While I can’t say there is standard evolution in how we experience bliss, I can suggest some of the broad points. This is because the world is expressed in layers, each a reflection of the prior that contains it. As we experience and then integrate each layer, that value of bliss becomes established. Even if we don’t experience it yet.
There are also gradations in how open we are to the experience. Even though we are integrating a given level, it may take several stages of surrender for the fullness of that bliss to be allowed. I touched on this in The Raptures.
For most of us, our first experiences of bliss are fleeting. An experience opens us up and we feel a wave of happiness washing over us. We may even surrender enough to touch pure love. This may happen listening to live music, creating art, watching a sunset, making love, or falling in love.
For those practicing an effortless meditation, they have a little more systematic way of experiencing bliss. Perhaps not frequent, but more often. This also brings us the reminder of how important it is to be rested for clarity. Fatigue tends to bring a fog to even the deepest experiences.
As I touched on in The Colour of the Dream, bliss is experienced when we return into mind from silent transcendence, when we cross the threshold with our attention. If we’re really clear, we may even notice the bliss going into silence.
Another lesson the transitory experience teaches us is not to hold on. While the high may lead to a big let down when it leaves, we slowly discover that the way to more is in release, not in trying to hold the experience.
We can for a time be swayed by the memory of an experience. This is fine as long as it doesn’t become an obsession. A memory is just a memory, a shadow of the experience.
All of these point to how it can be a trap. Unless we learn to let go, we will never keep it. The trick is not in establishing the bliss, but in establishing the silence. When we become that, the bliss comes with it. As always, the silent being is the key.
When we make the shift into awakening or Self Realization, there is the discovery “I am That”. We shift from being a person experiencing Self to Self experiencing a person. At first, the experience is often one of freedom and peace. Liberation! Then in time, as the physiology settles into the experience, the bliss begins to show through the clouds. Only now, not as a fleeting glimpse but as a backdrop to all experience. What the ancients call Sat Chit Ananda – absolute bliss consciousness dawns. But most remarkably, this is just the beginning.
As the perception further refines, we gradually begin to find that life itself is literally bliss. The life force driving us and all life into being and action is happiness itself.
During this phase, there can be deeply profound periods of almost overwhelming, rapturous happiness. Soon enough, we adapt and what was intense becomes normal. While events may still visit things on us that cause reactions like pain or anger, all of it takes place on a background of never-overshadowed, deepening happiness.
All of this greatly enhances our own healing and evolution. Far fewer boundaries exist to be surmounted. Far easier to release what remains.
On this platform, the divine begins to descend into our experience. The crust on the heart falls away, revealing the divine source within. Divine Love, the driver of bliss, begins to unfold in our experience. We begin to see (literally) life itself in all things. The lively bliss of life and the flow of love are visible all around us. We find ourselves in an ocean of love, together with all others.
Of course, you can see why a step by step process and integration is usually warranted. The idea is to make it real, not fall into ninny illusion.
In many ways, Divine Love and bliss are not really separate things but rather just interrelated expression. If we were to take a stream of life an an analogy, the flow of the stream is love, the ripples bliss. As usual, some experiences will be fleeting, then gradually integrated until they are always available to us with a simple shift of attention.
As unity begins to dawn and the core identity ends, the boundary between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ ends. There is just one continuum contained ‘within’. The world is all here. The inner bliss of life is now felt everywhere. The skin is no longer a boundary for feeling.
As the experience deepens further and we step into the depths of silence, we find the pure lively alertness, tickling our being. More deeply still, we find alertness and liveliness as separate qualities of Brahman. In that silence, the liveliness alone has a solidity to it. Bliss like concrete, unending and eternal…
Bliss is a very personal thing, an effect of our progress during times of clarity. Some are bliss cowboys/girls throughout the journey. Some find bliss fleeting yet progress step by step anyway. But at some point, for all of us, the clouds clear. The life of our being throbs in our veins and tickles our fancy. Where is suffering, whatever the pain, when we live in permanent happiness?
This is not a fairy story from a space cadet, although I have gotten that label before. (laughs) It is the direct experience of our essential nature. Life is bliss. It is our legacy and our birthright. And now we’re living in a time when we’ll come to know this for ourselves. A fine thing indeed.
Davidya
Another fantastic read, Davidya!
Thanks, Albert!
Ground control to Major Tom, haha…
I can somewhat remember when that feeling first appeared. Maybe not ‘appeared’…uncovered? But it is hard to remember, really.
I could not attach to it. When it came up, wafted up, sifted through, or whatever, it was wonderful for probably a second. Beyond that, I could not separate that ‘state’ from what came before. There was no longer the separative perspective holding out various states at arms length saying this one is bad, this one is good, and so on.
I suppose it is just life.
It is true that all of this living is bliss. It is really just life, and bliss is the nature of life. Problems arise for those thinking their current state is somehow inferior to the other state of bliss. “I am pitiful now, but someday I’ll have what I need.”
It is all in relation to the person hoping for more of this bliss, or more experiences of the eternal, or whatever we might call it. It seems to be a great block for the seekers.
Hi Takuin!
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, it just gets noticed one day and then over time we notice it continues. I recall getting sick and I didn’t notice at first because I felt just fine. (laughs)
And yes, talking about it like this will cause some to think ‘not enough’ or ‘not good enough’ or ‘never good enough’. Expectations, ideas of requirements and perfection, and on and on. Even ‘sheesh what a space cadet’. (laughs)
This is always the challenge. Ideas create concepts and expectations and can thus lead to more suffering. But they can also bring clarity and a sense of value to the journey. The hope is that what is said will be on balance to progress rather than suffering.
It is a curious part of the process. The wanting can help to bring the attention within and open to source. But it can also create a barrier to that which is wanted. This is why so many paths are full of zigzags.
If we speed time up enough, the zigzagging is like shaking. It’s kind of like Self is giving us a really good shake to let go the grip of the ego. (laughs)
hi davidya
i really enjoy reading your posts where do you get all this knowledge from it is truly amazing which part of the world do you belong, are you a person who write books on all this stuff are are you a professional in some other field . keen to know yoyr eucational background and keen to know how you
write so well i am into it deep ennough.do let me know
cheryl
The discovery Tat tsvam asi goes in and out. In that somewhere reality (vision) takes on a cartoonish quality. Reminds me of the days of weed smoking.
Hi Kaushik
(laughs) Yes, the experience comes and goes. There is kind of a center point where it is clear, then we are drawn back a little into the world. Then forward more deeply into it, where it also is not as clear.
Back and forth and it clears the way. The internal unity becomes greater. The perception of an external unity increases. And then the 2 fall together. And that too gets deeper and clearer until there is another value, a place of wholeness where they are more thoroughly, solidly one.
Then it’s not like weed at all. (laughs)
Hi Cheryl
Thanks for the feedback. I’m on the west coast of Canada. My pro background is in technology. My education is diverse in several fields.
I flunked English in school. (laughs) Learned to write later by doing and listening. Still working on it. Wrote a book on the subjects of this blog a couple of years ago but it was too much and too dense. Am now planning a series, opening up the discourse a bit. A blog doesn’t allow the bigger picture, a sequential flow.
Where do I get it? It’s founded on some learning I did many years ago, compared to several teachers I mention her periodically, and filled out with my own explorations and those of friends. But in some ways, these are more the filters. The overview and flow more come through me, hence learning to listen. When the muse calls, take notes. Today, it happened on a crowded bus. Me scribbling away, trying not to fall down. (laughs)
I just step through it that way and it grows organically on itself. Some describe this as remembering who you are.
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