of you as a child and the one now. The one somewhere in between is completely different – withdrawn from life, hiding and not offering you. Learning about jealousy and what it is and what it means for us as people and how to deal with it when we feel it has been one of the best things that I have learned in this life.
I realise the more people on earth that are living and feeling joyful, it becomes easier for everyone else to reconnect to it too. This shows how interconnected we are and how we affect each other through our choices and movements much more than we realise.
It is quite shocking to consider how much we deform ourselves in order to not feel jealousy. Jealousy is an evil force that serves only to diminish the brilliance of our connection to our divinity, and how our appreciation of this in ourselves and others confirms our purpose here to grow, learn, flourish and inspire each-other to evolve so we can live the joy of being all that are, in true Brotherhood.
When we put anything less than all of us in it is us that misses out. The Hokey Pokey is no fun when we play halfheartedly and neither is life.
So True Leonne, and as Joel has presented when we put our all into life we get the wisdom that comes with that Inner-Most connection>
Having got back from this year’s retreat in the UK it was cool to get a reminder of the past two. Whereby there were presentations based around the fact that eventually jealousy will not be the terror that it can be/is today that we all try to avoid. And that we are supported by many ways in life to do the Hokey Pokey, to be light and playful without hesitation. This future can be lived today and I feel this occurs when we take that ‘risk’ and re-introduce playful, silly, light-hearted moments into our lives.
Leigh we can even be playful, light-hearted and silly with jealousy, others and our own.
And what an evolution to see the beautiful and tender man that writes so playfully and so elegantly, building bridges that anyone can simple walk over on the way back to their own hearts.
Love it Chris, such a profound statement that hold water and can keep us all afloat. Could it be we forget about the bridges and life saving buoys because in the current of life we either sink or swim under our own way of play Hokey-Pokey. So as Joel has so simply shared by producing photos in which it is plainly apparent he is swimming again within the divine Light of his Inner-Most Heart.
Very cute Joel – this is a really lovely sharing of what it is to be our full selves. SO many times I have held back my fulness because I am scared of what others think – but the truth is – I am just playing a game with myself to not be all of me and find an excuse in others to justify this.
A beautiful invitation to drop the guard and let the world see how gorgeous we are.
Claiming our whole body will be an amazing experience as I already have claimed a lot and am working on the rest.
For more on whole body go to;
http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=WHOLE+BODY+
I drop into the pattern of taking the responsibility of other people’s actions as well, but when I truly stop and ask myself, why would I question myself before I question others? Having a level of appreciation, trust and love for myself, I know where I come from and what my essence is, and therefore when I sense another’s reactions and responses now, it is much easier to be light hearted, observe and ask why they are having this reaction, knowing we are actually all equal in playfulness as God, and why wouldn’t we want to show this with each other?
It feels simply amazing to re-connect to our body in every movement and feel the absolute joy, lightness and freedom to simply be ourselves in full. Very cool indeed thank you Joel.
Wow. The guy in the middle looks and feels so different. I would not recognise him as you, Joel. I kind of don’t really want to say say ‘joy has always been there within and never lost’ because that feels like it is a given (although it is in truth) that you re-connected to your true essence, but it is a miracle, not by luck – but by choice.
I too having reconnected to my joy, feel huge joy at feeling joy again 😉
Hear! Hear! Nicola I agree joy is so much a part of my life and it is a joy to experience.
For more on joy go to;
http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=JOY
I have to be truly grateful to my daughter as she makes me realise how serious and lacking in the joy of life I can be sometimes, getting caught up in life. Sometimes when I see her laugh so open and unrestricted and be so excited about things or events coming up it just brings up the hokey pokey in me as well something I also lost but is on the come back.
Joel the way you write is so up lifting and joyful, thank you reminding us that the joy lies within us, its up to us to play the hokey pokey and put our whole body in, shake it all about and express with full joy.
Playing the hokey pokey in life can only come from the natural progression of returning to the bodies that we had as kids because if it comes from either a mental intention or wishful thinking then it will be like so many of the other things that we attempt in life, a mental attempt that comes devoid of any backing from the body and as joy comes from the body it simply won’t work.
Much the way you returned to the Hokey Pokey, I very much enjoy returning to this blog. It is a very joyful piece to feel.
Your writing always puts a smile on my face… whilst also highlighting a truth… in how we have all chosen to not do the hokey pokey in life and have settled for a much more measured version of putting our whole self in according to how much of ourselves we are willing to express and be seen doing so. It’s a great analogy and a great reminder of the joy we are missing out on from choosing this.
Joel love the 2016 photo of you – gives me joy just looking at it… even though I don’t need any reason to feel joy because it is who and what I am.
I too allowed myself to let go of my joy and become less and less due to the jealousy of others and then wondered why I was depressed for so much of my teenage and twenties. Thanks to the immensely joyful and loving reflection of Serge Benhayon I have regained my joy and thanks to Serge’s teachings on jealousy I have grown to understand the mechanism of jealousy and when it is expressed towards me I take it as a confirmation of my awesomeness!
“I have grown to understand the mechanism of jealousy and when it is expressed towards me I take it as a confirmation of my awesomeness!” Nicola this is absolute gold, if the mechanism of jealousy was taught to kids as well as the technique of taking the jealousy of others as a confirmation of their own awesomeness then lots of kids wouldn’t grow up as the greatly diminished adults that they do.
In absolute honesty I feel that I still have a way to go with putting my whole body into the Livingness. Maybe as a child I held back playing the hokey pokey? Anyway I enjoy life and to the best of my ability so that as a student of The Livingness I always put my best foot forward and shake it all about.
ha ha Greg that is gorgeous and knowing you I certainly agree you put your best foot forward and bring a lot of joy to many, many people. Great point you make because although I feel a lot of joy, there is still further I can go with allowing it to be a whole body expression.
Is it possible it is a forever-deepening-experience, so that there is no exponential point to reach for it is forever expanding unfolding path of return!!?
I can feel the joy and playfulness in your blog Joel. I absolutely love what you’ve shared, it reminds me to let go of the worries of what people might think or how they might react and to simply move with absolute joy that is busting to be expressed.
The most powerful way to heal jealousy is to stand in its wrath and fury with your heart open and beaming. When we do that, jealousy has nowhere to turn but in towards itself.
Love what you share here Katerina. In the past I have often lessened myself and my activities because of other peoples jealousy, this way no one gets that amazing expansive feeling nor feels the power and glory that we can bring. Standing tall, even when others may be resenting one for it, is to keep up the shining and magic in life.
Elaine yes we need to keep bringing all of us shining our light and amazing-ness, Sure others may react or get jealous but soon our love and light would be felt, the magic and the glory we bring will melt them.
This is a very relatable blog Joel as I am sure many of us abandoned our ‘hokey pokey’ in the past to fit in and to avoid reactions from others. Thanks to the Universal Medicine retreats and courses on offer yourself and many others are also learning to re-connect back to this playfulness and joy we once felt as children and are celebrating and making this our new ‘normal’.
I have certainly felt I am responsible for other peoples reactions in the past – but Joel you bring such simplicity here in saying that it isn’t the case – we can only live and present who we are and if people react then they have a responsibility to look at why that is the case. Otherwise we get into this self inflicted cycle of playing small just in case. And what is the point in that?
I love that you have learned to Hokey- pokey again Joel… and thanks again for reminding me of that great song that just sticks in one’s brain …. 🙂
‘uncaring about what others thought” this is something I, and I feel many people need to work on.I tone down my movements around people. I see this start from a very young age at school. When kids start school, for the vast majority it is not there, I would say around p4 ( age 8 or 9) this begins to start, when many kids, I would say 99% become cautious, and actually change.
‘But life is SERIOUS right? Isn’t that the reality? I mean it’s everything I see around and about me’. For anyone who’s ever experimented with letting this view go and doing a jig of delight, flashing a brilliant smile or just walking jauntily along, they will know that as you show Joel that life is actually big fun and made for us to know joy in every step. The rest is just a bunch of junk, distracting noise not worth consideration. The fact is we are sons of God, not tortured, faulty and flawed. All we need to do is live the playful way we should.
I agree there is nothing wrong with having a silly or goofy moment as adults, in fact it makes life far more enjoyable and light hearted.
‘I have learned to ‘Hokey Pokey’ once again (metaphorically speaking), to put my body into life and shake it all about, because that’s what it’s all about…’ Which is quite symbolic of putting in our whole self in our commitment to everyday life to shake up the status quo and clear away any mess we have created. Great blog Joel.
Thank you Joel, it’s beautiful to be reminded of the Joy that lies within.
Its great that Universal Medicine has exposed jealousy for how evil it actually is and that so many of us shut down because of it without actually being aware of why. Thank you Joel for sharing this as well so we can be more aware and get back to the playfulness that we are naturally meant to be from.
How many of us have toned down our natural joy and appreciation of ourselves simply because we have chosen to cringe when we have felt anothers jealousy or reaction to us. What is worse is how much do we ourselves and others miss out on because of this dulling?
Previously, I have taken responsibility in my life for everything that happened in and around me. If I felt something change in a relationship where a person separated from me e.g because of jealousy, envy or competition etc, I immediately accepted that I had done something wrong and so I then held back (I stopped doing the Hokey Pokey and putting my whole body in) in order to make it better or easier for the other person to return to relationship or connection with me. These behaviours impact life and put a lid on the joyful, playful and Divine beings we are. It feels amazing to be uncovering these sinister patterns and opening to our innate Divinity
Christine I too used to think ‘that I had done something wrong and so I then held back in order to make it better or easier for the other person to return to relationship or connection with me’ but what I now realise is that the other person could not connect with me because I had diminished myself to such an extent that there was no real me for them to connect with. I now choose to remain all of me and if another person doesn’t want to connect with me then that is their choice but I choose to keep as much of the real me as available as possible and not hide great chunks of me because it causes discomfort in others.
love it Joel, we are always made to express the awesome joy within.
You do this so beautifully Harry!
What a great and vibrant boy you where Joel and to see it all pouring out of you again is a double joy to see and feel.
I hate feeling jealousy – I’ve not let myself feel it in full, but it’s definitely something I am working on, to not react and not need to be liked by people, to accept the fact that people especially women are jealous not of me, but the choices I am making in my life to love myself. This is key, to learn to not take it personally. But I definitely hold back and drop my joy to not stand out.
It’s funny as I read this Joel and see the words “hokey pokey,” I feel such joy and freedom in my body. I remember having so much fun with this song when I was a kid and I am feeling that same connection and fun with my body and my movements now. Thank you a great way to start my day.
I love the two pictures of you Joel as a boy and as the man you are today – cheeky, playful and joyful. Who is that man in the middle, you could say ‘it isn’t you’ and there is truth in that.
Beautiful reminder that life is about full commitment and not dipping your toes. The song is a great reminder that life can be as joyous and playful if we allow it to be.
Love that I happened on this blog again this morning. The lightheartedness and yet profundity are just the right mix to inspire me to put my whole self in and really enjoy today whatever anyone else thinks or how they respond.
it is lovely to read about someone re-committing to life… this is something that we all need to do and such a light-hearted and refreshing take on this is great to read
I feel so committed to life in a way I did not feel was possible, when something happens, when I choose something I feel it more in detail, I do not check out like I once did and I love every day encounters and tasks, alway deeper to go and more to learn, but feels amazing, to have jumped into life.
I love witnessing young children, how open they are, and how they throw themselves fully into whatever they get involved in. The joy, the presence, the light and the love they reflect melts you. But more and more I am realising there is no reason whatsoever that we can not live and express this as an adult – after all the only difference is that we are in bigger bodies and we have had a few more years of practice in this incarnation. We are exactly the same in our essence.
Toning down our Joy because we think it makes others feel comfortable is actually an illusion. When we go into this role and contract from who we are then this is reflecting back to those around us that it is ok to not be who we are. The amount of energy required to keep ourselves contracted is draining and exhausting. It just goes to show that there is a responsibility of being who we are innately design to be and not to be shy of the of magnificence that actually is.
Last night on New Years Eve I was working at a friends hotel and after midnight the DJ played …. The Hokey Pokey … although I swear it is call the Hokey Cokey!!!. Anyway the staff were dancing with the guests and it came to the part of the song where it says …. you put your whole self in and your whole self out. At this moment I remembered your blog and smiled and when putting my whole self in and my whole self out with much joy remembered this was not just for a split moment in a song but for every moment in my life, to be fully commitment with all that I do including connecting and being open and loving with others. Great reminder, thank you.
To consider every move we make can be joyful – this is a revelation. With the wonder and enthusiasm of our innate nature from birth we can move with the light-ness, the freedom and simplicity, it’s still all with-in. We have choice to understand and appreciate our own delight – without censoring ourselves for any reason. Walk with a skip in my step regardless who is watching – this is how I’m choosing to bring in a new year.
It is always a joy to come back to your words Joel.
The Hokey Pokey is about being playful and letting go…letting everyone see you in your glory. In a world where we do not celebrate someones true and natural innate glory, but instead glorify their accomplishments and the external things that they do, it can be very confronting to be one to Hokey Pokey in full view for it does trigger so much reactions from others. Well done Joel for returning to your Hokey Pokey and for sharing you with us and the rest of the world.
Connect to the fact that this being – God – is always joyful and always right here, and every movement is joyful. I love this Joel – it is absolutely true, for how can you not be in joy when you know it is God’s love that’s running through your veins?
Every time I read this blog my heart sings with joy. Transient storm clouds are no match for the might of the endlessly burning sun. This is a great lesson for us all to never hold back the warmth and joy that we naturally emanate when we are not contracting back from it out of fear of how we will be received. Every day I am blessed with these ‘hokey pokey’ moments when I watch my children move effortlessly and playfully unencumbered by the ‘weight of the world’. Which has made me realise that the world only appears to be heavy because we are not living the light that we are within it. It is our lightness of being that is the antidote to the weight we carry upon our shoulders where our wings otherwise rest.
love the poetry of this line- “Transient storm clouds are no match for the might of the endlessly burning sun.”
as soon as I started reading this article… I knew who had written it… I had an image of Joel doing the hokey Pokey… ☺ Thanks Joel lovely to read your writing again, and most definitely let us put our whole bodies in with Joy
Contorting ourselves in order to avoid jealousy results in the disfiguration of who we truly are.
