Book of Joy: A Handbook for Ecstatic Living

By S. K. Richter

The Book of Joy aims to bring us back to ecstatic moments. In a world in which we are literally running out of room in every way, this book shows us how to cultivate bliss-inducing spaciousness in our every day affairs. Spaciousness acts as the ultimate gateway to abundance, a super-highway to deep, satiating joy.

This book discusses simple ways to create more space in your life. Over 40 exercises are included to help you reclaim the present, create a perfect moment, and gain instant access to the sacred. Like a bright yellow line, this book guides you down the road toward instinctual, primordial pleasure.

“Too easily we forget who we are, how quickly this life passes by, and what is most important. In the Book of Joy, S. K. Richter offers us pathways to remembering, portals that are shared from the depths of personal exploration and discovery. Each contemplation and exercise opens a door to new possibilities.” —Jonathan Foust,
Insight Meditation Community, Washington, D.C.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Dec 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483439402

Book preview

BOOK OF Joy

A Handbook for Ecstatic Living

S. K. Richter

Copyright © 2015 S. K. Richter.

Interior Graphics/Art Credit ©Vladimir Ceresnak.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3941-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3940-2 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 11/30/2015

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Ecstasy: Why it Matters

Big Spirit

Connecting to Big Spirit

Mouse Tunnel: A Story from My Past

Space: A Story in Definitions and Synonyms

Thirty-Five Tips for Living an Ecstatic Life

1.   Be Here Now

2.   Be Your Body

3.   Be a Sport

4.   Be In Your Car

5.   Be Outside

6.   Be Inside

7.   Be an Animal (Because You are One)

8.   Be Alone

9.   Look and See

10.   Feel Your Feelings

11.   Feel Your Feelings Again

12.   Look and See Again

13.   Look and See Food

14.   Look and See Light

15.   Look and See Dark

16.   Look and See the Recreating World

17.   Get Small

18.   Get Wrapped (in Sound)

19.   Live In the Moment

20.   Consider Sunrise and Sunset

21.   Consider Paradise

22.   Consider Buddha

23.   Realize Intrinsic Value

24.   Travel

25.   Make a Move (If Only in Your Brain)

26.   Make or Experience Art

27.   Do Nothing

28.   Free Your Brain from Culture

29.   Cultivate Vista Vision

30.   Be Aware (Be Very Aware) of Beauty

31.   Fully Engage with the Natural World

32.   Ground Yourself in History

33.   Become Entranced (Get Hypnotized)

34.   Live in the Moment, with Feeling

35.   Talk to Big Spirit

36.   Love Big Spirit

Epilogue

Citations and Permissions

Acknowledgments

About the Author

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver

Foreword

In thinking about why I wrote this book, it struck me that when I had my first ecstatic experiences, I was in need of a way to rise above my circumstances. I was young, healthy, happy, and doing well financially. But something wasn’t working for me.

I’d always been the kind of person who didn’t exactly fit in with everyone else. I didn’t completely buy into cultural prescriptions for what I was supposed to do with my life or the normal definitions of success and happiness. I didn’t enjoy or want many of the things other people did. I was looking for something else, but I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t even know how to talk about it or what to call it.

In my early 30s, I began to feel a creeping lack of energy and enthusiasm for living, although there didn’t seem to be any particular reason for it. This was the beginning of a quiet crisis that largely went unnoticed by the people around me. I appeared to be swimming along with everyone, but I felt as if I were drowning. I started thinking hard, writing down what mattered to me, toying with ideas that might jettison me from this difficulty. The writings were amorphous for a long time before they began to take the shape of the book you are now holding.

Basically, I wrote this book for myself, because I needed a guide for my life, a way to live that would keep me connected to what truly mattered. I needed something that would help me remember what it was like to feel super-alive and full of vigor. I needed to regain vibrancy, the feelings I once had of drive and positivity. I wanted to experience the kind of joy I remembered so keenly from the past.

Looking back now, I realize that, although I couldn’t point to any one issue when I started writing this book, I had very serious challenges to overcome. My mother had died of MS when I was 23 years old. My brother died of MS when I was 33. Along the way, I was diagnosed first with a thyroid disorder and later fibromyalgia. Grief is long and exhausting in its ability to weaken a person’s vitality and joy, as is an incurable illness. Decades later, this book still unpublished, my father became ill with a neurological disease and I, not unexpectedly, was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder. Further straining my capacity for happiness was a childhood trauma that took me over forty years to fully process. Needless to say, I was like a hot air balloon with very, very heavy sandbags on board.