Melissay Joy

Deep Dive into Joy Using These 6 Scuba Principles

Melissa diving in Raja Ampat. Photo: SiK

One of my greatest passions in life (besides helping people find their joy and authentic power) is scuba diving. I scuba dive as much as I can whenever possible. If you are fortunate enough to discover what brings you genuine joy, include that experience in your life…no matter what it takes.

Scuba diving is like an active form of meditation, becoming more aware of stillness within our bodies as we connect breathing with movement. And like meditative experiences, diving is mostly silent, almost weightless, and virtually timeless.

I love the fact that scuba diving is mostly silent. There is no sound other than the sound of your breath and bubbles. The sensations of diving can create a deep sense of calmness that is much more difficult to achieve on land due to sound distractions. It’s easy to be present in the silence while scuba diving as the usual noises of life like traffic, cell phones, and people talking remains at the surface.

Even more than the silence, I love that the ocean does not care who you are or what you do for a living. Ego is checked at the surface as divers become one with a sea of potential.

Read the rest of the article at Thrive Global.

Unknown Coordinates

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

These words, written by Charles Dickens in 1859, could easily apply to many aspects of modern-day life. It is both the best of times and worst of times, depending on our perspective, depending on our resonance, and depending on how we choose to relate to what appears to be happening.

How we choose to relate to what is happening in all facets of our lives influences our ability to integrate, transform, and transcend all perceived conditions and circumstances.

Consider that humanity is in a position that we have never been previously. We are in new and entirely unfamiliar terrain. As Dickens wrote, “We [have] everything before us, we [have] nothing before us.”

From a strictly horizontal perspective, if we look at what seems to be occurring, we might conclude that the world is falling apart. It is the worst of times. Our environments seem toxic, our governments are in flux, our economies are threatened, and traditional prevailing paradigms are under scrutiny, revealing deception and breeding distrust. Fear is rampant.

Wherever we turn, there seems to be a breaking down of the structures and systems that have largely driven our experience of order in everyday reality. There is chaos. Collective reality is in flux.

However, when we look at what “appears” to be happening from an expanded frame of reference, through heart-centered awareness, we also gain a vertical perspective that essentially gives us an eternal, albeit synchronized, view. We can see that things are not necessarily falling apart. Rather, they are coming together in an entirely new way.

A vertical perspective enables us to see that the horizontal paths we have been traveling are limiting and may not be sustainable; rather, they may serve only to perpetuate destruction, distraction, and disconnection for the individual and collective WE experience.

Old paradigms based on fear, division, and control are reconfiguring. These old structures are dissolving so we may evolve into new realities based on unity, love, connection, integration, and individual command as an extension of community.

We are indeed at a crossroads where following old maps and old ways of doing things will not lead us to sustainability.

As long as we follow old maps, we will continually re-encode for more of the same. Our past will always catch up to us because we are perpetually re-creating old programs based on outmoded imprints we continue to follow. Old maps will not navigate us through the morphing terrain.

This crossroads is where the heart of it all intersects with the power of choice.

What new maps will we create? How will we choose to PLAY?

Excerpted from The Art of Limitless Living – A Guidebook for Navigating with Integrity through Unprecedented Times by Melissa Joy Jonsson

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Embodying Your True Authentic Self

What if you were able to consistently access and embody limitless potential, unconditional love, and Joy no matter what may have happened, or what seems to be happening now? What if it is entirely possible, and practical, to embrace and integrate your true essence (as unconditional love and limitless potential) with your self-contained perceived limitations—all your placeholders?

Consider what it would be like to live peacefully and harmoniously in an undivided house of consciousness, filled with many rooms of self- love and self-appreciation? What if your placeholders could evolve into graceholders? What if you could live, relate, and elate through the heart of integrity to access limitless living?

The embodiment of True Authentic Self (TAS), a being of unconditional love and limitless potential, having experiences that feel and seem like limitations, is a gateway to extraordinary, empowered, Joy-filled lives.