Feeling jealous of another also contorts us and disfigures who we truly are.
Joel, this is gorgeous, ‘I was playing with all of me, uncaring about what others thought, simply enjoying the feeling of my own body’s movements.’ I see this with children, that they are so full of themselves and there is none of the self consciousness that adults often have, and none of the thoughts of how they should or shouldn’t be, just a freedom and a joy, this is very lovely to see and feels very natural.
It is amazing how much we can hold back and change ourselves for other people to try to fit in. But no body wins and we all miss out – I know this far too well. What is crazy is that those who truly love me want nothing more than me to express in full and those who find it challenging well – maybe they need the reflection!!!
Today I commit to ‘putting my whole self in’!
One of the most powerful tools I’ve learnt to practice in life, is to see jealousy as a confirmation. In other words, if how I am is stirring jealousy through others, then I must be doing something very right or true, otherwise there would be no reaction! Also, observing the feeling of jealousy and understanding that it’s my choices that people are jealous of, it’s not actually me so I’m not taking the hit as personally anymore.
Imagine if we committed to life, looking after ourselves and reflecting back to humanity a joyous way to live in the same way we commit to ‘putting our whole body in’ to the hokey pokey 🙂 Great blog Joel, love it.
The joy emanating from the photo of you at this year’s retreat is tremendous. It brought a bit smile to my face just looking at. Definitely doing the hokey pokey in that one!
Love the title Joel – it alone is a great reminder for how you can live in life.. with a natural flow and playful dance, taking your whole body in to each and every movement.
Sometimes when some one is totally joyful we can judge them as being too much, too vibrant or too content with life – something must be false, simply because we have come to accept a world that is so far from this joy.
I have watched and observed my daughter when she would put her whole self in, share with the world, stand up for the teachers and speak up for her friends change completely in high school. Now she doesn’t speak up, she hides, she doesn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers and she is afraid to be herself so she conforms to fit in. She doesn’t want to talk about it or take responsibility for it and that is her choice and I know deep inside she is feeling it all and just reacting to all that is happening at school and all the jealousy that is aimed at her.
As children we know truth and love in our hearts and because what is reflected back to us is not of truth we develop behaviours in order to manage life, this serves us for a while until we hit a point in our evolution where those behaviours don’t serve us any more and once again we can return to the innocence and wonderment of our true selves.
‘Playing at a level of joy that is unrivalled” is something that many of us will relate to as a child.
What a great marker of our strong connection to our truth and our expression of this truth.
I love the metaphor of hokey pokey i.e. putting the whole body in. It is one of the easiest and most powerful way of communicating commitment to life that I came across. thanks for Sharing!
I agree completely – the deepest Joy is in connecting to God and expressing our truth.
I fully agree so often we look outside of ourselves yet it is all within. We can then share our fullness with everything and then we truly get magic! And yes without truth their is no evolution or joy as after all truth is love and so without love what are we really doing?!
Life is not the same when we live only dipping our toes in.
Thank you Joel of reminding me of the joy I often felt as a child. It is worth reclaiming this today with everything I do.
Thank you Joel for reminding me of the pure joy I felt as a child playing and loving the things I did.
Imagine that we are naturally born with ‘put your whole self in’ and that it us that separates into parts and plays life in different compartments in order to avoid not being hurt again.
Ah Joel, lets do the Hokey Pokey and return to the joy, sparkle, fun and laughter we once expressed as children. Thank you for the beautiful gentle reminder.
I remember this song well. In England it was called the Hokey Cokey. It was considered a child’s game / song, but perhaps that is because bouncing about with joy is only considered suitable for children. Grave mistake! As you have beautifully demonstrated, adults can have this joy in their life too.
Well said Rebecca. As adults we do tend to reserve our joy for special moments rather than just sharing what we are natrually feeling all of the time. This blog is a great reminder for us all, that we do not need to and should not hold back what we feel just because it may make another feel uncomfortable.
How different my life is when I feel the full commit to life with my whole body and not just parts. From attending Universal Medicine workshops and having Esoteric healing session I can feel the changes in my body and different organs within my body as the energy shifts within me. My relationship with my body has changed immensely over the years and I completely claim that I am still very much a work in progress.
We seem to quash the joy in our children, often without being aware of it until years later. Our need is often for our children to behave in a sensible way, but if we can’t be frivolous and joyful when young when can we be? You do look like you have connected to that little boy from the past again Joel!
It is so beautiful to see the sparkle and joy in your face and eyes Joel reflected as an adult now that was always there as a small child . This is real evolution.
I have loved returning to this blog Joel – I great reminder of the nature of God in us all of being fully committed but playfully so in all that we do.
I can relate to a lot of what you have said here Joel, about leaving my joy, long ago back in childhood. Feeling others reactions, so toning down who I am and an innate joy inside of me. This is returning the more and more I re-learn to listen to my body and self honour what I feel.
Hi Raegan, I understand to a level what you mean by ‘listening to your body and self-honouring’ what you feel, could you please expand on this so I can learn more?
I am learning more and more that when I don’t ‘put my whole self in’ that is one less reflection for humanity to know and feel the potential each and every one of us has as human beings to fully live who we truly are. Everything matters and I can be an example of that every day by putting my ‘whole self in!’
I have on many occasions been moved to tears, when I have witnessed people like Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon lovingly reflect the truth which I myself ask for, yet I react when it comes in a different way to how I expect it. I know I energetically whack the messenger and they must feel it – yet not once have I experienced them pull away and hold back delivering the most loving beholding level of truth again and again. This quality of dedication shows me an absolute and unconditional love and commitment to people that blows me away.
Wow! Such level of detail is amazing Golnaz, is it possible for you to give a more in-depth explanation so I can understand at a deeper level?
We are willing to see we were wrong about many aspects of life, but are we ready to see the biggest trick of all is that life and living needs to be serious? I love Joel how you show this seriousness is seriously holding us back – your photo shows you are leading the way in letting this go.
Joel, your blog is a beautiful reminder of the playfulness that we each innately have within and of course the playfulness of God, cutting through any pictures that I might still have as God being a condemning or serious God. God is love and of course with that love there is always play.
The joy in your photos are such a delight to see Joel! Reading your blog again, I can recall a time when I expressed joy with all my body with an absolute freedom. Then just before school started I exchanged joy for safety and expressed caution, shyness and in capability, all to be less threatening to bringing up stuff for others. Then later on in life I thought I was more expressive and more myself but I see now it was a false sense of confidence and the main point was always looking for recognition and attention. It shows that everything is a choice and if we can choose to be less then we can choose to reconnect and be more.
Joel, I love your joy of life and that you have now reclaimed it. Your story is a joy to read.
I can remember a feeling similar level of joy and playfulness as a child when I didn’t hold it back, but gradually it diminished as I became aware of others reactions towards me. It has always been there but throughout my life I would only let it out of the box when it felt safe to do so. But I am reconnecting with that true essence that is so much a part of who I am, and in doing so I am increasingly able to stay light in situations that I would otherwise stay very serious.
I still feel all these typically religious continuations when it comes to GOD, embarrassment, cringe, over explaining, justifying, I swear its not the daggy God with the beard in the sky…..
But Joel, when you call God a playful dude I let out a sigh, I go, I know that dude, he plays games with me, using nature all the time, he is a legend. In fact, some black yellow tail Cockatoos, very defined in their features, very rare to see at my house, have just flown over head, its cool, this dude does have fun and reminds me to not be so serious regularly.
It is so inspiring if we can go full circle as you have done Joel and come back to fully doing the hokey pokey without changing, even if we do feel the old jealousy aimed in our direction. At least now because of the wisdom brought though at the retreats we now know what to be aware of.
I feel that we really need to pick apart the seriousness of life, it’s so unnatural but considered so normal. In my own life the more serious I get the worse I feel – it literally depresses who I am. Laughter is such great medicine and I have had profound healing’s just from lightening up about issues, which have pretty much then dissolved. We can consider joy, playfulness and silliness as qualities that show we aren’t committed or serious (there’s that word again) about life, but I feel joy, playfulness and silliness actually show a commitment to who we truly are in essence.
Joel, I absolutely love what you have shared here and I can actually imagine you playing the hokey pokey! “The story goes that I was a master of the ‘Hokey Pokey’. I would play with a level of joy that was unrivalled, throwing my whole body into each rendition.” – and this alone is inspiring as it goes to show how many of us hold back in life when in fact we really have the opportunity to be having fun and doing the hokey pokey every day!
A truly awesome blog Joel,
Just today I connected to how I felt at 15, and at this point in my life I was still very open and aware. So much so that on starting my first job and realizing that ‘real life’ was the same as school life, i.e. Bulling. I immediately began to shut the world out. Like you, thanks to Universal Medicine, this is no longer the way I live. I to love putting my whole body into life.
The only way to live life is with both feet in – absolute commitment to every single day and every single moment. We can’t afford to only put one leg in, or one arm in – it’s all or nothing.
What a great one to be looking at Joel and it is so interesting that we like to play this game of tip toeing on the edge so wanting to be in the middle but holding ourselves back. The effort involved and the control is ginormous and whats the worst that is going to happen if we jump in, we feel amazing and others get to see it!
I say let’s put our whole body into the circle of life and live from the heart rather than our separated parts and perspectives.
Yes jennym putting our whole self in and out of everyday life is often the missing ingredients. Living in fear or not trusting in everyone to see the whole you. Not realising that taking this on board brings with it a whole new level of appreciation that we may not be aware of.
this is such a sweet story, i love how you make such a great analogy between that song and how kids are in their natural joyfulness.
Such a playful blog, I love the fact we can by choice put ourselves into every thing we do, every moment is a choice to embrace it in full, like a child delighting in the present moment.
If ‘common logic’ creates a picture of how we should be then this is a very great time to choose the opposite and bring back our own versions of ‘hokey pokey’.
‘At last year’s Universal Medicine Retreat, we looked at how we change ourselves through not wanting to feel the jealousy of others.’ This is so true Joel. There is so much unconscious jealousy flying around – bats in everyone’s belfry! We all feel the poison of this emotion when it hits us and in order to avoid it we tone ourselves down and stop shining. Universal Medicine is the best support to learn to field the jealousy.
Joel, I also have to say that I love the pictures you have included here – the joy you felt as a child is palpable in that picture, and that same joy is re-ignited in the more recent photos of you! How awesome is that!
Joel, what you have shared here is key for us all to pay attention to: “Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction.”
So often we can blame ourselves for how another is feeling or for how another is reacting. Of course the things we say and the things we do have an impact on others and so it is super important to share things with care and respect. But if we share things with care and respect and with love for another and they react to what we are sharing or simply react to how we are or who we are, then it is our responsibility to hold ourselves unwaveringly despite their reactions. But in reality we often keep allowing ourselves to be affected by another’s reactions so strongly, and as a result, we reduce our natural way of being, we reduce our light so to speak. When we do that we take away the initiating factor in relationships – we stop being ourselves and essentially pass the message onto others that it is ok to live as a reduced version of ourselves and that it is ok for others too to behave in such a way and live lesser than what they are capable of living. However relationships are about growth and initiating more growth – when we are ourselves we give permission for others to do likewise and hence we all grow and learn endlessly.
The most joyful few words to have been written about God – a subject normally approached with such pious seriousness. No wonder we all live so joylessly if the one thing that we all crave (connection to God/Ourselves) is depicted in such a sombre light. Bravo Joel of sprinkling some kiddy-sparkle over the whole thing.
Love what you have said Otto about Joel’s sparkle-sprinkle article about the joy of God. This article makes a really good pair with Maree Savins’ recent light-shedding article ‘Born to Sparkle’! Who’s next?
Its fascinating to observe children. I was at my school carol concert yesterday and there were a few who were up on stage creating the nativity scene. There was one girl dressed as an angel who couldn’t contain her joy and was dancing and prancing around the stage in her wings, some children wanted to join in and they did, but were holding back. There were others who felt too embarrassed and there was one sister who stopped her baby brother from joining in as she didn’t want to go against the ‘rules’. There was no doubt though that the angel in this case was putting her “whole self in, her whole self out and shaking all about!” She was shining and very beautiful to watch!
Wow Rachel, this really highlights the control we put on ourselves and others, we literally train ourselves to suppress the joy. Apparently there is something good about rules, seriousness and glumness…..but who made those rules when joy is meant to rule?
I used to be like the girl I observed who stopped her little brother from joining in…I suppressed my joy to fit into the rules and was scared of being told off for doing the wrong thing…and Melinda you are right about the seriousness, glumness and the control we put on ourselves and others! If we made joy our first rule life would significantly shift…as it has done for Joel!
The other thing that works tirelessly as suppressing our joy is manners. We lasso our kids by ensuring that they adhere to manners. We would rather that they not interrupt rather than interrupt with a spontaneous display of joy. Etiquette is another killer of joy and spontaneity. But the ridiculous thing is both manners and etiquette are arbitrary, they change dependant on the sex, race and religious beliefs of a person.
We’ve done such a thorough job of suppressing our innate joy that if you asked most adults what joy is they would be hard pushed to know what to say. Happiness is not joy, it lacks the expansiveness of joy and the utter celebration that joy truly is. Happiness is a manufactured state that for most can flip very quickly into misery, whereas joy is an emanation that doesn’t have a flip side.
Why I love True Movement (Universal Medicine Modality) is because it gives you permission to move unencumbered by your ideals and beliefs on how you think you should move. This modality supports me to move again in the way I did as a kid… light, play-full and joy-full
Allowing the sparkle of the child we all have been to come on out to play again is refreshing, expansive, liberating and super beautiful and inspiring for others to see and to see in others.
