Heartland: Getting the Joke - Humour and the Heartland

These are a collection of reflections, noted at different times, and so there will be repetitions.

Getting the joke, when the joke is on me, is a surprisingly liberating experience. To be able to contemplate an instance of my own fallible humanity with equanimity, and some amusement, feels like a relief.

Having a smile, or even a laugh, at my own expense means I have found a place to stand where I can both feel and acknowledge my vulnerability (my feelings of insecurity, jealousy, indignation etc) and sense what lies beyond these feelings - i.e. the rest of the situation.  It means I am free, or detached from these feelings, at least for the moment I get the joke.

Fear makes us reactive, and my fear-tinged feelings have tended, in the past, to crowd out my sense of reality and proportion.  So becoming more able to laugh at myself feels like being set free from the ego-hell these tainted feelings used to bounce me into, before I learned to spot and stop ego’s shenanigans in my psyche. 

In place of narrowing, harrowing self-criticism and accusation, I find myself in moments of delicious, forgiving self-understanding. This feels like a steady, spacious and realistic way to be.

Humour, I think, must be intrinsic to a detached view of things.

When I ‘get it’ – when, in an uncomfortable, untenable or painful situation, I come to see the humour in my predicament - then I am inwardly released from it. 

release - real ease

Usually, by the time I can smile about something which has scared or upset me, I will have been clear of it for a while.

Song:  Letting go of the illusions

The funniest situations in my life, when I can see them in this light, are the tricks life plays on me.  I sense affection in these 'set-ups', as well as acute perception into my particular blind spots. The one setting me up is probably my own unconscious, working to help me notice things I have been ignoring, that I need to see, by making me trip over them - stopping me in my oblivious tracks.

'Halt!' cried the angel.  'Where do you

think you're going?'

So it seems that one of the best things I can do in life is let my sense of humour develop and broaden out. Doing this helps me develop detachment – from my ego-tainted feelings, from any self-images I may be harbouring, and from thinking I have to attain ‘results’.

The Big Overarching Joke, or Set-Up, of my life is made up of elements well known to writers of comedy.

A: my starting point – my ‘position’, persona, who I think I am;

B: my 'plan' in life, or my proposed solution to any problem I identify - including any gung-ho ‘Here We Go!’ idealism;

and C: the guaranteed fates that await any such grand plans – the boomerang effect of ‘saviour behaviour’, the law of unintended consequences, the humbling that follows hybris.

When I hit the brick wall that meets my hybris, and slide down it, head ringing, to sit in a daze at the bottom – I need time to come round, time for my senses to revive.  This may take years.

But eventually, when I ‘get it’ – when I can see events in a new light, with an ‘Aaaah’ of recognition, and ‘No wonder that happened!’ –  when I see how A plus B had to lead to C - then, the smile is born.  

It's born of the love-match between ouch and acceptance.

Then, I sense the twinkle of freedom and enjoyment. It feels like a ‘Welcome home’ gift.

Seeing the funny side of my ‘failures’ frees me from rage and frustration, from the sense of being got at, and from the trap of victimhood.

It transforms my dealings with others (and with myself) from survivalist struggle to something more enjoyable, more like puppies play-fighting.

Life’s refusal to go along with my self-deceptions is not harsh or mean-spirited, but affectionate teasing – a form of loving attention and interaction.

Life’s rebuffs, when they occur, are the opposite of humiliating - they are helpful, necessary reminders of where my true dignity lies.

Often, when I get a glimpse of the sense of humour behind things, there is a burst of energy - a big laugh, quite unexpectedly.  And it is heartening to realise that, whether or not I can see it, there's always something else going on within any situation, beyond what's preoccupying me about it, behind what appears to me obstinate and frustrating in it.  There is always something we're not seeing, always more than we can see.

Quote from Carol Anthony:  Guide to the I-Ching

Ego, of course, can't enjoy getting the joke, for ego needs to feel in control of EVERYTHING.  Gaps in its understanding are no joke to ego, but rather, threats.

Ego can never relax - it is forever trying to cover all the bases, and it never can. 

This humourlessness is one of the ways in which Egoland, for all its claims to vivacity, confidence and charm, shows itself to be a miserable place to live.

Often, instead of siding with me against those I perceive as opponents, life seems to beckon me inwards – away from the current conflict, into my own inner space, where there are no opponents (except my own resistance to ‘getting' whatever the joke behind this apparent clash is) and no threats (except from the bullying voices I carry within me).

Once I get the hang of this, in any fresh predicament, and begin to trust life’s guidance, I have access to an infinite source of precise help, which may come as insight, or as an unexpected event – tiny, or major.

There is often humour in these events, or sequences of events: several twists and turns may lead to a favourable outcome which needed all these near-misses to bring it about. I call this suprisingly common phenomenon ‘Cosmic tweaking’.

The great thing to get the hang of in life, it seems, is to stop getting in my own way, stop tripping myself up. Learning to get out of my own way got easier when I started to notice that I was the one getting in the way!

By and large (with a few unfortunate exceptions) it would be true to say that no-one else has enough reason to take the trouble to get in my way!   It’s a great relief - and possibly the best antidote for paranoia - to realise this.

Perhaps everything, seen correctly, is funny – every bit of human folly and nonsense – even if the humour is sometimes ouchy and dark, and takes a good deal of detachment to ‘get’.

Humour, laughter, the sense of something being ‘funny’, is our physiological response to being released from a constricting falsehood – let loose, freed from a burden we suddenly see as unnecessary and so no longer have to shoulder.

Getting the joke often feels like letting go of an elastic band I've been stretching between my hands - a twangy 'ouch' of 'I'm alive!'  AHA! (HA-HA)

Ironically, it was not until I took myself seriously, until I attended to my own heart as if it were a child requiring attention, that I felt myself being released from the grip of my fears and began to taste the detachment and freedom that have brought the humour of things home to me.