Living as True Authentic Self is not about being perfect; it is about being perfectly imperfect, including all the aspects of ourselves that we may want to change. As TAS, our perfect limitless nature eternally dances alongside our finite limitations or deemed imperfections.

Limitless potential as unconditional love is who we are in our core essence. Our core essence, our True Self, is always available through the field of the heart.

Conversely, our Authentic Self is the experience of limitation and confusion as well as all the notions and emotions that may accompany this confusion. These mapped patterns are simply placeholders for how we may perceive ourselves. They are our perceptual filters. Perceptual filters are the lenses we look through to make sense of our reality.
Our Authentic Self is essentially who we think we are, based on how we have defined ourselves from our limited experiences. Although the limitations may not necessarily be true, when we resonate with them as if they are true, then our reality will conform accordingly.

The perceptions we hold, whether they are beliefs, thoughts, or feelings, serve as the filters through which we experience reality. Everything is experienced through our filters. This is our reality bubble, which is often clouded with confusion. Clear the filters and reality will take on a whole new brilliance. We embrace our whole brilliance.

The synthesis of True Self as abundant love–limitless potential, combined with our Authentic Self, that which experiences limitation, is the liberating experience of living and loving our True Authentic Self. As TAS, we are both limitless potential and limitation united peacefully together as one, in the same way we create our reality and reality happens to us.

The True Self component of TAS is the All that is creating our reality from unlimited potential and infinite creative intelligence. True Self is the self of miracles, magic, and synchronistic puppy dog manifestations. The True Self is essentially impersonal consciousness potential or perfect and complete unconditional love. Our True Self is connected to All as One, divine and sustainable, without personal qualifiers or identifiers.

The Authentic Self component of TAS is the part of the self that responds to reality with its plethora of placeholders. Authentic Self includes our self-contained perceived limitations, including the habitual programs we may run that tell us we are anything other than . . . bound- less love. The Authentic Self is the finite part of our being possibly perceived as being fundamentally flawed, inherently lacking, and imperfect. The Authentic Self is the self as individual, separate, and differentiated.
Authentic Self is “only human.”

Unity of Limitlessness With Limitation

Integration of the True Self (limitless potential and unconditional love) with the Authentic Self (limitations and conditions) allows for an acceptance of all parts of our being to cohesively exist together as one. Acceptance. Authenticity. Integrity.

As a result, we are able to serve up our own reality and respond to what reality may be returning to us in the most empowering of manners. Reality is a little bit like playing tennis. Our True Self serves up the ball to the universe to instigate the game. The universe may return the ball, often with unexpected speed, curve, and force. Sometimes the ball will come out of nowhere in a way that seems completely unrelated to our serve, both in time and space. Sometimes multiple balls are returned simultaneously. However, all is connected. How we respond to those balls varies to the degree we may have integrated and embodied True Authentic Self (TAS).

In truth, limitations are not really limitations at all; rather, they are expressions of limitless potential in a finite parameter, a boundary of which is still inherently connected to limitless potential. Limitations are placeholders still connected to our core essence as unconditional love and unbounded potential.

Limitations are not necessarily hindrances. When integrated, limitations can serve as springboards to magnificence in the interactive reality creation process.

Rather than limitations being something we need to release, trans-form, or transcend, limitations can serve as powerful placeholders in our awareness, effectively changing the way we relate to . . . everything.

Reality is up for grabs, and sometimes our hands are fully occupied with responding to the balls that are being served in our direction. When we live from the field of the heart as our TAS, we will be empowered to create and relate to anything. When we change the way we relate to ourselves, we change the way everything relates to us.

Whole Peace Of You

Remember, you don’t need to be fearless in order to move forward. You simply need to be willing to allow for the resonance of love (and your desire to move forward) to be greater than the fear. It’s okay to have fear. It’s okay to have confusion. This is a very fearful, confusing time. This is also a transient time… and we are bigger than that which is presenting itself as the ‘boogeyman’ seemingly outside of us.