” God …is actually the ultimate playful being…..” I love this. God was always presented as being such a serious being when I was growing up. Children love to play and are so close to God, yet we as adults often forget how to play.
i agree, I had the same devout seriousness when it came to any conversation about God. It is little wonder as children it seems unrelatable when presented like that.
This is very cool Joel – I have been exploring joy and how I hide it from the world- so reading your blog makes a lot of sense to me and prompts me to appreciate that I have a lot of joy and if I hold it back it is me who misses out the most.
It is amazing after so many years and experiences that you can come back to the joy you had as a child. It is all there , but we pack up and go searching for ourselves through many mediums. Thanks for sharing your return Joel.
So true – the efforts that we go to ‘find ourselves” – travelling all over the world, reading copious self-help books, following gurus, walking on hot coals and all kinds of other crazy rituals….when all we needed to do was play some Hokey Pokey.
Joel, I too am learning that after years of putting my ‘left leg in and my left leg out, and shaking it all about’ I too am learning to leap into life with my full body, thanks to Universal Medicine, for without whom I would still not only be ‘shaking it all about’, I would be floundering on the shore with my little toe in the water, wondering what lies beneath the surface.
What a inspiration you are Joel, looking at you in your photo’s it is pretty clear that jumping in with both feet is actually the one thing that you had been missing all those years.
Amazing Joel, the same joyful smile with the upturns at the corner of your mouth has returned after so many years. The thing is I can actually feel the joy in the photos. I feel to get rid of the ‘poky mo’ or what ever it is and bring back the full expression of the ‘Hokey pokey’ as presented by Joel.
“However, at some point in my life I stopped… my joy and abandon were replaced with caution.” – Worth to have an eye on what we have given up on in life, what has made our life maybe more ‘safety’ in a way, but also cold, hurtful, boring, lonely and disconnected….and to claim the joy and all back! Yeay!
Reminds me on some so called ‘midlife crisis’ actions, where we try to get ‘our youth’ back. Thereby in fact we are longing for our true expression. Which is ageless joyful.
The return of Joy! Isn’t this what every human being wants? To know that they are a Son of God and belong to a grander realm of life.
This is a gorgeous blog. Imagine a world in which everyone maintains their “deep connection to life and others”, walks with their full potential and expresses their all with as much joy of a child delighting in a game of hokey pokey. Knowing people who choose this way of living makes my heart sing.
Some of the synonyms for ‘silly’ are; trivial, mindless, meaningless, inane and stupid. Could it be that when we grow older, these are the new names for things in our youth we called joy-full and fun? We all need to keep dancing!
How we mess with language to try and make sense of our choices not to stay joy-full, powerful, vital and inspired by life and learning.
I was just struck how the song Hokey Pokey also reflects how we live our lives in segments and put our body into disharmony by not living in such a way that allows everything to work together as a whole.
Your photos are a great expose of your journey Joel… so awesome to see and feel the joy overflowing in you again 🙂
How important is it to nurture that love of life in our children… because if we don’t they live a reduced version of themselves for however long, perhaps decades – until they come across someone like Serge Benhayon who continues to reflect pure love and joy consistently and without apology for all to be reminded it is innately within them also.
As children, we are so uninhibited, naturally expressing our innate joy, vitality and love of life… and then over time we don’t see that reflected back to us and make the choice to align to what we see around us – mainly to keep those around us happy, when in fact that joie de vivre is exactly what everyone around us needs to see and feel, and to be reminded they have that naturally within them too!
Incredible Joel, the joy is emanating from every pore of your being now just as it was as a child. It show as clear as day that we can walk in the joy we held as a child.
And one of the beautiful things about true joy is that it often ignites the joy in others. Joy often feels infectious.
Bring on a rendition of the Hokey Pokey. Your blog is a beautiful reminder Joel that we have the choice in any moment to express in full.
I agree – every moment is an opportunity to bring the whole of us and express us in full (put our whole self in and shake it all about).
Beautiful Joel, I love the example of ‘putting your whole body in’, it is lovely with children that they do not have the self criticism and simply move and express as they feel to, and wonderful that you are returning to this joy in movement as an adult.
As I recall my own childhood and the joy of playing this game I can remember just how expressive we all were with our bodies as we moved – so free and untethered.
It is so worth it when we choose to do the ‘Hokey Pokey’, expressing who we are fully with every part of our body and essence without holding back. I am relearning to do this too Joel. It’s interesting to notice though how easy it is for me to go back to my old ways of hiding, but the more I practice the ‘Hokey Pokey’, the more it will be the norm for me to express myself in full.
I remember this too – feeling the joy of ‘putting your whole self in’. And I also remember when that stopped the knowing that you couldn’t truly and freely be yourself anymore due to what it felt like when you did this. Closing down was then a way of life. I too am experiencing a return back to who I am thanks for this observation Joel.
As you say Joel being joyful is a natural expression. It is a shame being joyful all the time seems like a feat to achieve.
Joel, through you I am learning to deepen my love and trust of men and people. You are such a wise, generous, loving, spunky and playful man and I am, and so is your family, fellow students of The Way of the Livingness, the general public and the Universe, so blessed to have you in our lives, shakin’ it all about.
Beautifully said Sarah, I absolutely agree. Joel and the students I met at Universal Medicine and The Way of The Livingness have inspired me hugely. Every day, I read blogs like this, written by people who have chosen a life of truth and love as their way.
Just imagine how the world would be if we all fully claimed our true expression of joy and pulled one another up to an equally joyful vibration.
I love this Joel because we have all done this; we have shut down the joy and love for life we once had putting our whole self in.
We shut down what we love about ourselves
We shut down what others love about us holding it back in spite
We shut down from expressing the joy and love we naturally are.
It does not have to be this way – bring back putting your whole self in.
Thank you Bernard, this was really supportive for me to read. I can really feel the various ways I have shut down who I am and also my love and joy for life. I have experienced a lot of jealousy, bullying and attacks, and it all boils down to the one reason – people have seen the love and joy I live with yet instead of being honest about how that reflection felt for them, they had very deceitfully made it about something else to falsely degrade me. Humanity would benefit from learning to support these qualities of love and joy in self and others, not live degraded and then degrade others to make that choice more comfortable.
Even you are not feeling playful, then you are capable in that moment of feeling the true light of God.
I was at this year’s Universal Medicine retreat where we looked at how we use behaviours and foods in a way that makes us think we are not constantly reading and feeling what is going on in life. It was a total game changer to know that at any given moment we are either connected, reading, aware and transparent or we are dulling, protecting, making ourselves racy or disconnected. There is no sitting on the fence…we’re either putting our whole selves in like you as a young boy Joel, or we’re not.
When we commit and put our ‘whole body in’ the most amazing things can happen. I love how life configures when I commit in full.
The configuration of my life is something that I feel is totally aligned to what my divine purpose is. Thank you Jenny I agree this can only happen when I commit to life in full.
Often we can look at children and see their freedon and lack of care and feel envious of this – and yet we do not consider that a) we once where just the same, only we have chosen to leave it behind and b) is it possible one of the reasons for leaving it behind is when we felt the jelousy and envy of adults, even those who would rather shut down our joy then feel the lack of it in their life? We need to change the cycle and support our kids to be as beautiful and joyful as they possibly can be, and in turn be inspired to be the same in ourselves.
Thank you Rebecca, children are our true teachers in life offering a marker for the level of connection we have to our essence, and the level of love and joy we express from that in our everyday lives. Children may not have “knowledge” but boy are they little masters!
That is so interesting Joel, that somewhere along the line of childhood we actually choose to leave the joy that is inherent in us and make do with less in order to not be the recipient of the jealousy from others. It follows that if we choose to lose it we can choose to be joyful again. It doesn’t come through telling ourselves though, it comes from reconnecting with the feeling in our bodies that has always been there for us to rediscover beneath the layers of protection. The body memory of the hoky poky brought you back.
So true Joan we can choose to re-connect with it, the joy of life constantly sparkles in every cell of our bodies, all there waiting to be connected to and enjoyed. Walking into a Universal Medicine workshop was the most potent step forward in re-connecting with this internal joy of life, am so, so glad that I took that step.
Hi, Joel. I love looking at that sweet, cheeky picture of you as a child and it is so great to feel that quality has returned.
When someone is truly content and joyful we tend to question, ‘what is it that they have that I don’t?’, but as you’ve shared Joel joy is something that comes naturally so it’s a choice NOT to be joyful..
That’s so true “joy is something that comes naturally so its a choice NOT to be joyful.” It is really up to us to choose to be joyful.
It is true, we so often leave our true joy behind. And choose to hide because of others reactions. It is a choice to let ourselves be affected by this, or to connect to this inner joy again, feeling that in that we are supported all the way.
‘The Return of the Hokey Pokey’ describes our ‘Return to the Realm we Come from’. Such joy and playfulness and child-like openness – reminding me of the ‘little children’ that Jeshua is reported to have spoken about. I use to do a similar thing with playing my ukulele for my family – doing a funny version of ‘Sad Movies Make me Cry’ and then I would do the ‘go go’ for afters. We had so much fun.
Joel I love the playfulness and experimentation in “We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.” it’s like we simply are going back to a way we used to life as a kid and our natural way of moving in joy rather than with the burdens of the world on our shoulders.
Joel, it is always so much fun to read what you write!
Our natural light that comes from within, is so bright that it takes a lot of work to hide it – and hiding it in the end serves no one, for we are left with much less joy, and there is a lack of inspiration for others too. The jealousy we encounter as we grow up letting our light be seen is indeed unpleasant, but we cannot use this as a reason to shut down. I loved reading this as a reminder, for I too have felt myself in the past (and still at present, though not as much) shut down when I feel the reactions and the jealousy of another.
Gorgeous Joel, I can see so much playfulness coming out in your pictures – what a great sharing.
Remembering these occasions when we were children and so full of ourselves with joy is a great reminder that we can simply return to it knowing it is our choice. We can choose to wear the shackles of adulthood, or hang onto the issues that affect us through life, but the joy remains inside each and everyone of us when we choose to reconnect to that instead. I love your example Joel and it reminds me of my feelings of joyfulness from childhood days too.
Playfulness is a beautiful quality and how often are we playful in our day? We tend to take life very seriously which is understanding but there are always opportunities to be light and playful with the people we meet.
I’ve just spent two weeks with my 80 year old Mum, she’s one of the most playful people that I have ever met, she plays almost constantly bringing joy to everyone around her.
Putting children down whether overtly or subtly can cap them for life. Allowing children to express their natural joy and playfulness can be too much for adults, who in their turn were capped when young. So the cycle continues…….. Time to end it and allow natural expression free reign.
I love this Joel, and can see how the jealousy towards us as children when we are so joyful, stops us from being all that we are. I can remember that feeling coming from friends, family members and adults, and very quickly it impacted on me in such a way that I shut down my joy and became shy and reserved. It is wonderful to be rediscovering this innate joy in me now, as I learn to put my whole self back in to life again.
I still remember today the absolute joy of doing the hokey pokey and putting my whole self in. Thank you, Joel, for reminding us of the unfettered exuberance of feeling free to be ourselves, and for raising the question as to why we think we have to loose that as we grow up.
There is something incredibly refreshing and inspiringly unencumbered about approaching our every interaction fresh from previous experience, hurt or guard… it allows the potential of each moment to be fully accessed.
As we could live with joy and playfulness as a child we can live it as an adult too and that is something we must not forget. We tend to believe that how we were as a child was only because we were a child and that adulthood is a serious business because of all the ‘responsibilities’ we then feel come on our shoulders. But what if this belief is only given to us to keep us capped and not express that joy that lives inside, that joy that is naturally in each and everyone of us, no different to when we were a child.
I always thought is was the hokey cokey! not hokey pokey! 😶 anyway whatever it is called yes it it playful and joyful and I love what you have shared about putting our whole selves in 😆 into life, into being, into love, into playing.
Love it Joel, that’s what it is all about, spreading the joy. It is about connecting to ourselves and celebrating who we are and what we offer. I can say that I still often hold one or some parts of me out of certain circles and it feels less and less who I am, which is an important awareness to own and work through.
The way children are when left to be their gorgeous, joyful selves can be too much for adults sometimes if the adult is in any pain or living way less than joyful themselves. And so sometimes, being around an exuberant child causes an adult to try and control the child, put them down in subtle ways – in a way asking them to turn their volume down. Children then learn that they are too much and start to dull themselves and fit into what is expected around them.
I agree Sandra, instead adults should appreciate children to be playful as in that they give that reflection that is so much needed opposed to the seriousness and sadness in the world people have made life about.
Today I was at an event where the local boys school choir came in – it was lovely to see these young boys really enjoying themselves and totally not self conscious, just singing their little hearts outs.
It is a great marker that when we are not feeling or living the Joy that we innately know and are that we have simply deviated from living the Truth that we are in connection with God and the Universe.
It is then a matter of re-connecting if we Will it so.
I can feel so much joy in you now, Joel. We all have that innate joy in our bodies and can feel its’ expression when we feel all the love which is itching to come out of us.
I have seen the joy in many children over the years fade to a dullness or aloofness so it is great to have the lid lifted on this subject and see someone get the joy back, although we shouldn’t have to lose it in the first place.
The excitement and joy a child can display is something that is quite easy to be envious of, after a twenty four hour flight the night before last the joy and excitement from my daughter at seeing her relations was astounding after such a long flight, whereas all I could manage was very subdued greetings. You are an inspiration Joel to up the joy in my life and do the hockey pokey again.
Coming back to your blog this morning Joel I am reflecting on how many times I have been half hearted about certain tasks or aspects of life, trying to cut corners and do the bare minimum. Its actually very tiring. I now compare it to me being fully engaged (my whole self in) with even things like doing the dishes and there is a world of difference. I am not struggling against life, but am in it, and feeling the flow.
I love this journey Joel, from joy filled child back to the same quality as an adult. I know I always had the self-conscious feeling as a child and felt awkward in a lot of these types of situations – this year I have begun to feel this shifting and to feel more open to expressing myself in this way.
