I want to talk to you about joy, not as an emotion and not as a feeling, but as the inherent nature of beingness, and what this means on the Joy Rebel Path.
In non-dual Shaiva Tantra, joy isn’t something you chase, cultivate, fix or manufacture. It isn’t the opposite of sadness. It isn’t the silver lining after a hard day. Joy is the inherent bliss of awareness itself. Ananda. The shimmering aliveness of Shiva Shakti recognising itself as the fabric of all things.
Joy isn’t joy instead of.
Joy isn’t joy when.
Joy is joy as.
Joy as the ground of being.
Joy as the natural radiance of awakened perception.
Joy as the throb of existence.
And joy includes everything. Grief, rage, confusion, guilt, shame, ecstasy, heartbreak, all of it. Joy shines through everything because the joy of being underlies everything.
Bhairava, Kṣemarāja, Utpaladeva — they all point to the same thing.
When the contracted “I” dissolves, what remains is the boundless, undivided joy of consciousness vibrating as the entire universe.
This is the joy my work points to. Unconditional. Ever-present. Non-oppositional. Not a mood. Not a preference. Not a bypass. It is the joy of beingness itself.
‘Ānanda designates a way of experiencing and loving reality that is completely independent of circumstances. …it is a state of absolute contentment, acceptance and quiet yet sublime joy: the peace that passes all understanding. This state, which is far more fulfilling than ordinary happiness, can exist in any circumstance.’ – Christopher Wallis, Tantra Illuminated pg 105
This is how I live, to the extent that I forget and the mind contracts back into the old limited sense of self. Then I notice, and I open back into the inherent joy of being. And this is something I can teach you to do as well, because joy is always here regardless of circumstances.
The mind struggles with this, especially when you still see through conditioning. The mind throws up its objections.
What about when something horrible happens? Where’s the joy then?
The question itself reveals the misunderstanding.
Because when the worst things happen — and I’ve lived this — the suffering doesn’t come from the event. The suffering comes from resistance and grasping. Aversion and attachment generate the pain, not the event itself. This is why joy and awakening go hand in hand. When you dissolve aversion and dissolve attachment, you start meeting reality directly. You stop living in thoughts about reality and start resting in reality itself.
This is what it means to be a Joy Rebel.
It’s rebellious because our entire society teaches us to wait for the right conditions. When I get that job… when they love me… when I feel better… then…
There is no “when” and no “then.” Life unfolds only in this moment, and this moment is the only place you can open into the joy that is.
And this moment contains all of it. Grief. Shame. Fear. Beauty. Love. Loss.
When you stop being afraid of feeling what’s here, everything changes. I had to train myself into this because my childhood survival strategies protected me from feeling what I couldn’t handle back then. Now I can. Now I choose. And training myself to feel what arises is what unhooked me from suffering and drama.
To be a Joy Rebel is to be a warrior.
A warrior who refuses to participate in the suffering club.
A warrior who won’t play the drama games of “life is so hard” and “everything is awful.”
A warrior who says, enough — no more fucking drama, people.
Leaving the suffering club changes your relationships because you stop co-signing mind-generated suffering. You don’t buy into it anymore. You won’t play that game. This is why I created the Joy Rebel Club, a community for people who want to live awake and creative rather than stuck in the endless loops of drama.
Because opening to the inherent joy of being opens you to the inherent creativity of the universe as it expresses through you. You are a function of the universe. You are the universe expressing itself in your unique configuration. But when you’re tangled in suffering, there’s no space for that expression. When you stop running from life, creativity floods in.
This is where Dancing the Dragon comes in. Dance has always been one of the ways I access joy. As a Joy Rebel, dancing the dragon becomes a core practise. The dragon can be grief, desire, shame, fear, pleasure. You dance with whatever you want to fully meet. Sometimes that looks like embodied movement. Sometimes it looks like painting or writing. The point is to meet the dragon and move with it until it alchemizes.
My own practise weaves prayer, invocation, asana, trance dance, martial arts patterns, yin, meditation, chanting, mudras, bandhas — a full spectrum way of allowing myself to be danced by Kundalini Shakti. She dances me. And when I dance with the dragon of shame, rage, desire, grief, whatever is here, I open the channels for joy to flow because I stop running from life.
Joy doesn’t depend on money, partnership, status or security. Joy doesn’t come from externals. Joy lives here. Joy is here. Always.
This is a practise. And when you live from this place, life reorganises itself around you. You stop being a slave to your mind, to conditioning or to society. You become liberated, compassionate, wild, awake and attuned. You become the creative force you always were.
I took twenty years to fully embody these teachings because I was so stuck in attachment and aversion. Yet I kept practising, devouring, digesting and dissolving. Slowly, everything unwound and the inherent joy of beingness revealed itself.
If you feel the call to do the most rebellious thing you can do and become a Joy Rebel — not just for yourself, but for your family, your community and for the world we live in — come talk to me.
Let’s go.
KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR THE ARTICLE
- Joy in Tantra is not an emotion; it is the inherent bliss of awareness itself.
- Joy includes every emotion and experience because joy is the fabric of everything.
- Suffering comes from attachment and aversion, not from events themselves.
- Awakening involves dissolving resistance so you can meet reality directly.
- Becoming a Joy Rebel means refusing to participate in the “suffering club.”
- Radical responsibility transforms your entire experience of life.
- Dancing the Dragon alchemises whatever arises and opens access to joy.
- Creativity flows naturally when you stop running from your experience.
- Living from joy reorganises your life and relationships.
- This path requires training, courage and devotion, and it changes everything.
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