I really enjoy sharing different approaches and perspectives about finding our Middle Ground. Recently humour or humor has been a theme … You know who you are!
It’s no coincidence that, as I am going through some changes, I experience feelings of sadness and loss … and then that humor bubbles up!
Humor brings light and lightness. Its takes us away from our thinking, stories, and beliefs about the world. It activates different parts of our brains and releases serotonin and yummy hormones!
Its also one of the ways that we may avoid facing reality. Yet when we are aware and recognize this, we see its okay … just like one espresso and piece/bar of chocolate now and again is okay 😉
Living a comedic life would be living a life avoiding the highs and lows that are a part of it.
However, having a humor pause may be just as helpful as a sacred pause.
So give yourself permission:
To laugh in the face of adversity.
To giggle in those awkward moments.
To smile when things seem lost.
Recall the good times and laughter when someone is dying.
Guffaw at the ridiculous-ness you find yourself in.
And choose to laugh because it feels so good!
It’s all okay 🙂
No one need tell us how we should be feeling. Its up to all of us to find a way to feel fully and therefore live fully.
After all, life is serious enough without taking it too seriously all the time!
Find Your Middle Ground 
I spent over 20 years of my life having a very close connection to a monastery, and much of that time living there too. I got to know several of the ordained recluses quite well, and a few became very dear friends, remaining so all these years later. Monastic life is incredibly intense; every hour is structured, and the controls imposed are rigid and many. What makes the whole tolerable, and indeed may transform it into becoming a delight, is the role that humour plays. Naturally enough, it must be both appropriate and timely, and not used as an end in itself.
As you say in other words Val, we need to balance the recognition that on the one hand we are all a little absurd in our respective self-conceptions, with our potential either to transcend the same, or to negate the same through immanence. Humour can keep pointing us back to our absurdity, the thing we ultimately wish to be released from. Yes, it can be used as an avoidance technique, but those that do so are never truly serious about discovering themselves, nor others, and I think it may largely be a fear response, a sort of protective coat for the ego.
Hariod. ❤
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Thank you for sharing your experience here Hariod. I appreciate the insight of humour being transformational in a monastic setting!
Pointing us back to our own absurdity is powerful H!
Seriously?!?…. 😱😖😡
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With your permission Val, perhaps it would be useful to include this video just here. It may well resonate with those readers who are familiar with the egoically-driven intensity that can sometimes envelop the spiritual seeker, and how that same intensity is suddenly seen to be absurd in glimpsing beyond the self-entity.
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Brilliant Hariod!!
Such a release and relief 🙂
I love seeing the prana and life energy at work.
This is a powerful reminder to lighten up and “be”.
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I’ll be taking several “humor pauses” today, Val. Thanks for the inspiration!
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May I join you Joan? Shared laughter is the best!!
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Laughter is good medicine for the heart. I was just thinking that there is hardly a more beautiful sound than the sound of children laughing… ❤
Diana xo
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Yes indeed Diana! Laughter frees us from ourselves.
🙂
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Humor truly is the best medicine! When my father died he got one last one on us…he was terminally ill and we were with him as he took his last breath. We waited not sure if he was gone; as my sister leaned over him the air expelled from his lungs and she nearly jumped to the ceiling. If anyone could have seen us laughing in a moment of death they would have thought us crazy…but it was just like him to get the last laugh and ease the pain of the moment.
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A way to release and connect… and give you a memory for a lifetime 🙂
He sounds very special.
thank you for sharing Suz!
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“There is nothing left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.” ~ Zen Master
“A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher
He deserves Paradise who makes his companions laugh. ~ the Koran
“A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.” ~ William Arthur Ward
Laughter shortens the distance between people.
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Yep … LOL.
Where’s the chocolate?
xo
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I like the way you frame this that we can use laughter as a pause in problematic situations, as long as we recognize it as a pause and do not use it as a chronic state of denial or avoidance of facing reality. Well said.
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Thank you Elizabeth – as you say its all about awareness, perspective and finding the balance 🙂
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Laughter is pretty much my favorite! I think it’s great to embrace the humor!
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DUH!!
Right ?!?!
hugs
Val xo
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Laughing is essential in the ups and downs of change. Even in my darkest grief, laughing helped me see a different way to look at my life! Great post Val.
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Thanks Karen for sharing how therapeutic it can be. It can be a release in the darkest grief… and lets us see things a bit differently. Sometimes that’s all it takes to help us keep moving along 🙂
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great advice! needed that today actually!
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I’ll giggle along with you Claire 🙂
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Wonderful post, Val! It is so liberating to laugh! I do laugh often and it helps with almost everything 😀
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(GRIN) You go girl! Thank you 🙂
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From my perspective humor never condemns or judges, it merely reveals things as they are.
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I like that. Thank you 💐
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