<commit_before>---
title: foreword
permalink: "/foreword/"
layout: page
navprev: notes
navnext: preface
---

This book comes out of an investigation into the cause of joy. 

At 15, great joy spontaneously overcame me. It felt _normal_. But after three heavenly months, it disappeared. My other concerns seemed empty. The need to solve this mystery gripped me.

After 21 years of investigation, I did. Others had discovered the destroyer of joy: cataclysmic trauma. I discovered the self-healing power of the psyche and the essential condition nature provides us to heal: darkness. More than a decade of testing, refinement, and documentation followed.

Briefly, joy is a function of being alive, not effort. Lack of joy indicates a damaged system, not moral failure. Given conditions of profound rest, this damage heals by itself, and joy returns. 

It's that simple. We are all months away from happiness, health, harmony. My condolences to the founders of world religions for either getting it wrong or explaining it so badly.

Effort, our lifeway's smug panacea, gives false and fleeting results. With the will, one can do nothing directly to restore joy. One can only provide proper conditions. The organism does it autonomically

For 10,000 years, we civilized people have correctly ascertained that something is terribly wrong with ourselves and that we must do something about it. But we have mistaken which part of ourselves must do it At long last, this book puts the issue _to rest_.


 <commit_msg>foreword<commit_after>---
title: foreword
permalink: "/foreword/"
layout: page
navprev: notes
navnext: preface
---

This book comes out of an investigation into the cause of joy. 

At 15, great joy spontaneously overcame me. It felt _normal_. But after three heavenly months, it disappeared. My other concerns seemed empty. The need to solve this mystery gripped me.

After 21 years of investigation, I did. Others had discovered the destroyer of joy: cataclysmic trauma. I discovered the self-healing power of the psyche and the essential condition nature provides us to heal: darkness. More than a decade of testing, refinement, and documentation followed.

Briefly, joy is a function of being alive, not effort. Lack of joy indicates a damaged system, not moral failure. Given conditions of profound rest, this damage heals by itself, and joy returns. 

It's that simple. We are all months away from happiness, health, harmony. My condolences to the founders of world religions for either getting it wrong or explaining it so badly.

Effort, our lifeway's smug panacea, gives false and fleeting results. With the will, one can do nothing directly to restore joy. One can only provide proper conditions. The organism does the rest _autonomically_.

For 10,000 years, we civilized people have correctly ascertained that something is terribly wrong with ourselves and that we must do something about it. But we have mistaken which part of ourselves must do it At long last, this book puts the issue _to rest_.


 
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