The natural exuberance of children is something to be relished and inspired by, and should be a great big marker saying you have gone the wrong way!
That cheeky boy is back in the most recent photo of you Joel. What a joy to witness! Until we put our ‘whole self in’ our bodies cannot express their true joyful nature! Simple and yet so challenging when we do not let go of the walls of protection we built around us – or should I say, ‘Ido not let go of the walls of protection I have built around me!’
Exactly Bernadette our ‘whole bodies’ are required if we are to feel love and joy and feel everything else around us, that protection to being hurt is the killer of joy.
Yeah, there is something delicious about the rye smile :-0 – even if I do say so myself!
What if we all jumped in and shook it all about, would we not get to see and experience the full beauty and joy that everyone holds with no reservation? Would we not see that there are no differences whatsoever between any of us? Just thinking about that makes me want to laugh and jump in.
‘I decided it was better to tone down the joy than have people reacting to me.’ – This is huge Joel, and something most of us keep doing for the rest of our lives – we live our lives according to the hurts we are fuelled by. I am contiuously learning to understand my own hurts, to acknowledge them, deal with them and let them go.
I love this example of not holding back and putting myself fully into the circle of life without worrying about what others think.
This is so common, ‘I decided it was better to tone down the joy than have people reacting to me.’ this is huge. Why are we so afraid of people’s reaction towards us? Perhaps by understanding the force of jealousy is pretty strong but also understanding that nothing really beats the power of expressing joy fully, this will support us to not tone down our joy but to express it more and more regardless of what we receive back.
This great blog totally exposes, amongst many things, what the word ‘shy’ can encompass in its meaning. It can mean that cold water has been thrown upon a child to arrest their natural joy. As we grow up in our observation of reactions towards us and others, this will soon be water off a duck’s back . . . as you have shown Joel.
Jenny, I can feel how I had toned down my joy since I was a child, weighing up what sort of response I might get first.
‘We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.’ – The support of the Universal Medicine retreats, work shops and presentations is unique. For me this has been a true game changer.
The thought of doing the hokey pokey whole heatedly (and bodily) is one that fills me with joy. But is that something I live daily?
‘Toning down ‘ our joy is something that we relegate ourselves to when we gauge our worth on what we perceive as acceptance from others.
Joel you may not be literally doing the Hokey Pokey but your recent photo is testimony that your very being is jumping with joy, just like the young you. You’ve by-passed the sense of seriousness and struggle most of us live with – congratulations are in order.
Ay caramba – you are so right Joel when you identify how and why we shut down our joy. It’s so great you have found yours again. The next trick? Finding joy in people’s reactions to our joy!
Finding joy in people’s reactions to our joy! …that is a whole other level…thanks for pointing me in that direction
It is time to discover and name how evil ‘jealousy’ is and how much it does force us to hold back, shrink and withdraw. This emotion is pure evil. Based on comparison, which is neglecting taking responsibility about the choices we made against the pull of evolution. We are offered evolvement all of the time and if we avoid the offer we are in fact missing what was available for us. To see it in others brings up our choices against evolution and this are not comfortable feelings. Jealousy is than the try to bring down the other and so be on the same state of ‘less’ – how much lower can we sink? Absolut disgraceful.
It is a big joy to claim back our playfulness and learn to not react anymore to the choices of others. In fact our playfulness and joy is more needed than ever then, to inspire and show that it is possible to choose & live like that in this world.
What a great metaphor for life this song is. It’s about the body, our awareness of it and how much we are willing to ‘put our whole selves in’ and ‘shake it’! I love it.
This is such a great lesson for us all, in not holding back our joy no matter what, so that we do not waste years being miserable for no reason.
I agree Janet, choosing to hold back our joy is certainly very miserable. It doesn’t make sense why we would choose this. I know I have and I have seen many people make the same choice. Is it possible that the more we choose to shut down our joy, then more people are likely to make the same choice and vise versa, if more and more people choose to live and express their joy in full, more and more people will be inspired to choose to be joyful too.
I can definitely relate here to what you have written Joel as watching my own children move and relate with the world and the absolute joy and uninhibited way they move has reminded me of how I also was a child. And then yes based on the reflections I was constantly receiving from the world about what it meant to ‘grow up’ I caved in and tightened up, and things got serious, cautious, sensible, intellectual. With the support and inspiration of Universal Medicine I am slowly rediscovering my joy and lightness of being again and relearning how to hold this quality of living no matter what anyone else thinks or reacts to it.
To remember that God is the “ultimate playful being” is so refreshing. Too often we can get bogged down in life and take it way too seriously. Your rendition of the hokey pokey Joel is a beautiful reminder of the joy that we innately have inside of us and it is always there simply waiting to pour out.
I love this blog and this sentence jumped out at me -‘You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.’ – It is so true when we get caught up in life and having to make sure we are ‘surviving’ in it we loose all sense of the connection to God. Being able to let go of such burdens and pressures we put on ourselves to fit the picture of what we think life needs to be and just be ourselves and enjoy the connection with God it is absolutely playful and a lot of Joy to be had,
La la la, ‘I put my whole self in, I put my whole self out, I put my whole self in and shake it all about; I do the hokey pokey and my knees bend, knees bend, that’s what it’s all about – Oh hokey pokey pokey!’ La la la!
I love reading the comments on here about the conditions we place on expressing the endless joy which is the hokey pokey. When we don’t express with all of our bodies than this doesn’t reflect a different way to anyone, and effectively we go on carrying on as we are at the present time.
Great sharing Joel that the joy we can connect to is beyond our body and is made to be expressed in full, not held back which is why we get a slump and all of the complications that come with reducing such an expression of the universe.
It’s crazy to realise how much jealousy and other negative emotions or attitudes are directed towards young children. Our young are super sensitive to these impositions and they change their behaviour to adapt. How fantastic that you were able to feel where you had shut down Joel, and thus allow yourself to ‘hokey pokey’ again.
Joel just reading your article brought a smile to my face, and you have given Hokey Pokey as a new analogy to – put all of me in life and shake it all about. Very inspiring and how we much we hold back in fear of how others will be towards us…we all hold each other back, so someone must take that step and shake it all about.
“Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction.” – We learn from a young age that if someone reacts to us being joyful that we need to tone it down. We feel the jealousy that they themselves don’t feel that same joy and that we are an annoyance to them, and then modify our behaviour so as to not have that reaction from people, particulary those closest to us.
A few years ago I returned to my “hokey pokey” a little too literally. I was really good at this game called elastic’s when I was a kid. In case you don’t know the premise, it goes like this. You have a big elastic that stretches a few meters around two people standing on opposite sides of the room facing each other with the elastic starting round their ankles. The person who’s turn it is has to jump and sing “England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, inside, outside, monkey’s tales. Each time they complete a level; the elastics move up the human stands bodies, until they are super high, you only move up if you do the jumps perfectly.
I got the game out and started to play with my kids, I was surprised to find I was still good at it and had loads of fun but man was I sore the next morning, I found out the hard way that unless you go to the gym daily adults don’t usually jump in the air in that formation, it was a classic though!
The joy you describe from young is something that we can all relate to and can be returned to in any moment – why not put our whole selves in…and shake it all about.
When life gets a little too serious I will bring myself back to this blog as it leaves me feeling how playful life can be if that’s what we choose.
I love the last photo of you Joel, you certainly show us all what it means to be committed to life, and to gain this wisdom from an old children’s play game song is just beautiful.
The photo of you as a boy is so like you are now as the joyful man. You are one and the same. The man in the middle now he is someone else!
Totally agree Kathleen! The ‘middle man’ can often be quite dodgy!
Your photos Joel show an absolutely remarkable return to the joy you naturally had as a child. Knowing that this is possible to do is a huge deal for humanity. Thank you for sharing this.
We have these pivotal events in life that change the course of our lives, so what a blessing for you Joel to remember the point of when you shut off your joy and why, and to have the support and understanding to heal this event. With the support of Universal Medicine I have healed similar life events and as a result am living in much greater joy and self love also.
To put my whole body into life and shake it all about with lots of laughter and fun…. wow love this simple analogy of the ‘hokey pokey’ of how to be in the world.
Getting to know and appreciate the playfulness of God really supports me to lighten up and do a lot more of ‘putting my whole self in’ – it is amazing to be free of the stranglehold of what others will think or how they may or may not react.
It is truly beautiful to feel the unreservedness in children and their natural ability to put their whole into their movements and actions.
Absolutely – a joy and unreservedness that confirms a deep connection to ourselves and the universe that is never lost…simply awaiting us to say yes once more.
Universal Medicine has empowered me to play Hokey Pokey again as well Joel and thank God for that! When I first met this incredible healing work, I was so miserable and had totally given up on ever feeling truly lighthearted and playful again. Having ‘fun’ meant consuming some form of toxin, which in my 40’s was alcohol that somehow loosened up the cogs and enabled me to ‘let go a bit’. But that isn’t really playing. Roll on ten years of esoteric healing, Universal Medicine retreats and workshops and the active encouragement to address my hurts and connect to my inner essence and hey presto, the joy of life has returned along with the commitment to put my whole body into it and yes shake all about with a renewed vigor and playfulness that relies on nothing else to fuel it other than the love of God I feel in my heart. Awesome!
I agree Joel, it is what it’s all about, a commitment to life and the more I commit to life including the commitment to self the more I am enjoying and accepting my part in it.
I really want to see you do the Hokey Pokey Joel! Next Retreat. I remember being entered into a ‘Lieder’ competition when around 13 years old – I was playing the piano and a friend, Helen, who was a great singer was singing. Then just for a joke we also entered with me singing and Helen playing (we thought we couldn’t do either of those things). Anyway we WON with the joke entry! The adjudicator said that he had never in his life heard such an enthusiastic and joyful rendition of ‘Hark Hark the Lark’! It is amazing when you think of that childhood joy and how we have recovered it again.
I find it hard to believe we would be jealous of a small child enjoying themselves, rather than enjoy the pleasure they bring to share with us. Thank you Joel!
Joel I love the reclaimed joy you now emanate! I am seeing how much I hold back from fully expressing what I feel. The perfect opportunity to simply allow myself to express myself in full has presented itself, so it is no accident that I was drawn to read this blog today.
Darn it… If God is “the ultimate playful being”, then why has misery and living to merely ‘exist’ become so prevalent??
We most surely need to reconnect to God – and no imposter versions of Him that would have us dwell in suffering…
Gosh… If only we all shared with no reservation – as you have done so here Joel.
I celebrate the return of your ‘whole body joy’ with you – inspirational, and brilliant! That lives can be so transformed from the inspiration and teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, is amazing beyond measure… Whoop, whoop 🙂
Jealousy is rampant in our society, from childhood, right through adulthood. It is something many don’t recognise either in themselves, or in others directing it at them. It is however an opportunity for development and evolution should we choose to see it how it is.
Its really beautiful seeing the similarities between the younger and present you. The same cheekiness, openness and joy are all there. Life is not the drudge or chore that the middle photo portrays.
I’m struck just now by the phrases like growing-up, becoming an adult, maturing…they all imply that we should change, discard the old, improve….but what about maintaining and nurturing and staying true to all that gold we had as children? Why do we seem so keen to leave all of that behind?
love these questions Otto, why do we make a picture of adulthood that is so devoid of joy.
Yeah. Exactly. It’s crazy. Where did it all get so serious? Why do we have to validate it all, give it some kind of forced validity? I struggle with this and am still too invested in outcomes, perceptions and some kind of notion of what it should be or is meant to be. But I’m learning to let go – through my kids, through glorious blogs like this and, most powerfully of all, through connecting to my absolute self – and finding out that there is oodles of joy there busting to get out.
Just sitting here, having read this blog, I am so struck by the feeling of it. I’m not thinking about it, I’m not re-reading it, I’m not even really concentrating on it, i’ve dealt with a couple of emails and a few other things, but still the feeling of this blog is inside me, around me…and that feeling is Joy. It’s extraordinary – to feel it so clearly and to feel how it has nothing to do with the words or how how much I consider them. It is simply Joy emanating all around me.
Today I took my very first solo trip outside of the UK – and in doing so I have felt so much innocent childlike delight and wonder at the world, at the process of flying and visiting a completely new country, different people and climate and values and I am allowing myself to be wide eyed and joyful because its such a wonderful way to be.
Joyous cuteness personified
Your photos say it all. The middle one shows a man who thinks he’s successful but is afraid to truly be seen and yet you can still feel the sensitive boy just hidden underneath the mask. In truth, who we are is always there, it just gets covered by the heaviness of our ideals and beliefs and once we let go of these we are back again, joyous and free.
Hey Joel, I love the way you put things so simply from your own experience. I too made that choice: “I decided it was better to tone down the joy than have people reacting to me.” And it was a huge price to pay for in my serious attempts to confirm I became held back and eventually got exhausted and unwell. I am still feeling the repercussions of these choices to be comfortable rather than shine in my own light.
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being.” So true and we forget, we get all serious and sombre and let of the fact that God likes to play and has a great sense of humour, gentle, witty and always uplifting.
“Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction.” I have not yet unravelled all my layers of protection for taking the responsibility of other people’s reaction and can still do so. However, I am dis-mantling the layers and increasingly managing to maintain my connection with myself rather than reacting. As this happens so I am increasingly playing ‘hokey-pokey’ in everything I do.
Thank you Joel. I used to love the hokey pokey … that was until other kids sniggered saying it was lame and had sexual connotations. I stopped quick smart afraid of what this game would say about me. This memory has me pondering the way that people use whatever they can to stop others from simply enjoying themselves and expressing that. Jealousy is definitely behind it all.
To live life with the attitude of ‘All in’ is something most have to restore after having lost it during childhood, ie is to be fully committed being all of oneself in every area of one´s life. The world will look different the more of us live that way as we will make the changes that are so much needed. By implication, that means that many of our worldwide as well as personal problems are due to a lack of commitment to life; that may be worth some consideration.
Yes, Alex, putting all of ourselves into life would make an enormous difference, for our bodies and our state of mental wellbeing.
