Continuing with this ethnographic account of ascension, I filled out two years of income-tax forms today, all the time in bliss.
After weeks of bickering with myself, getting up to putting the necessary forms in my shoulder pack, actually looking inside the file folders but going no further, etc., I finally took up the challenge.
This is the first time I’ve done such a complicated task in bliss. I’d been in bliss since 9:00 a.m. (10 a.m. now). I expected it to be totally dissolved by such a materialistic undertaking.
But, no. Everything worked out wonderfully. I felt calm, neutral, happy throughout.
I saw things differently from inside bliss. Instead of grumbling about this normally-unpleasant task, I saw early on that it was like doing push-ups in the area of mathematics and accounting and wasn’t that handy round about now?
I began to work my calculator like a professional – Paul Newman in The Sting – and totally loved the experience. I enjoyed each separate calculation. I saw that all my grumbles were state-specific. If I were in 3D, they’d all seem totally justified and I’d feel totally awful.
But seen from bliss, they’re revealed as inconsequential – and made-up anyways. We really seem to have an ulterior motive that being dramatic satisfies. Drama and trauma seem to tell us we’re alive.
But there’s no interest in that ulterior motive when one is in bliss. In that state, there’s only freedom from grumbles and, in their place, happiness. Where’s the downside?
The mind intervened at points, automatically responding with hair-trigger reactions to things we hate to do (taxes, in this case). But it could find no foothold and skidded off the mountainside, so to speak. This too will pass – very quickly in bliss.
Now I’ve finished two years’ return and am sitting here unperturbed, blissful. Imagine emerging from filling out your income-tax return and feeling this way. Relieved perhaps. Sick of it. Worn out. But not blissful.
And here my Teflon memory comes to my rescue. Five minutes after finishing, all is forgotten.
Based on my own experiences, I agree with Sri Ramakrishna, who said: Jump in the lake. Dive in the lake. Get pushed into the lake. The important thing is to get into the lake of bliss.