So many people yesterday had comments regarding difficulty in finding/maintaining joy in their lives. Is joy a phenomena that truly only occurs rarely, or is it possible to be in joy all the time?

In further sitting with the discussion towards the end of the session yesterday, I felt that this enthusiasm/caring also be especially hard in adult years when one wants to share who they essentially are or what they are doing and are met with the "that's nice" comment and a complete refusal to talk about it. It is very negating and makes further contact difficult without people pleasing them.

In a conversation today with a guide, we got down to "I was punishing myself for wanting something". It seemed to fit right in with the lessons here. When I heard that I immediately got choked up and quite quiet.

I was talking with someone regarding people pleasing and he used a a "deserving scale". In some cases we feel we "deserve" something or not. Naturally there is a wide spectrum. We went into some real examples - one being does one eat what is less liked on their plate first and then save what is liked for the last. It was a bit complicated but I could see that potentially in some way I was not necessarily people pleasing per se but the underlying theme was that I needed to do what I did not like before I could get what I liked. This called to mind one of my body work teachers who says - do what you like, when you like, how you like. Anything else is pushing against the law of attraction in the universe. (of course, no harm to others or self). It became apparent how ingrained the lack of legitimacy was for me.

Happy Monday! I finished watching the lessons from week 7 over the weekend. My experience is that my mom recognizes that the way that they parented us was problematic and she would like me to forgive her. She often says things like "dad and I didn't know what we were doing", "we made so many mistakes", etc. I will usually reply to her comments with general statements because I don't feel comfortable sharing my true feelings with her about my childhood for a variety of reasons. So I kind of have the opposite problem - it seems like my mom wants to confront me and I am avoiding. Does anyone else have a similar experience?