There is no outside of us.

Consider that we all have some form of the virus, whether we test positive for it or not. No one is immune from this virus, even if we’ve already developed auto-immune antibodies to it. In other words, we may be immune to the physical virus, but none of us are immune from what is happening to our collective humanity. No one is immune from the effects of the virus.The most powerful defense for anything seemingly outside of self is a powerful offense, and a powerful immune system. The stronger you can be, not just your physical immune system, but all of the systems (mental, emotional, relational, spiritual, etheric, causal) that are influencing your experience of reality as you, the more empowered you will be to support yourself. This overall strength enables you to better support others in the WE experience moving forward.

Every time you shift up your consciousness to a state of love, every time you shift into a state of empowerment, that vibrational resonance becomes available for others to resonate with too. By compassionately loving self, you are in equal service-to-self and equal service-to-others.

Loving self is not selfish. This dynamic with self is the single most important committed relationship that you can be in, at any moment in your life. Self-loving actions create a map for others to follow, as coherency, congruency, and integrity in action. So, while you are staying home, in the interest of humanity, remember to be self-loving.

Remember to be kind to yourself. Remember that you are made of love, and you are made of light (biophoton light), an expression of love in linear form. Right now, in this moment…know you are okay. Everything is going to be okay. Remember…everything is okay.

Where Am I and Why Am I Not Coming Home?

Why embracing both sides of polarity is the key to opening portals of unity.

In May 2019, I left the USA. My time away was supposed to have been only a six month work-play tour; three months teaching seminars in Europe (including the United Kingdom), followed by three months scuba diving (and working remotely) in Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Even as I packed my bags last year, something told me this trip away from “home” would be much much longer. I needed to leave the USA and be somewhere outside my safety net for reasons I myself did not yet understand.

Since that time, through a series of extenuating circumstances, opportunities and synchronicities, I have never made it back home to America.

My house rented for most of 2019, and in early February 2020 I signed a one-year lease with a tenant who would care for my beautiful home in San Diego, California as much as I do.

For the time being, I traded my ocean view sanctuary for a comfy villa in Bali, returned my convertible BMW and rented a cheap zippy motorbike. (Yes, I drive a scooter in Bali). I swapped out my Italian boots and silk blouses for flip-flops, bikinis, and scuba diving gear. Who knew the mask would be so handy?

To be honest, I have spent more time underwater this past year than on land. Scuba diving is like meditation for me. Breathe In. Breathe Out. No thoughts. Simply observe and appreciate the 70% of the planet that is… One great ocean.

And while I work really weird hours now due to various time zones in America and Europe, working at a distance from Bali has suited my soul well.

Apart from teaching seminars in Europe and the United Kingdom, Bali has been my home base for most of this past year. And it seemed Bali would also be my home base in the year to come. I would still travel overseas to teach every few months, but departure and return would be Bali until further notice.

In the past several weeks, as the Coronavirus pandemic and Infodemic has taken over life as we know it, many people have asked me, “When are you coming home?”

This last weekend my government (US State Department) urged all Americans overseas to travel home immediately, while simultaneously telling all Americans overseas that traveling was unsafe.

I was asked by those close to me to consider that I am technically in a third-world country where health care is considered sub-par at best. This fact, coupled with the rapid decline in tourism (due to recent travel bans) makes the future of Bali a little “uncertain” to say the least.

Would I choose to leave Bali based on what IS actually happening or what MAY happen? As I looked at the chaos and uncertainty begetting the EU, U.K. and USA at this time, including my home state of California being under lockdown in a state of emergency, going home wasn’t very appealing.

If I could even get a flight back to America at this point, I faced the risk of catching “the” virus (a virus I am 99.99% sure I already had last month). I also faced risk of quarantine on transit, and risk of quarantine on arrival. The risk of risk was really risky.

If I stayed out of America, right where I was, I could socially isolate without much adieu. I could ride out the bell curve of contagion that seemed inevitable, but is still just a probability state.