There is something very familiar about your sharing Joel that has given me much to consider. I was also full of joy and dulled it down to the point where a few years ago I felt joy was distinctly lacking in my life! Also, from a young age I stopped expressing but always reacted to the ‘shy’ label. There is much to reflect on here… thank you for your inspiration.
Our inner-child has never left us, just like the purity we were born with. We just need to let the child come out and play once again in our light.
We tend to take another’s jealous response to our joy personally, rather than knowing this is exposing their own lack of joy, and therefore for us to show our joy allows them a choice – to celebrate their joy also, or to react, but the choice is theirs alone, and we can stay with the joy we know and feel. How awesome would it be to know this from young!
Jealousy can be so toxic – imposed or taken on consciously or unconsciously – it is the reason behind why many of us have dulled our joy, and chosen to measure how much joy we reveal to those around us according to our perceptions. But what if us showing all our glorious joy is just what every person in the world needs to see and feel, no matter how they respond or what comes back at us?
I can totally relate to what you are sharing Joel. Jealousy is not nice to feel at all, especially not when you yourself are actually feeling so great and others react to that. I can now see that because of most of us do, be it unconsciously, choose to dim our joy and light and fit in, there are only rare reflections of that living in this joy as an adult is possible and can be done without being childish or out of this world. Yet it is and I am thanks to Universal Medicine learning to do this every day. It is gorgeous.
“As children this connection is simple, so of course I would “put my whole self in,” because it was what I was truly doing. I was playing with all of me, uncaring about what others thought, simply enjoying the feeling of my own body’s movements.”Reading this Joel makes me wonder if I ever really played with all of me. When others were around ,I remember feeling anxious shy and self conscious and wondering if I was doing the right thing.. It has taken me a long time to be able to feel I can be me regardless of what is going on around me, but when I do it feels very freeing and so much more joyful. I look forward to the return of the Hokey Pokey and putting all of me into it.
As a child we innately know how to “put our whole selves in” yet at some point early on in life we learn other ways of being where we become less. Universal Medicine is paving the way in reminding us that “putting our whole selves in” is in fact a path of return back to who we truly are.
Well said Donna, putting our whole selves in is the path of return back to who we truly are.
Its amazing how we naturally know and are pulled to be 100% in the middle of the circle going for it and enjoying being all of us and then over time we allow the outside influences of others to alter this exquisite expression in us. Goes to show how much comparison and not wanting to make others feel uncomfortable can really have a massive impact on us.
Your blogs are simply gorgeous Joel, thank you for your consistent expression to us all.
“However, at some point in my life I stopped. My parents could not work out why my joy and abandon were replaced with caution.” this is the case for so many children, what happens? As parents we go by the books and do the ‘right’ things in parenting for all the different ages, but when our kids start to shut down we question why, because they aren’t truly met.
beautiful Joel, when we truly embrace life and give it our all, we naturally return to the joy and wonder of living our connection with Divinity – a forever deepening and joyous celebration.
‘We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.’ – I am continuously learning to let go of the restrictions and hurts I have taken on in life, and this is life changing.
Yes, Eva, for me too. It really is like shackles falling away, leaving me free to make responsible, playful and loving choices.
It’s true that the joy children express is unconditional; there are no terms or conditions to it and they really don’t hold back, but as we grow older we write in conditions such as ‘if this person reacts I can’t be like that in front of them’ or, ‘if people will get jealous then I mustn’t say that’. These terms really reduce our joy, and it’s a great question to ask of whether we value the opinions of other people and their processes over living that unconditional joy and reflecting to those people that there’s a different way to live?
Great question Susie and you, along with the Benhyon family and others, are the living testament that there is a different way to live.
There is no doubt about the joy you now emanate from you latest photo Joel. You are radiating-Simply gorgeous!
I’d never related the Hokey Pokey to putting all of me into life, but I can see the connection now. Life is so much richer, rewarding and makes so much more sense when we put all of ourselves into it, without reservations, without holding back and without any questions or doubt.
I just want to go out and do the hokey pokey, but not in a circle with a few friends but out in life wherever I am. Very cool Joel.
This I found worth to ponder on “I would play with a level of joy that was unrivalled, throwing my whole body into each rendition. However, at some point in my life I stopped. My parents could not work out why my joy and abandon were replaced with caution.” This is a point in life where we have to stop and check deeply what is going on. When we stop being joyful, stop bringing all we are, start to hold back, start to withdraw – this is the start of an illness! We have to take this more seriously and don’t wait until we are a few years later overweight, hard and bloated. Living not all of us is a disease!
Great point Sandra! It high time we started to consider any moment without joy as a sickness, a disease because defining on mere function alone is what allows us to consider one who is functionally well but lacking true joy as “healthy”
True Joshua, we are settling for less and than we get less and so on and so on. And than we become unhappy and blame the world for it. If we count on function we will get this energy – functional feedback. This is very unsatisfactory, because we want to be loved, we want vitality, a deepness in our relationships. But if we want this we have to go for it, have to activate this kind of energy. To start to see any kind of disharmony and lack of joy as an illness is raising the bar to where it should be. And even if this may look like out of reach from our point of view, we have to take this reflection of our choices as they brought us to that point. To put the standard up where it in truth is brings at least truth back into our live and the purpose of true living brings us back on track. I can get lost in the illusions of life and function very easily, empty inside – but when I connect again to my true purpose I feel connected to a higher source. And even though I will never be perfect and get reflections which will challenge me – I am blessed with the connection again, the connection we are all longing for and which contains the joy we have more likely access to as a child but can now claim back.
As children we are acutely aware of the jealousy directed at us from adults and from quite early on we create ways to deal with this- always though to our own detriment.
Therefore we learn from a very young age to dull our light, to not shine so as to not feel the jealousy that comes towards us.
Joel those ‘family favourites’ (repeated stories that get rolled out routinely at family gatherings), differ in detail from family to family but the discomfort that the person who is at the centre of them is exactly the same. They offer no evolution for anyone, they are energetic shackles.
What a sad irony it is that so many of us cut down, cut back and in the end kill the very joy we are here to display. To settle for sad uniformity in average, everyday mediocrity is the deal that we have made. Yet at the end of it all, all we ever long for in ourselves is health, wellbeing and vitality. Your words here Joel show that our joy comes not at other people’s expense, and does not make then less but actually supports us to see we are deeply interlinked and to kick this jealousy habit once and for all. So here’s to everybody who decides today to put their whole being ‘in’ and live the whole of life.
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.” – this is gorgeous Joel.
I love the last photo of your Joel, not only your innate joy that’s positively brimming over, but your joy at re-connecting with this.
It’s a shocking reflection on us and our society that we concede to easily in our choice to leave our joy-full selves to appease the dis-ease felt by those around us. Those who have already left themselves and are now jealous that we have not, and are uncomfortable being reminded of the joy they can also live, but they are choosing not to.
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being.”
This is such a joyful and playful sharing, Joel. It makes me remember to my own childhood and the giving up of my joy like you. and how my life became serious and about the doing, the recognition and what outcomes I bring. The process of rediscovering that we are playful and joyful beings from nature is joyful in itself.
A beautiful reminder that as we are equally the Sons of God it is our birth right to let joy out regardless of how others respond.
Even the words ‘joyful abandon’ feel so playful and free. Another winner Joel.
“put my whole self in,” I love the whole 100% celebration and no holds barred commitment of this expression reflecting to me that commitment is joy-full.
What a great blog Joel, I love the analogy of the Hokey Pokey and I remember the joy of it well;
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful”.
Today I will ponder on the Hokey Pokey and be joyful in my bodies movements.
We have much to observe when we watch young children playing, they are totally with themselves, immersed in what they are doing and oblivious to any external influences. What a shame we lose that, but what a joy when we reconnect to it.
“We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others” – i remember well those times as a kid Joel, and that passage of time or years where i ceased moving with the same ease, delight, and became static or quite rigid in expression and movement… These days the True Movement classes run by Universal Medicine have been instrumental in allowing me to let go and release my body into its flow, pace and natural rhythm…once again i can and thoroughly do enjoy moving my body, shaking it all about (!!!!!)
Joel once again awesome sharing and the reason why I love reading your blogs is I can feel the Joy of you living All of You inside the circle, giving it your all and the grace of walking your stride along the way. Super cool and very inspiring. Thank you.
I love your blog Joel, so simple and easy to read but with such a brilliant message behind it – we often put our joy and wide eyed love of life to one side as we grow up, but its just as much a part of being an adult as a child.
We’re either all in, or all out… and your photos so clearly show the reflection of both choices.
The beauty in you shines out in your photos and your journey of reclaiming your self your body in movement and your joy inside. A magical and very relatable to sharing Joel thank you a real inspiration.
Love this analogy Joel, true joy in life really is about putting all of the real us out there into the world and not holding anything back.
Something that struck me when reading this is how much energy we have to use to hold back our natural expression – if we keep ourselves compressed and restrain a joy that is naturally wanting to come out we have to be constantly putting our body on lock down. Whereas when we allow ourselves to be free to express what we’re really feeling deep down it frees our whole body up.
Well said Fiona – key for us all is to take the lid off…
“You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.” Joel you have a wonderful way to show the natural way of God. Very relatable and very everyday.
That really is what life is all about, learning to get into it and ‘shake it all about’, I love this metaphor. We tend to hold back, not let our true essence shine and boy oh boy, that isn’t good because it ensures every misses out. But if we get in there, boots and all, allowing for us to live and express who we are in full, if we so choose.
Love it Joel!! Maybe at next year’s retreat we could rewrite the song by adding how you put your whole heart in and how you feel that to hold that love you can never shake to out.
Loved the joy in your first and last photo Joel. I love seeing the joy with which children move their bodies, and realise that that joy of movement is also in me an it was when i was a child.
During the last course of Universal Medicine I attended I sat down in a group and shared that I do everything to avoid jealousy coming at me. What I actually felt is that I want to avoid jealousy to deny the jealousy within me. I ‘hate’ jealousy. I’ve got very strong beliefs about jealousy and that it is very bad. I tell myself literally that I can’t be jealous. This precious exercise left me to ponder on me and start to be more honest to myself about both jealousy as well as appreciation for myself. I can allready tell that there’s more joy and lightness in my life, due to more appreciation and less wanting to control. How beautiful that I do have a choice… Even after a long time that I burried both the jealousy and the appreciation.
That middle photo of you Joel is sandwiched in joy…always in you but not let out as much in that middle phase of your life.
The moment we choose to stay with our own joy is truly a moment when we are supported by the divine; we can feel it in the lightness of our very being. I’m understanding the potential greatness these moments expand to if I allow it and continue to choose this quality. It’s becoming so clear that dulling joy so others don’t react is not only a poor replacement for joy it is harmful for us all – the denseness that comes with dulling becomes intolerable and deadly in many ways.
Who is that man in the middle photo? Surely not the joy-full man and boy in the first and last photo. who is so aware, expresses love openly, shines like a beacon and is a true inspiration of what living a joy-full life is. I love and appreciate all your blogs Joel.
Awesome Joel – what a lovely way to have reclaimed the joy of your movements back and be ‘all in’. I love what you say here – ‘You see God…is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful. – This really stuck with me as it is so true if we consider that connecting to our bodies is being with God.
I so loved doing the Hokey Pokey as well. I remember the excitement and the fun and being with other people. There was so much joy.
As adults, we can have such a mixed relationship with children because for example, we love their unrivaled joy at doing the Hokey Pokey but it also reminds us that we are no longer living that full joy – and that can be hard to see at times.
Thank God for Universal Medicine and the Benhayons for reminding us and showing us the way that the unrivaled joy of Hokey Pokey (metaphorically speaking as adults) can be lived again. You are a living example of it Joel.
I love your metaphor here Joel, and it is the beautiful simplicity that I am also returning to – not holding back my joy when moving in life.
Such a great blog to consider what we do when we choose to not be bubbly and joyful anymore as we were as a child. There is actually no reason to leave it behind and not be playful and full in life as an adult. We just have to make a start again and offer a different reflection so children don’t feel the tension of being joyful whilst everybody else is not and can stay with this their whole life.
Children show us ‘what it’s all about!’ in their absolute abandonment and natural expression. Awesome that you have reconnected to this Joel and that you are allowing your true essence to be expressed. Remembering the Hokey Pokey brings up bubbles of joy and self consciousness in me – I wanted to ‘let go’ but held back. Great metaphor to ponder.
Imagine if we all chose to stay in the joy we felt as children and to not hold it back…? What if we maintained that through adulthood…!
Dropping the layers of protection and regaining the connection to oneself and to God to “put my whole self in” is a totally unrivalled joy and your photos, Joel, express this perfectly.
‘You see God – that dude that many of us struggle to define and relate to – is actually the ultimate playful being. Connect to this fact and any movement is joyful.’ And the photos make it very obvious you’ve chosen to reconnect to the joy and playfulness of God just like you did as a child.
Most if not all of us had that joyful simple connected expression when we were young and yet later on in life we find ourself living serious complicated preoccupied lives. There is a vast difference between the two and because most people live this pattern, we tend to assume that is the natural progression of life. It is inspiring and empowering to know that the original expression never dies, it is our natural way and one that we can return to whenever we choose to start dealing with, healing and letting go of the hurts we hardened up to not feel along the way.
Your photos are inspiring Joel. The return to the joy that you knew as a child is evident. How beautiful.
This is such a beautiful sharing Joel – the new found sparkle in your eyes is identical with that of your joyful childhood picture.
I can definitely feel how I have allowed myself to become less joy-full over the years, from a need to blend in. It’s crazy how we choose to dim our light and allow our skip to falter to halt the reaction from others, rather than choosing to stay in the fullness of who we are. If we all chose to stay steady, our world would feel very different today.
Jealousy is extraordinary in its effect, so many of us develop a character and a way of survival that is the complete opposite of who we truly are, just to avoid that reaction from others who cannot handle the amazing light we bring to the world. It takes a lot of courage to begin to express ourselves in full, to learn how to handle the reactions from others without being destroyed or affected in any way, but it makes such a difference when we do.
