I read today a view that the ego will always attempt to suck us back into a state of suffering. Without resistance, we begin to blur our sense of separateness and the ego needs us to see ourselves in terms of separation and difference.
From the egoic point of view, it’s vital that we remain in conflict to some extent, and that’s why, when we look at the world around us, we see so much conflict among human beings. (Adyashanti: Falling into Grace)
This prompted for me that the realization that joy, at least as I perceive it, is rarely if ever ego driven, existing most profoundly in the moments when the barrier of ego-separation is breached by a sense of connectedness, of grace.
So for me, part of the purpose in consciously working to develop the capacity to access joy is to provide myself with one of the tools with which to combat the pull of the ego and the resultant ‘suffering’, the fall from grace into being a part of conflict.