I made the decision to stay put in Bali and stay strong. I am at peace with my choice. I don’t think my immune system can take much more of the 24 hours news cycle, but at least from Bali it’s easier to breathe in peace and exhale fact from hype.

It’s true that Bali currently has very low virus numbers, and it’s also true that Bali has very little testing at all. But what Bali does not have is the fear and panic factor.

Ex-pats and locals alike are calm. There is no panic buying, and the toilet paper is plentifully stacked on the shelves as most Indonesians have a bidet system in their bathrooms. While we are all on requested social isolation, most people are complying.

Following the ban on Chinese tourists in Bali in early February, several countries have been banned from allowing travelers to enter Indonesia. As Chinese and Australians comprise the largest sector of tourism in Bali, without them Bali is mostly empty.

On March 20th the Indonesian government stopped all visas-on-arrival and free visas for tourists for 30 days. This effectively is a ban on tourism in an area where 80% of the GDP is dependent upon tourists. I am concerned it is not just the Coronavirus that will hurt the people in Bali, but the lack of economic sustenance.

So for now I will stay in Bali and watch in shock as the world I used to know is in total panic. The home I left in America will never be the same…for anyone. This is true almost everywhere in the world.

I am not in fear, yet I am proceeding very cautiously. Right where I am. In this moment. I am fine. You are fine. In this moment there is no fear of what may come, unless we allow it into our consciousness.

Comforted by A Dream

I am comforted by a dream I had a few nights ago. Every few years I have airplane dreams. (For as much as I fly, you would think I would dream of planes more often). In these dreams, sometimes the plane can’t take off the ground, sometimes the plane can’t land, sometimes the plane has no pilot, and on occasion, the plane totally crashes.

To me, these dreams are always metaphors for personal and collective consciousness; what we individually and universally may be encountering as one humanity.

In my dream the other night the plane was flying at 10,000 feet. Suddenly the pilot determined the plane needed to make an abrupt emergency landing over the ocean.

All members of the plane, including myself, were calm. The plane descended smoothly and made its landing in the middle of a vast sea. The waves braced our landing. We floated in silence over the surface of the water for quite some time. All was ok.

As I looked around the plane, there appeared to be no one else on the plane. I was alone. I looked up at my seat number and noted I was seated…in 3D.

The pilot then spoke over the intercom. She now had my voice. She said I had to isolate, as the plane needed to land on new waves of potential. She said I had to isolate in order to remember true connection.

She went on to say we were all already in social isolation before this whole emergency landing started; that we were more interested in our phones, our devices, our distractions, our things….than we were in being present to one another and flying together.

As a collective, we are in an emergency landing. Where we land will not feel like solid ground. We must settle into ourselves now more than ever, control our fear-based emotions, and our parade of the imagined terribles.

We must be present. It is not the end of the world. It is simply the end of the world as we knew it.

We can focus on what dread may come, or we can focus on what can change for the better. As we find ourselves in the waves of fear, we can remember there are also waves of possibilities; that we don’t need solid ground to be ok. We simply need to be solid within ourselves.

We can focus on what dread may come, or we can focus on what can change for the better. As we find ourselves in the waves of fear, we can remember there are also waves of possibilities. Click To Tweet

If we look out to what appears to be happening, we will see virus everywhere. If we turn within, during this time of social isolation, we have an opportunity to reconnect to ourselves (and others) in an entirely new way.

I am not denying this virus is real. It is real. But so too is the grand opportunity we all have to reevaluate, well…everything. We can eradicate the mini-viruses we run as habit in our every day lives.

Take this time not to be addicted to distractions but to get really clear on how you want to fly once this is over. Because it will be over. It will pass. And what happens after this time passes is up to all of us.

No matter where we are. Because borders can’t keep us apart. For we are not separate. And fear is not our natural state. Love is. So find the love inside you and pass it on. Love can go viral too. Stay connected. And stay afloat.