The photos really show it all. It is as if the light in you had gone out in the middle one.
Enjoy your body’s movement, it is actually a tragedy that we lose this ability to just enjoy our movements. We have a lot to learn from children.
I agree with you Vanessa, however it’s simply not possible for most of us to enjoy our bodies once we’ve treated them so diabolically. It’s like asking a pit pony to enjoy trotting, once it’s retired from a lifetime of hauling coal. With the support of Universal Medicine I have salvaged my body back from the scrap heap and now can actually enjoy how it feels again.
I can remember doing the Hokey Pokey when I was a child too, but what I can’t remember was the joyful feeling that went with it. I was so closed off I didn’t allow myself to express fully and this continued until adulthood, in fact, until I came across Universal Medicine which taught me that it is okay to express the joy, which was as equal in me as everyone else, as I was under the misconception that I was a serious person, and that was my nature! Not so I have discovered. It was only my choice to hold myself back and not express joyfully and let go of the sadness that I was holding on to as a child, that was stopping me from expressing in the fullness of me as an adult.
I used to love doing this as a kid too Joel, so gorgeous to have the understanding of the words as you express them. You have inspired me to dust the record off and start playing it again.
Thanks, Joel. Yes, putting our whole self in is definitely what it is all about! How simply and joyfully true…
You are so gorgeous, Joel. I love reading anything you write. Simply beautiful to see, in your most recent picture, how you have reclaimed the joy that you are.
Dancing as a child is such a playful thing, untainted by our perceptions of what it looks like and wanting recognition and acceptance from others. The dancing symbolises how we live in our days – too afraid to be ourselves, looking on the outside for confirmations.
Thank you Joel for reminding me of the joy I felt as a child when I felt free to be all of me in life – so often I have felt inhibited and held back – and yet I do have those markers of joy and fun even though they have become buried. I will reveal a little more of me today – as I allow myself to play ‘hokey pokey’.
I love the way you look when you were a child and your photo from the most recent retreat. The joy in both pictures is the same – in fact maybe even more so in your most recent photo. If that is what being ‘all in’ looks like count me in.
This is gorgeous Joel, and it’s true that joy comes naturally to us and is in truth a way of living rather than a short term emotion or mood. Thus to fight joy is to fight ourselves, and this is a tension a lot of us feel when we abandon this.
Gorgeous Joel. Long live the hokey pokey – let’s do the hokey pokey and let all of our light shine out.
Beautiful Joel, ‘We also looked at what it might be like to move as an adult with the same abandon and joy, without fear of the reactions of others.’ This is great to explore, why can’t adults live with joy and playfulness, it seems we become so serious as adults, how wonderful to not be concerned what others think and to give ourselves permission to be our silly, playful, joyful selves once again.
I was so playful as a child…and found myself later very much protected and hard with me and others. To claim now back my openness, innocence and natural love for me and others is just possible by being playful again. Universal Medicine does inspire me here and they do such a great job! But it is me who has to make the choice to come back to the ‘Hokey Pokey’ and bring all of me back into this life. This can be very challenging as we have become very comfortable in our protected and ‘safe’ way of being – even we are feeling miserable. Returning to playfulness is very supportive to let go of protections and be more open again…to unfold the sweetness we all are and let it grow.
True Sandra, we are indeed comfortable in our misery.
I love it. I have a huge smile beaming over my face as I sit here in the early hours considering whether today my life is going to bring the open, playfulness of a child to it with both feet in or if I’m going to stand in the corner of the room not wanting to be seen. I know which sounds more enjoyable – that’s for sure.
Great reminder of how as children we just go for it without worrying about what others think of us. Moving in that way is so much more lighter and freer.
Isn’t the crazy thing that even though we experience this as children we as adults will be the ones being jealous of the children we see and spend time with and so the cycle perpetuates itself.
Raising a young toddler, you can definitely see that they ‘put their whole self in’. There is no filter nor anything stopping them from being this way. But, as with the case with Joel, me and many many others, we learn (i.e. it is not natural) to tune ourselves down as we grow up so as not feel the reactions of others. Its awesome – and inspiring – to know that we can return to the joyful way we were as toddlers.
I feel it is something that most of us have done as children and that is to tone down our joy rather than have people reacting to us….and that becomes normal and by the time we are adults this is well and truly ingrained. Speaking for myself, I lost my joy and became so, so serious. It really is time to play!
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We have no choice in the matter of growing older, but there is always a part of us that never has to completely surrender, to growing up and enjoying the child that is always within us. We just need to choose to let it come out and play!
This is so true Steve Matson. It is where we all started from as children and it only takes one person to reignite this for others to feel ready to shine just as bright.
I remember the Hokey Pokey song and enjoying taking part in all the actions as a child. It made me smile where you describe god as the ultimate playful being. Of course he is. We have just made life all so serious, somber and disconnected. Thanks for this reminder of such a joyful song and how it relates to us getting stuck in with life.
Absolutely love this Joel, the photos say it all… and it shows that no matter where we have gone we can choose to walk who we are again. I replaced joy and simplicity with seriousness and complication to avoid jealousy growing up and while this has changed a lot I find I slip into it but I know quicker what it is about.
Its awesome to clearly see how all that childhood enthusiasm and playfulness has returned Joel, that cheeky twinkle in your eyes is back and back for good. Thank God for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for empowering so many of us to get that twinkle back, in our eyes, in our hearts and in our whole bodies, to restore our true expression and not allow the reactions of others to diminish our love of being alive.
I have seen so many kids grow up and lose that joy of life thing, doing the hokey pokey no longer getting the energy it deserves. Jealousy when you break it down is such a buzz kill and totally evil, I can wonder at how much more joy would be in the world without it.
It is such a great joy to see you ‘Hokey Pokey’ Joel – it is very contagious. So imagine what I am doing now – “throwing my whole body into each rendition” – with not a single reaction to jealousy at all – that is a wonderful way to start my day!
The joy you write with is palpable Joel, just like the Hokey-pokey you describe. That would never have worked or been fun if it went ‘put a little bit of your toe in, think about it, take it out, get upset, put in again and wonder why are sad’ yet in reality this is more the model we are used to. Thank you for this reminder to shake it all out and start again.
Thank you Joel, it is definitely never too late to reclaim the immense joy and innocence we knew so well when we were children and live it to the fullest no matter what.
Just reading this Joel I can feel how beautiful it is to move our bodies with ease and grace. We can simply be joy-full. Thank you.
Awesome Joel, with the guidance of Universal Medicine along with self care choices you have done a full circle in life, back to yourself.
Reading how your parents were left wondering what happened has got me to consider what happens when we reduce our joy and celebration of life for those around us. It’s like people complaining the lights are too bright but when they are turned off it leaves everyone in the dark wondering what happened. So when I remember the jealousy that was directed at me and I turned my light inward though there’s a relief from others they don’t have to look at how they are living that’s not joyful and that they have chosen this themselves, there’s also a deep sadness that once again they are left in the dark with no guiding light. Of course we can choose joy again at any moment.
I worked in child- care for many years in my youth and will never forget the joy in children when they sang this song. There was endless giggles in between the verses that were priceless pockets of joy for everyone to enjoy.
Natalliya what a great reminder to us adults that joy is all around us, its how we choose to be and allow ourselves to move that makes our life joyful or not. Kids show us no matter the situation joy is there.
Re- reading this blog has increased my awareness around the fact that so many of us and children today start to shut down at some stage early in life depending on what is happening around us. It is something that parents sometimes don’t notice and it is often something that when it is happening to us we don’t either understand or even notice. The other ironic understanding is that no-one questions it and that the world often celebrates it – the world celebrates how we become less of who we truly are and the fact that we conform to the pressures coming from outside of ourselves. This is a simple and straightforward blog but what is communicates to us is vast – thanks Joel
Joel, you are beautiful! What a lovely sharing. I can feel the joy on my screen when I read this, you emanate joy – and thats whats its all about – Yay.
There is something deeply joyful in seeing another not hold back, put everything into what they are doing, not caring for how others respond but being led Only by what is natural. How easy it is to be discouraged from shining and how important that we do stay true to what we feel and particularly support children to express as they really want to
I love it Joel and just wanted I needed to read today- put your whole body in and shake it all about.
Need to be more playful with life.
Great analogy to how putting ourselves wholely and unreservedly is the way to go.
Brilliant Joel, i used to adore the hokey pokey, singing those words too, it was so much fun ha ha!! And looking at your photos the one in the middle looks and feels so static and immoveable, the energy in the 1st and 3rd look alive and fresh – i guess that’s what ‘putting your true self in it and turning it around’ looks like, awesome!
Joel it’s inspiring to be reminded that we naturally are joyful, playful and full of life something that you can’t help but be reminded of whenever you see a baby or young child. For whatever reason when we shy away from this everyone looses out, looking at your pictures before and after shows however it’s never too late to come back to this spark of life again. Very inspiring.
“to put my body into life” I love that description Joel – a real engagement and commitment to being in life.
Yes and it’s through that engagement and commitment that we connect to the joyfullness of life.
The look in the eyes of Joel say it all. Sparkling and emanating the ‘hokey pokey’ through the whole of his body. Behind my computer I can feel how easy it is to connect to the joy and naturalness of this beautiful man. If I feel myself physically close to him it’s like I am contracting myself. As if there’s fear to shine my light as well, to be seen in full. Until today there was a strong belief that it is impossible to live the natural joy that we are. Feeling Joel means that it is definitely possible. And even though I can feel the (extreme) fear, I can also understand and feel that I’m not that fear.
The child within us is never too far away. This later photo of you Joel is very cute, and the return to the joy is evident.
So true Victoria yet when we loose our playfulness and joy for life, it can feel a million miles away.
Wow, your joyful essence is so clearly visible in the first and last photos Joel – no difference except for a few grey hairs and I would suggest even more joy in the last 🙂
The whole world is gaining loads with that natural joy you bring Joel, never stop for feeling this joy we all have a lightpost in finding that way back to truth.
I use to love the hokey pokey, any time for a good song and dance and I was in. It is amazing how we can dampen our natural joy when we take things on or try to fit an image of what we think is acceptable.
The whole-hearted and whole-bodied joy and alive presence of children can be a real challenge for some as it reminds them what they have compromised, left behind and don’t express any longer.
A joyful reminder not to react to or be in fear of others reactions but to live each moment in the joy that is possible. You can’t remind people that there is more if we choose to live less.
Great blog Joel and a great analogy for life. You can put your whole self it and shake it all about, or you can only put your left leg in and only shake that. Here’s to the whole she-bang of putting it all in and shaking it all about. And shaking off the jealously that comes with it so you can keep shaking it and inspire others to do the same.
Your story makes me think of singing and dancing as a child, and I really didn’t care what I looked like or sounded like…and then how that all changed after being told I couldn’t sing.. and then the thought of maybe I can’t dance. It is so restricting when we hear things like this, but it is up to us weather we take them on or not.
I have started singing again, and dancing and I am enjoying it and there is a part of me that feels that I missed out but not having that as a part of my life for so long.
I felt the same Rosie. Dancing and singing were natural and uninhibited for me as a child. Its not pleasant to feel how we shut ourselves down, however our natural inner joy can be easily reconnected to and its great that you are singing and dancing again.
I remember a line I had heard once, that the more life gets complicated, the greater the need to play. Who was the person we could spend hours with and just enjoy what ever we were doing, our best friend, ourself! We all need to sing and dance and just play sometimes!
Very true Steve, and how good do we feel when we do take time out with ourselves. I always feel refreshed and like my batteries have been recharged.
Interesting – I’ve had the ideal that women and girls only have to deal with the onslaught of jealousy. But since doing the work of Universal Medicine, I’m understanding that the triggers for jealousy far surpass superficial looks and assets. Yours is a beautiful example Joel, that jealousy is actually about Joy and lived light, in other words, choices that have been made by another that have not been made by the triggered person.
I remember the Hokey Pokey from when I was little – but only now do I realise what wisdom was in those words!
Delightful to read the return to the joyful you Joel, your photos speak for themselves. The presentations of Serge Benhayon bring deep understanding and wisdom about life and offers us the choice to change, as you so clearly have.
I love this Joel.. I also remember doing the ‘Hokey Cokey’ but I am not sure if I remember doing it with the full enthusiasm you describe.. ummm – shutting down as a child happened quite early for me – great that this joy can and is returning!
Love seeing the joy and presence that’s returned in your current photo Joel! There’s so much that we are picking up on a sub-conscious level about others reactions or responses to us and how we then respond or react back. Thank goodness for Universal Medicine helping people to raise their awareness and understanding of this and to connect more with our true and unhindered expression.
The photos say to me that what you are sharing is undeniably true, the freedom is written all over your face in the first and last picture.
I was an extremely out going and expressive child, I thought I was lucky enough to never loose this part of me because even into my adult life there was a freedom to how I was that people admired. I avoided the jealousy that I felt too, I was naturally very funny but had measured somewhere along the road that I would have less reaction’s when I was playing the clown, then when I was wise and joy filled in this humor. So I tailor made a version of how I was and it appeared like I had never lost who I was as a child but really I had cleverly altered the way in which I expressed to lesson the jealously that came…now that’s a mouth full and if you didn’t catch all that, well I understand. To put it simply, the original package from childhood was all encompassing, it was wise, deep, funny, outgoing and thanks to with my studies Universal Medicine I have returned to this whole package of expressive freedom.
I love your expression Sarah and your joy for life, for people, and for yourself. You are an inspiration.
Hi Joel, I am celebrating the fact that you can once again put ‘your whole in and shake it all about’ as through your writing you are certainly sharing the joy.
Simply divine Joel Levine. As children we feel the vastness of the universal love we are eternally held in and our movements are a natural expression of this. It is only when we learn to calibrate to others, in order to not make them feel uncomfortable for the contraction they have chosen, that we too end up separating from this divinity. In-truth we can never be removed from this holiness for we ARE it – God lives and breathes in us all – but we can stop feeling the depth to which we are held by our Father’s almighty and undying love and that in his arms, no matter our age, we are forever his children in joy-full expression of this.
