It really is fascinating how spiritually primitive we are as humans. Somewhere inside of you is a calm and unwavering infinite soul that knows the meaning of life and how to live. But, our cluttered minds get in the way of noticing this part of ourselves.

As an experiment, place your focus on your consciousness / internal peace and away from the endless mind chatter and you can see how quiet things are. And, if you can practice reducing that background noise, more regularly, through meditation or mindfulness, you can quiet that noise down habitually instead of having to focus on it. Since you have the ability to come in contact with that internal peace for a few moments, then you could safely say that you could feel peace for the majority of your day if you practiced.

That was a very long-winded way to say that you have a choice about how we want to feel. You can choose to let your mind chatter run your day OR you can choose to live consciously. If you choose the chatter, you will spend lots of your day in lack, discouragement, blame, etc. If you choose consciousness, you have more of a chance to feel joy naturally.

Here is what the Chopra Foundation says about this choice:

Because joy is already within us, we do not need to seek it or acquire it – but we do need to choose it! Only our thoughts and beliefs are blocking joy from our awareness, and we are free at any time to change this. But to do so requires choice. As we choose to accept the truth of who we really are, the awareness of our inherent joy will grow.

Taken from this awesome blog post at Chopra.com

I first read this philosophy in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and it really resonated with me. It used to sound odd that we have a choice of how we want to feel, but after a year of regular spiritual practice, I can see that it is definitely possible.

The joy within is there for you at all times. It is your job to do the work to quiet your mind chatter in order to recognize it in your day.