Love and joy are on the inside. Go in...

The search that runs outward

We can choose love and joy, and in choosing them we are really choosing ourselves. Mostly we do the opposite. We look for happiness somewhere outside us: in relationships, in what we own, in the pursuit of the right house, the right car, the right body. Sometimes, sadly, even in children, held as possessions that ought to fit an ideal shape.

That outward search begins at birth and does not end. It is woven through with fear, disillusionment and dissatisfaction, and it is what keeps us in conflict, both inside ourselves and with the people we care about most.

Why we are looking at all

Because love and joy are our actual nature. The belief that you are inherently flawed or unworthy is something the mind constructed, a prison of guilt and shame that holds you at a distance from your own essence. What we are looking for is not out there at all. It is the self we lost underneath layers of conditioning and programming.

From very young we are taught to measure worth by what we achieve and what we accumulate. That cycle of producing and consuming hides our gifts from us and turns us into components in a machine, a long way from the freedom nature intended.

And then, for some of us, clarity arrives, usually dressed as a breaking point. No possession, no person, no job and no version of the body fills the void. When everything external has failed to satisfy, one direction remains.

When nothing outside you can fill it, the only road left runs inward. That is not defeat. That is where it starts.

The awakening

The journey begins the moment you stop and inquire. As the inner life gets richer you wake out of the illusion, and the hypnosis of the material world loosens its hold. You start to see it plainly: the love and joy you have been hunting have always been in here.

It is a transformative turn. It reconnects you with your purpose and shows you your gifts, and it makes obvious what was always true, that fulfilment never depended on people, possessions or circumstances. It rests in the authentic self, which has been waiting patiently for you to come back to it.

How you begin

You begin by pausing. By inquiring. By choosing love and joy, which is the same moment you fall in love with yourself. You let go of what no longer serves you and allow life to move. The blinkers fall away, and the doors of a prison built out of guilt, shame and fear stand wide open. You are free.

In that freedom another journey opens. As you practise awareness you hold each thought up to the light and become more present. Letting go creates new patterns, and the subconscious, which has been a storehouse of fear and doubt, begins to reprogramme itself. New behaviour appears, new pathways form, the shift deepens. Fear, guilt and blame get released, because you no longer have any use for them.

The invitation

Love and joy are not outside you. Stop searching outward. Go in.

You will find yourself there, waiting. It is time to change your story, and to choose love and joy.

A great deal of this work is exactly that: quieting the noise enough to hear what sits underneath, and giving the subconscious something better to hold.

Angela Pereira is a certified hypnotherapist and Parts Therapy facilitator in Mulbarton, Johannesburg South, working in person and online. She came to this work through her own hypnotherapy, for a driving phobia that had quietly organised her life.