So evocatively expressed Liane, “As children we feel the vastness of the universal love we are eternally held in and our movements are a natural expression of this”
It’s my strongest (and almost only) true memory from my childhood – feeling that vastness of the universal love. I used to lie in my bed most nights and joyously expand into this infinite space. I never really knew what it was all about – just that I loved doing it – until I had the same feeling again (having not had it for 30 years) at a Universal Medicine workshop. The pure boundless love that we all are.
I love this Joel. It was interesting as when you described the joy-full child doing the hokey pokey a lot came up for me to process. Both now and as a child I did not put my whole body in. I can imagine what comes at someone who is expressing such joy as it is a very strong reflection for another to deal with. It can be easier to just want to squash anothers joy so that we don’t have to feel what it brings up in us.
Sad isn’t it that so many young children, from such a young age, choose to hold back their joy for fear of jealousy or upsetting others. A lot came up for me too. Sadness at all the times I have held myself back and kept myself on the periphery of life not wanting to stand out, whilst all the time my body yearned to express itself but was just too shy to do so.
Haha and Joel Levin you are a legend. Expect me to comment on this blog for the rest of my life. What can I say, I love the story, I love the message, I love the ending and I love the photos. It all sits together as a complete package. I get the jealousy and the change we make, it was like waking up one day and being completely different but not be aware this was the case. Then once you have a change in movement like this and then do it over and over it becomes ingrained and you think it’s just how you are. As you are saying you were the hokey pokey naturally, you can see from the photo the joy is there. The middle photo is the change and you can see the weight of the world on your shoulders and on your brow and the end photo, an older more sleek version of the original hokey pokey. Thanks for putting it all in and keep shaking it all about, thank you Joel.
Another ripper! Thanks Joel. The photo reel is excellent. i can really feel the similarity between child version and now. So awesome.
Joel, you uplift my heart with your words here and remind me of when I was young and used to sing with my sisters when young whenever we went visiting relatives, and that suddenly stopped also for the same reason. I work with young children and we have done the hokey pokey often and it’s so lovely to claim back that natural sense of childhood pleasure and joy again when I do it with the children.
This maybe an obvious request – but it will be awesome to play the ‘hokey pokey’ with you and appreciate all the fullness we can all be in this game. We are never to grown up to appreciate and express the innate and divine playfulness we are and sharing this will be delightful.
It is empowering to realise that the joy we are and live as child has never truly left us, as we are the same Soul and as such the same love is within us. We only choose at some point to diminish how much of this lightness and joy we show the world, and over time as we continue to reduce ourselves we forget that this reductionism is not our true way. Yet at any moment we can choose to return to what is our natural and joyful way, as it is in essence who we are and the ever-present quality is always calling for us to move in union with it.
Not much to say about the photo in the middle Joel, but as for the other two, a joyful, childlike innocence exudes from both and I have a feeling that if you were to do the Hokey Pokey now you would undoubtedly through your whole self into the middle without fear or hesitation.
(p.s maybe doing the Hokey Pokey at the next Universal Medicine retreat should be suggested… although for me the retreats ARE like throwing my entire body into the middle, never knowing what to expect!!)
Brilliant Joel – let us put our whole body in and Live life without holding back.
Whatever happened to the Hokey Pokey! I remember it well. If you were to ask me now to do the Hokey Pokey (metaphorically speaking) I would probably say that I was just putting my toe into the circle, holding back all of me until it was ‘safe’. Thank-fully, Universal Medicine has helped me realised that it is okay to put my whole body in’ as it is only my mind that tricks me into holding back, when if I listened to my body it would not hesitate in diving in head first!
This brought up a memory for me. I used to have a very vivid imagination and would play with toys and action figures giving them different names and creating quite elaborate adventures. But the moment an adult walked in, I would immediately stop and become very shy about my play. I could feel the judgement that was coming from them, and possibly the jealousy as well. Learning to allow that sense of joy and play out again has been incredibly powerful, and something I am so grateful to Universal Medicine for showing me.
It puts a smile on my face to picture you playing as a kid. Awesome to know that it’s always inside like an everlasting supply of fun, playfulness and joy.
Brilliant, brilliant blog Joel – I smiled all the way through reading it and could feel your joy as a child playing Hokey Pokey in life. It’s a great analogy. Just yesterday, I was describing to someone how I’ve taken the brakes off, maybe not completely but certainly a lot which is an analogy for no longer holding back my expression. We know as children there was a point at which we didn’t measure how we were, this we learnt as we realised we were not accepted just for who we were in all our joy.
As children we know how much fun it is to be fully connected to our bodies. I used to for example love going barefoot in the fields and feeling the grass under my feet and feeling the absolute beauty of having my body and my being in harmony. Through attending Universal Medicine presentations I have learned to just be myself again and to re-claim what I had let go of.
Taking on the reactions of others as being ‘our fault’ is huge and something I still do at times. But reading this reminded me that just as it is my own choice to react, others are also able to allow or prevent their own reactions. Each person is responsible for their own reactions, each person is responsible for addressing what triggers them to go into reaction and all that follows. If I want to shake it all about joyfully then I have every right to, just as others have the free will to react or join in on the fun.
I think we all know what the world is like without a bit of fun, and playfulness. It goes to show therefore just how much most do not know God, yet we do know God at the same time because we all have at some point in our lives felt the freedom from joyfull, playful movement through our veins
At a certain age, I became responsible for my family’s well being. If something was not right, I thought, for some reason that it was my fault. Why did I do that?
Now I understand that I did that because I thought it was my job to make things all right, and I would be loved if I made things ok.
At some point in my life I understood that sometimes you need to let things fall apart, that maybe I don’t know what needs to happen.
So no more control, just surrender, and let go. My real responsibility is to myself and I am finding that that is a full time job.
Restoring oneself to participating in life in full with all that we are is one of the aspects that Universal Medicine supports unparalleled; the depth of healing and quality of life that comes with doing the ‘Hokey Pokey’ is enormous and counters the giving up mentality and stupor we as a society have drowned in.
Yes people often do get jealous when someone is open and shines because in that moment the pain of our choice of the opposite is more acutely felt. But although I myself have reacted in this way many times and I might have even been annoyed that my comfortable bubble was disturbed by the reflection, yet on hind site a part of me deep down is so very grateful for these moments that help keep alive the fact of that possibility even when, for whatever reason, I have chosen to not go there at that time.
I feel that this scenario has been a very common way for a lot of people to not stand out and for very similar reason whether they were conscious or unconscious.
I’m glad you put your whole self in Joel, loved reading your blog! The realists of what you have shared for children is very real, they feel very open and exposed when they are in their true joy and sometimes this is too mich to bear to see everything around them not the same as that Joy.
Yes, a big yes, to returning to the joy I felt in childhood. Interestingly, my youngest child has taught me an enormous amount about letting the joy out once again, and continues to do so. When did we get so serious?!
Returning to the childhood innocence we erroneously thought we would have to leave behind… that’s the journey back to our soul.
Just gorgeous, and I can so relate – as a child I couldn’t contain the joy in my body and i loved dancing and moving and grooving but of course that also attracted jealousy just as you describe Joel. So I toned it down, even shut it down – until the last few years where with the inspiration of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I’ve been inspired to let my joy out again, the playfulness and the gorgeousness and know that in that fullness of me, nothing can truly hurt.
That change in our personality is probably something that is deemed to be normal as we get older. “Oh they’re at that age” But it can’t be our natural selves or otherwise parents would never be concerned or think that there was a change. How incredible are the Universal Medicine Retreats that we get the opportunity to gain such insights into our lives and our choices and then let go of all that has held us back. What joy for your parents to see the return of your hokey pokey and to once again participate in life like you are doing the hokey pokey.
I love it. Thank you Joel for showing what life is all about. Simple and joyful.
You make the Hokey Pockey sound so much more fun than I recall – such is the power of joy.
Absolutely Abby – and we can bring the power of Joy to all that we do and make life a WHOLE lot more fun than what it currently presents. No need to bungee jumping or skydiving to feel alive, just be the joy you are and cooking dinner can be full of fun!
Awesome Joel – I know what it looks like when kids go “all in” which they do quite often. I’m inspired because I haven’t gotten to that point yet, or I haven’t relocated myself into that freeness of being again. I had it as young for sure and I’m heading there once more. Thanks for a refreshing read!
Matts, the sad thing is that kids are born ‘all in’, it is there natural way of being. We then train them and coerce them into stepping away from that divine and oh so natural state of being. And equally with adults, we are all actually already ‘all in’, it’s just that we exert constant pressure on ourselves to give the impression that we are not already there. But we are and that’s the greatest illusion known to man, the fact that we are all already Home, it’s just that we have kidded ourselves and persuaded others that we are not.
Re-learning fairly recently that I am not responsible for how another feels has been one of the most liberating pieces of information I have come to understand.
Yeah this is pretty huge, Alexis. People will be who they want to be and choose what they want to choose regardless of us – though sometimes due to us (a reflection, for example).
Oh Joel, I simply love the playfulness of not only what you have shared but of your expression. Life for so many adults and increasingly more and more children has become an absolute drag and this is nothing short of a crying shame.
I love those photos, you as a child and you now, the middle picture bears no resemblance to either one. Who was that man? Kids and dogs both know how to do absolute joy and put their whole bodies in to it and ‘that’s what its all about’ as the song says.
A yes, I remember the Hokey Pokey from my child hood as well – it is very interesting how we often see this gradual or abrupt change from joyous to the reverse and more guarded as a part of growing up – that teenagers are just naturally going to struggle with self confidence and wanting to fit and be ‘be cool’, as though to live with joy is somehow not cool?! For me I know that there is this effervescent endless bubbling stream of playfulness to be found in life if we only allow ourselves to explore it.
What’s incredible is that your expression during the retreat is exactly the same as when you were a child. Whereas, In the photo in the middle you are very stiff and protected…magic!
Jealousy Unimedpedia – http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-jealousy.html provides some great quotes, audio and further insights into the energetic truth of what is behind jealousy.
I had a very similar experience to you Joel and wrote a blog about it here: https://truthaboutsergebenhayon.com/2016/07/11/sharing-the-joy/. I too encountered a lot of jealousy when I started returning to my natural joy. The presentations of Serge Benhayon on Jealousy have been immensely liberating for me as they have brought a new level of awareness and understanding as to what is going on. These days I am much less affected by jealousy and am more likely to take it as a confirmation of my awesomeness rather than something to avoid or hold me back.
Joel, my own memories of playing this as a child came flooding back when i read your blog – it was so much fun! Thank you for the reminder that whilst we may well have left it behind in childhood, we can all return to the joy of doing the ‘Hokey Pokey’ once again.
Friggin heck that Joy is way back! And then some! I love being playful and joyful and yes people react because they have seen something they are and know themselves to be, but chose not to, and that can ruffle people. They key is (as I am learning) to not turn down your joy, child like playfulness, cheekiness and innocence for anybody. It’s better to let someone feel how miserable they are, and how joyful they can easily be, rather than join them in their misery.
I totally agree with this Gyl. I experienced it so many times in the early Universal Medicine retreat celebrations that occur at the end. It gets to the point where sitting in misery on the sidelines isn’t worth it anymore! That wouldn’t of happened if everyone stopped being joyful and sat in misery with me.
Learning to accept the reactions of others in response to ‘putting your whole body in and shaking it all about’ is huge Joel, thanks for the inspiration…
We use a lot of energy holding back our natural joy. Look at how often people put a hand in front of their mouth or apologise for laughing or being spontaneous. I agree, let’s all let it out and share the joy!
I have a very cherished moment of my granddaughter dancing in the summer with all of her, arms and legs flying around, and the biggest smile on her face, full of joy, so I know exactly what you mean Joel. I am returning to that same joy, and if there is any criticism or reaction to this, I am now able to hold me and not shut down as I have done in the past. Understanding the energy of jealousy is huge and does not need to stifle our expression.
“Of course in reality, I wasn’t causing their reaction but it is often common logic to take the responsibility for someone else’s reaction” So true Joel. People say ‘you made me……’ We need to take responsibility for our own feelings and reactions. Playing small doesn’t serve anyone.
Children love the hokey-cokey – as we used to call it – and big people too – if they don’t fear to express themselves in full.
Love it, put ourselves back in to life. I know I held back for years and yet I to had that joy and enthusiasm initially in my childhood years…I enjoy all areas of my life now, be it cleaning, working, childcare, relationships, travelling…it is not that I do not get some bumps and challenges along the way, but I genuinely have joy a lot of the time and I am with God so much more and feels wonderful.
I love this Joel and can relate in the way I was all in, full of joy and then also backed away and “became shy” it makes no sense really until you understand or consider what you’ve presented. Somewhere I didn’t want to stand out and receive all the jealousy that comes with that. Regaining the joy however is back at the top of my list.
Joel, what you have shared makes so much sense. I love observing this with children, how they are so full of themselves and do not worry what people think and so move very joyfully and naturally. When it comes to adults dancing and expressing their joy it feels very different – it feels more self conscious, ‘what will people think’ etc.. I know that I certainly have this and almost need permission to be joyful and express this.
What a beautiful sharing Joel. I too remember the hokey pokey and loving it putting my whole self in and out …..what a joyful and playful reminder.The one memory I have most clearly from my early childhood was singing and dancing all the time and on the table even and the joy in life being in it all. What happened I often wondered but with Serge Benhayon and through Universal Medicine the toning down to fit in and be quiet and not seen is changing back to the freedom and joy I always knew also and my body moves and feels alive with life and there is much more to come. I love your photos and the return to the little boys smile and joy is simply gorgeous.
