“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” [1]

The virtue of joy is wrapped up in the feeling of expansion. It is living a life each day where all basic and mental needs are essentially fulfilled and our full personal potential takes place. This includes being fully alive and finding our own personal true meaning in life. It is an emotion but it is more than an emotion; it is a feeling but it is more than a feeling; it is a state of being where we are constantly growing and expanding. Jack London in The Call of the Wild expresses this beautifully when Buck claims his true wild nature: “He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.” It is the ultimate sense of power, beauty and freedom we experience when we are who we were meant to be.

Like Buck, we have to escape the bonds of civilization to experience our true nature. Maslow in this hierarchy speaks about reaching our human potential in what he calls self-actualization. He associates this with using our gifts as in art or music, or perhaps rising to the top of our career choices, or perhaps excelling due to some major achievement. But all these things are merely an extension of our egos. It is striving for and reaching a goal set and achieved in the mind. It is an expansion of the mind which is a good thing but only part of true self-actualization. As Buck experienced his true animal nature, in order to achieve a state of joy, we have to experience our true human nature which means existing beyond the confines of the mind.

Our personal potential is much more than what we achieve or what we do. It is coming to terms with our true nature as powerful and beautiful human beings with body, mind, and soul. Like Buck, it is learning to be in and enjoy our bodies, the movements of our muscles, exploring the treasures to be experienced through our senses, experiencing the pure joy of each breath. It is using our minds as an extension of our bodies to plan and enjoy our achievements, to being in control of our life path, and using it to provide experiences where we are constantly expanding.  But it is still much more. It is living by the heart, choosing to love and connect with others for the pure joy of knowing them and experiencing their lives with all their joys and sorrows.

But it is till more than just mind and heart, it is spiritual, which means we sense the energy patterns that surround us and learn to flow with them, soaring and expanding on the lifts of pure clean energy. We experience our own energy as something that contains the threads of eternity that hold us and bind us to life itself. We then become aware of the energies of others and can feel and experience their vibrations, helping them when there is need and simply enjoying them when they, too, are full and whole.

The virtue of joy is bliss and ecstasy with and within ourselves. It is being at peace with ourselves and learning to just be ourselves without striving to be something else. It is the ability to be completely content with who we are and to enjoy the life we live. This is the purpose and meaning to life. It is expanding in vibrational energy, love energy, and body energy until the day we die. Our true purpose is just to live, expand, and enjoy. In the words of Percy Bysshe Shelly, it is being able to say when each day is done “I have drunken deep of joy,/And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
My five applications to Bisexuality:

1. We simply enjoy our bodies and our sexual experiences as a true expression of ourselves. It is celebrating the animal in us.
2. We explore the full circle of masculinity and femininity allowing ourselves to experience our full range of potential sensations and feelings.
3. We seek sexual partners and life partners with whom we can experience the gifts of the mind, where we can share our life path and expand in knowledge and wisdom.
4. We seek soul mates where we can share the gifts of the heart including love and compassion. We strive to continuously expand and grow our relationships.
5. We seek kindred spirits where we can sense their love vibrations and life vibrations and the joy of combining their vibrations with ours to experience, expand, grow, and vibrate with pure joy.

[1] ― Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life