It took me a long time to hear what Abraham was saying concerning the nature of Joy.  Joy isn't really one of the emotions ON the emotional scale that Abraham describes.  Joy is the relief one feels when moving from a worse feeling emotion to a slightly higher feeling emotion.  When I was setting Joy as the highest attainable emotion ON the scale I was distorting the analogy. 

Each of the emotions on the scale is an improvement over the one below it (except for shame - I don't know what falls below that).   Joy can be found in the moving from Fear to Anger.  Joy can be found in the moving from Love to Unconditional Love.  Joy is the "junkies rush" that is felt when you choose a thought that moves you to the next higher feeling.

The emotion itself is just an indicator of the relative nature of the thought you are thinking.  If you are thinking and (this is key) BELIEVING a thought such as: "I am hopelessly worthless and deserve to have bad things happen to me."  That thought is so staggeringly different from how your inner being/soul/source/god feels about you that you feel the massive disconnection/differentiation/separation in the form of what we call shame.  It isn't because the thought you are thinking is true.  More accurately, it is because the thought is patently false.  But, because we have free will to contemplate any thought we want to here in space-time, you are free to think/believe/feel this thought and how awful it feels.

Now to find Joy in this situation, all you need to do is reach for relief by choosing thoughts that make you very angry.  The joy is in the movement from one emotion to a higher one.  It is not, necessarily, the emotional state at the top of all other emotions.

Abraham has been very clear on this topic but, again, it took me a long time to pound it through my existing belief system.  When you are in complete alignment with your Source, there is no emotional indicator like the ones we commonly experience.  That is because the emotional indicator is an indicator of separation and with no separation there can be no emotion.  Abraham has described the state of alignment as one of confident knowing and although that "knowing" state is pleasant to some degree, it is not the same as the rush of moving through the emotions.  They have also described being at one with source as a state of infinite love and appreciation.  I am not qualified to expound on those topics as I have not allowed myself much experience with either.