As has happened often before, bliss arose a little after noon today.
At first it was just a vague stirring, but now, two hours later, I’m again “steeped” in it.
One can only use metaphors to discuss something like bliss.
It’s so far beyond our ordinary experience that no one has invented words, that are universally accepted, to describe it. Bliss precedes and transcends language and does not depend on it for anything. So one cannot ask it to cooperate in the matter of our description of it.
What it’s known most for is how it lifts us up, elevates us, causes our hearts to soar to a level of enjoyment of life with which nothing we’ve experienced to that point compares.
It’s that feeling of pure enjoyment, a peak experience, a magic moment – however you wish to see it – that one revels in. It has one want to stick out one’s chest and say “Yes!” to life.
But it isn’t vanilla or chocolate. It isn’t hot or cold. It isn’t lavender or rose, green ray or blue ray. It’s one of a kind and seems to have no qualities explicit or implicit in it.
Here I am again at Starbucks, outrageously blissful, feeling as exposed as I could possibly be, and bliss sweeps away the cares I’d ordinarily have about the situation.
In bliss, I softly sway to the music and am carried away from anxiety and confusion. Everything becomes simple. It’s all about the Now and the Now is all about love. The Now is love’s address. And the chief reward in staying in the Now is the love that’s to be found there. The Now and love cannot be separated.
I’m practicing remaining consciously blissful and looking at one person at a time. I feel so shy feeling this much bliss.
Now the bliss turns to love and the shyness goes away. Love is very social. My love takes in everyone around me and presents no problem to me.
How odd that I’d be shown this fact now because it ties right into a thought process I had the other night.
It’d take too long to say how I arrived at this insight but I saw that all of us have two sides to ourselves: the observer and the participant. The two are just as much ego states as are our parent, adult, and child.
I was either in my observer mode or my participant mode, but, when I was in one, I was not in the other. They were exclusive and didn’t necessarily work towards the same purposes.
When I was in observer mode, I was not experiencing and so there was no enjoyment in it.
When I was in participant mode, I was in the Now and so didn’t remember much of what I did, much to the frustration of the observer who wanted me to make a record of the process I was in.
That’s as far as I got with it but I now see a connection between love and bliss and the participant and observer. Love would benefit the active participant in me and bliss would benefit the passive observer.
Now that strikes me as a useful distinction. And, look, the bliss increases. It agrees with me!
But the love does not leave me this time. I have both going on simultaneously. This is new.
I see that love grounds me while bliss unfolds my capabilities, at whatever vibratory level I happen to be at.
Now I no longer feel shy about feeling bliss because I feel love as well and can switch to love if I engage with anyone. This feels … amazing. Unbelievable.
Add love to bliss and you don’t get a sum. You get a product because they multiply each other.
It isn’t love plus bliss. It’s love times bliss.
Love, bliss, ecstacy – these have no downside that I can see.