Continuing with my Ascension ethnography, I awoke this morning not feeling bliss. And I felt lonely for it and forlorn.
If we compare the process to eating a meal, I awoke feeling hungry (lonely for it) and not feeling as if I had enough money on me to buy a meal (forlorn).
But then I felt a peculiar situation. I felt myself full of bliss, but the bliss was just sitting there, inactive in my chest region.
I’d compare it to having finished a meal and feeling full in my stomach, only here my entire chest area felt full.
But the bliss was not moving. (1) My guess was that I’ve assimilated and integrated some of the bliss that I’ve felt and it seems to be “just sitting there.” I’m feeling that integrated, assimilated, but “inactive” bliss at the moment.
I began to work my breathing, breathing up bliss from my heart and sending it out into the world. Soon I felt the bliss become active again, moving up from my heart to my head, at which point I begin to “bliss out.”
Then I realized that it was 6:45 a.m. and I’ve never felt bliss this early in the morning. Usually it comes between 9 and 11 a.m.
All aspects of what is happening are unusual. First of all feeling bliss this early in the morning is unusual.
Secondly, feeling full of bliss and feeling it sitting there in fulness in my chest area is also unusual.
And thirdly, the ease with which it came up in response to my breathing exercise is similarly unusual. It took only one breath to bring it up.
Now here I am again, in the fulness of bliss. The first thing I notice about it is that I have blithely said for months that the bliss has me feel wonderful. But I now see that there’s a component from me that also contributes to my feeling wonderful.
When I focus my attention on the bliss, I feel amazed, awed, and grateful at how wonderful the bliss feels. And these feelings are also a part of my experience and contribute to the excellent way I feel.
They also add to the experience I have of release, which adds to the elevation I feel.
Whereas normally I’d be getting ready to go over to the coffee shop, and begin my day, researching and writing, I now sit here without a desire in the world but to enjoy the bliss. So much for that agenda!
I began to play with my breathing exercise. If I breathed slowly and deeply, I felt the bliss more fully.
I looked back on the shift in my response to life. Previously I was lonely and forlorn and now I’m happy and content. Bliss has that effect.
I also noticed how my attitude to and interaction with life changed dramatically when I’m in and not in bliss. I noticed that, when I’m not in bliss, I worry about how others think and feel. I think strategically. How am I going to handle this situation? What will I say to that person?
Once in bliss, all that strategic thinking goes out the window and I’m happy just to meet each situation in whatever way I do.
I fantasized that, when I wasn’t in bliss, people could read the fact that I’m strategizing and hear it in my voice and that they also then switched into strategizing.
But when I’m in bliss, I’m not strategizing. I hypothesize that they can also read and hear that and they also drop the felt need to strategize. We usually call what I’m describing “spontaneity.” I feel spontaneous in bliss.
Ok, time to begin my day. But what a beginning!
Footnotes
(1) I’m not sure bliss ever moves per se. It’s I who swells and feels transported at the mere touch of bliss. It feels inactive because it hasn’t reached my head area. When it simply remains in my chest region, I don’t feel it. But when it reaches my head I feel it. It’s as if it enters my consciousness at that time.