I have always loved the Hokey Cokey, it gives us permission to be playful, but when it’s finished we put ourselves back into our little boxes. I know I stopped playing lots of games, finding them ‘silly’ and now I am wondering was it because of the reasons you have explained. I have a friend who is a clown but have always avoided going on her workshops, never quite knowing what was putting me off, so perhaps this is a clue. I love the analogy of putting your whole self in, because that applies 24/7 i.e. to absolutely everything we do, say or think. Interesting that it has a different name depending on where you live (UK/Australia).
This made me smile, especially as I had my own memories of the Hokey Cokey. We all have similar incidences in our lives of giving and receiving jealousy, and quite often that is at home from our siblings or parents – it seems to be one of those cycles which is passed down from generation to generation which never gets addressed.
I remember this game, and often I loved it, but over time I came to believe it to be silly and childish. It just shows how we are so willing to drop the joy for the sake of looking cool and not ruffling any feathers.
Such a joyful blog, thank you Joel. And a great reminder to stay full and completely with ourselves when we feel the poison of jealousy directed our way.
Yes and hooha… may we bring back the “hokey pokey” in us all! (Love the photos Joel!)
Ahhh…thanks Joel. In the UK we called it the Hokey Cokey, and I too can remember putting my “whole self in” with absolute joy, not holding back whatsoever. I will take this reminder into my day as a marker of what it feels like to be completely and utterly myself.
How lovely it is to feel the pure joy of just being all of who we are and not having to live in a reduced state to try to assuage others irrational jealousies etc. I can very much relate to your sharing here Joel as one who recalls the unbridled joy of childhood but then the pain of becoming very self-conscious and contracted. The opportunity to see this and return to the joy and the awareness of the truly playful God is a wonderful thing at any time of life.
Indeed Joel reminds me of the freedom and ease of nakedness that we knew as a child, returning through the playful twinkle in our eyes and the giant smile of trust from within.
It is one of the beautiful things being around Universal Medicine, that you see people, lots of people of all ages return to that natural joy and unguardedness that we usually only see in children.
Jealousy is an extreme case where a person goes into massive reduction from what truly is and get transfixed into something in which there is an obvious difference with someone else. The force coming out of this exercise at comparing is horrendous. We feel it all the way in the body even if the force does not come with words that reveal the enormous hurt that lies beneath it. In a world where we are suppose to help each other to evolve by reflection, jealousy plays the other way around: it is all about the satisfaction of someone choosing to be less so someone feels more by that fact.
And all the playfulness comes flooding back, when we can put our ‘whole self in and shake it all about’. Awesome to realise the reason why you toned down your joyful commitment to life and what an immense joy that you have reclaimed Joel. The message is loud and clear “keep shaking it and keep showing the world how to play the game until everyone is joining in”.
Thank God for Universal Medicine! What a grace to get inspired to bring back the joy and the ‘all in’. A joy to watch people unfold again their natural playfulness, beauty and commitment to life. In fact: a joy to see true religion back on earth.
Yes Sandra, and you are a great example of someone who puts their ‘all in’…
…what shall I say? I am a player 😉 – Thank you Jenny. You must know what you are talking about, as you are ‘all in’ too! Was great to meet you last month.
A lovely reminder Joel that God enjoys us being all that we are and is the ultimate Playful being. I can sometimes forget this as I get wrapped up in the seriousness of life, I love your analogy of the Hockey Pokey and putting all of ourselves into everything and the joy this brings. A great marker to start my day.
Reflecting the joyfulness of God is glorious to see and feel but then the poison of jealousy and comparison come in to stifle this movement – awesome to feel your return Joel and the reawakening of your joyful zest for life.
Often we’ll react to ourselves and our judgments that other people will react to us if we’re a certain way – so we end up moving and behaving in different ways and ultimately not being ourselves. If we do this for long enough we lose that sense of who we truly are. But that sense and knowing is always there, waiting to be reconnected to.
Reading your blog Joel reminded me of how much I loved that game and like you would play it with loads of joy, expressing myself however I felt with no concern as to what others thought about my moving and grooving. Then like you one day this stopped and I became self-conscious about the way I moved and stilted my expression. I am still working with allowing myself to be as free and easy as I was as a kid. The more I connect with my body move in my own natural rhythm the easier this is.
Man and child reunited: photographs of you as a child and as your are now speak for themselves. Hokey Pokey here I come!
I am so inspired by this blog to also do the hokey pokey again. I remember it well as a kid at most weddings I went to. I see my daughter in total joy with her body and I have often thought that it’s a shame we have to lose that, but hey, as you have pointed out, maybe I haven’t lost it completely and can get it back. The old body though has definitely taken a beating over the years and may not get back the looseness that the hokey pokey can bring.
The last line of this playful song/game is ‘That’s what it’s all about’ so as children we joyfully put our whole selves in to feeling the love of God and at the Universal Medicine retreats as adults we are learning to return to the same joy and freedom we felt as young children.
Joel, I also used to love the hokey pokey when I was a child, and I also lost that joyful playfulness and instead became very quiet and very serious…… sometimes this serious likes to creep back in as it became an ingrained habit. My body so wants to be play!
Jealousy is strong yet in truth it is joy that has the power, it is just as children we become frightened, confused and do not know what to do with that power.
What a very clear and concise example of what happens when we stop being with God and instead join the pack of life. My daughter walks in a way that used to drive me mad because she was jumping, skipping, twirling anything but walking in a straight line and this would show the joy she simply was and the lack of connection I had in those everyday moments. No wonder I got frustrated, once I realised this I stopped the ‘walk properly’ and actually admire her way and you see it with lots of kids they jiggle and bounce and do anything but walk properly, may they do so for as long as possible, until one day adults are walking as their bodies want to and not as they have been conditioned to.
Jealousy is a nasty thing and is something we have to become aware of to nail it and to let go, relieving society of one of the devastating energies that make us live in separation from one another. And if we do so we can reintroduce the hokey pokey in our lives and let go a period in which we had to suppress that inner spark, which made our lives dull and very exhausting.
Gorgeous, Joel, I love it. I can understand all you are sharing here, it so mirrors my life until the past almost 10 years now, since I met Serge Benhayon and began living The Way of The Livingness. I have re-learned the joy of letting myself be free to move in the way that I did as a young child, still somewhat in progress, but it is such fun, isn’t it?
The hokey-pokey song is a great metaphors for living life. Remembering this song and dance i too would do at family parties brought a great smile to me reading your blog… the body remembers this joy!
How often do we tone down to avoid people reacting around us?
I couldn’t help but read this with a big smile on my face. Thank you for providing such a simple example of the way we shut ourselves down to avoid jealousy. I’m sure many will relate to this. One thing is for sure – you totally rock the hokey pokey.
Simply and Profoundly Gorgeous Joel – both you and this blog. I love the sharing and the glory-and-joy filled photos of you now.
Your photos are amazing Joel, seeing and feeling the joy shining through your most recent photo is beautiful. Learning to do the ‘Hokey Pokey’ again is obviously the way to go, expressing with our full body not holding back one ounce of joy but expressing it in full is a healing effect for us all, for those who may react and to those who can simply appreciate the reflection.
There is no doubt the hokey pokey has come back and is part of your dance of joy! A wonderful and light-hearted piece of writing on the sparkle we see so often in our young that calls us to reignite our own.
Great example Joel, and that’s exactly what we do, we allow ourselves to become self conscious and we abandon the joy we feel just in doing something, I remember those things from childhood distinctly where I just loved moving and then the later awkwardness that came with trying and all in an attempt not to stand out or get too much attention. I wasn’t consciously aware of it then but I did feel the jealousy of others and how they reacted and I was uncomfortable with that and wanted to stop it. Now I’m learning again how to be as I am in each moment and let others do the same.
Beautiful Joel, your pictures say it all.
I agree Joel, putting the whole of our body in and shaking it all about in joy is what it’s all about. Wow what a reflection for others 🙂
I remember the Hokey Pokey from my kindergarten teaching days! What an awesome reminder of being the joy that we naturally are – and which most of us connected to so easily as children – and putting our whole self Joy-FULL-y into life.
I love this Angela: “putting our whole self Joy-FULL-y into life.”, and questioned whether that’s what I am doing in every moment, and if not, why not? Just imagine if we never lost the joy and delight we had as children, that it naturally stayed with us into adulthood; oh what a different life we would be living in a world that would be bursting with joy.
Our little boy has just started doing it in playgroups and it’s amazing how easy it is to get back into it and to sing (and dance) along. It may be years since I’ve sung it, but I feel I’m putting myself back in 😉
Its a disaster that we live in a world where we end up toning down our natural playfulness and joy of simply being. Why has that not been addressed, why isn’t it the number one course of study for kids, parents, teachers – that foremost before any of the clever stuff, as without it, what is the point of the clever stuff anyway?
When we stop ‘shaking it all about’ you are right Simon, we have lost the most important part of us, how not clever is that?
That’s such a marker Joel, loving the ‘hokey pokey’ when you were a child, what an irony that we shut down relating to every part of our body. For me it took a wake up call to realise I actually had lost me in the burden and choices I had made and the joy had faded. With those same choices I am returning to connecting with my whole body and ready to join in ‘ putting my whole body in to life and shake it all about, as that’s what it’s all about.’
This is so so cool Joel: ”In essence, through my own choices, and the learning and inspiration from the retreats, I have learned to ‘Hokey Pokey’ once again (metaphorically speaking), to put my body into life and shake it all about, because that’s what it’s all about…”
You literally make me sit on the edge of my chair when reading this blog.. as I know where you talk about , and I know we all know it too. So your blog inspires to become our inner-child of joy again. Let’s not hold back.
This is brilliant Joel. For me I simply loved being out in the garden and dancing around looking at the butterfly’s and dragonfly’s and just getting really excited by them flying by when I was young. I never really lost this childlike wonderment, but I did definitely tone it down, because people would say I was weird. Now I ask what is weird about moving and feeling all of who we are? Sharing our joy with the world is one of the biggest inspiration bombs around and I love to dance from the full joy and movement of my body without fear once again. Thank you Joel.
Awesome Joel – thank you for sharing I will do the hokey pokey with anytime!!
Love how you’ve come full circle Joel and refound that joy in moving. For me, my hokey pokey was swinging in the trees where I felt completely at ease enjoying moving around and hanging from the branches. Very interesting to look back though in the context of jealousy and freedom of movement, and how the one can impact the other.
How beautiful to feel the joy as well as the innocence from what you’ve shared in this blog Joel. Thank you for that. I can also feel my own giving up ness on the joy as well as the joy that is within me, ready to be connected to. How different would life be if we would be encouraged to share all the joy within. Our world would be completely different. Who’s leading the change?
Beautifully asked Floris. Who is responsible for leading the change – I would say absolutely each and every one of us for ourself is the starting point.
Love your sharing Joel. Looking back in my life I was a joyful little being until about the age of 4yrs. I always wondered why that changed and I became shy , but I feel after having read you blog that it was to do with jealousy also. I remember My Dad saying (not long before he passed) that I brought a lot of joy into my parents lives when I was tiny.
It seems to be the journey that almost every person goes on, from full-of-joy to not very joy-full-at-all. And so we have a wold that is full of misery and hardship as we as adults try to get through without our natural playfulness. I love that Joel has regained his smile that is so beautiful, it shows to me and to the whole world that all is not lost, we can come back to ourselves and be who we are in life.
I agree, Shami. But just as seeing joy in others can draw jealousy we can also choose to be inspired by it – and sometimes this isn’t even a conscious choice, we just say ‘yes’ and laugh, play and share that joy.
In my experience when I am particularly joyful or aware I trigger jealousy in others. A bomb consists of a trigger and the explosive – if I am the trigger, did I cause the explosion (here jealousy)?
Beautiful blog Joel, love it, how playfully you played with your whole body when you was young and then as you got older started to be cautious due to others jealousy. This is a common thing and I am sure most of us can relate to the same.I know I use to love playing when i was a child, either on my own or with others. I too loved the games like hokey pokey. Yes you are right I remember other friends getting jealous and also started bullying me because of that and so I started to withdraw. Wow this is allowing me to reflect back as well.
Nothing brings up reaction in the world more than unexpressed joy, and yet equally nothing brings more healing to the world like true joy. Such reaction from the world of course causes all small children at some point to grow up and leave behind such connection in order to fit in and protect themselves. Of course, ironically, it is in doing so that we lose connection with the very one state of being that is the antidote to all the misery and struggle we observe around us and choose to enjoin.
I agree. I remember the desperation I felt every time I left a joyful action behind and how I felt I had no choice as the reaction from those around hurt more than the joy I felt in my experience.
Awesomely said Adam – and ultimately we deny the very playfulness of God in us when we do this. The beauty is – he patiently and understandingly waits, as does our connection – until we are ready to return to this joy and glory. Seeing the remarkable stories from those who have chosen to reconnect to this – I am always blown away with just how quickly our bodies are ready to realign and support us even though many of us have had many years of denying this connection and not honouring it.
As our children grow up to see that everyone around them are also not afraid to be joyful and playful they will too learn that it is safe to stay connect to their innate spark, joy and playfulness because it is so natural to us all. So, the more we choose to reconnect to this the more we will inspire others to also do the same. Our choice to not tone down our joy has a ripple effect on us all, on our children and our community world-wide.
yes, yes, yes
Joel the tears in my eyes express how deeply I can feel and appreciate your inspirational re-connecting and shared reflection of the joy with-in us all.
What a JOY to read this blog Joel. Your photographs say it all.
Doing the hokey pokey is a great simile for being engaged in life, with all of us and without reservation. As children we are super sensitive to the jealousy coming from others and thus, it is no wonder we clam down and become ‘shy’. The jealousy doesn’t stop but we build a fortress around us to not feel it anymore and withdraw further and further into our shell. What a poor and insipid replacement for the joy of the hokey pokey.
It is beautiful to read your story, we react deeply to the reaction of others. Preferring to not be seen and not feel the awful emotion jealousy is. It is causing many to back down in joy, and even forgetting about it. But this joy is still there, it is in building our connection back to this joy that makes us express it again.
That is true Benkt, we might not show it but that does not mean that the joy we felt as a child is not with us anymore in adult life.