Bliss

Find Your Bliss

Bliss. When I first thought about doing a class on BLISS, I just got pissed off. Even the word pissed me off.  In fact, I had a little foot-stompy hissy fit.

BLISS?

BLISS?

I am not a BLISS person, I have been more of a “life sucks and then you die” chick.

Bliss is for other people. I grew up with the no pain-no gain mentality. Seriously, I would need a lobotomy to feel BLISS. Sheesh….

This is was all the mental chatter that was running through my head as I contemplated teaching a class about how to be more blissful by allowing more of the YIN (feminine) energy into your life.  It was a bit horrifying to realize how attached to being cranky I was.

Sort of anti-bliss, really.

Eckart Tolle talks about this addiction to suffering as the PAIN BODY. It was created by all the pain and suffering you have had in your life (plus your inherited pain) and it actually eats pain for breakfast. It has it’s own thoughts and space in our energy field and is like a malevolent entity that we all carry around inside of us that is totally addicted to suffering, misery and pain.

Every once in a while, it pops up, freaks out and CREATES more pain in your life, because it needs that pain and suffering to survive. And it loves to share in the pain and suffering, so it delights in spreading it around. It created the axiom: “Misery loves company.”

Yikes.

My pain body owned me. I could feel the sway it had over me, like a dark magic spell and I see it in other people too.

Mine came out in a spectacular way the other day when I had a fight with my teenage son. Our pain bodies took over and we chewed on each other (figuratively speaking) for a while and I could feel that my pain body actually LIKED the fight. The pain body was eating. Yum, yum.

Of course the rest of me felt terrible! When we indulge in the pain body, it takes a toll on us and we always pay a price. Living in the pain body is not only bad for your health, it’s also bad for your karma.

Who are we if we are not our pain body? What happens if we take away our primary identification with the pain body as who we are?

For many people, this is unexplored territory.

Thankfully, we also have another part of us called the BLISS BODY- a term that I first heard of from one of my teachers and friends, Sharon Wilsie, a wonderful Shaman from Vermont.

Your bliss body is the opposite of the pain body. It is made of light, lives in the light part of your energy field and is totally attuned to the frequencies of love, pleasure and joy. And it needs a steady diet of that to survive.

What’s really exciting is that when we choose to, we can move our attention and commitment off the pain body and onto the bliss body. That means we can starve the pain body and suffer less and feed the bliss body and feel more joy.

In trying to get my head around this concept, I had to ask myself this question: What is bliss? And what would it be like to be more in the bliss body?

For me, bliss is the ability to experience whatever feeling I am having in the moment, without holding back. Even the gnarly ones. Bliss is about tuning into the body and experiencing all the body and sensory experiences, plus all my emotions.

I experience bliss when I am fully embodied no matter what is going on.

Sleep?  Bliss.

Eating yummy food. Bliss.

Resting. Running or walking my dog. Even sitting here sipping tea and writing this. When I am IN my body and my sensations, it’s pretty blissy.

There is also a bliss factor in the rainbow richness if my emotions. I have the emotional range of an opera singer, I always have. I used to judge the heck out of this and try to tamp them all down. Now I just try to enjoy the ride and if I don’t judge, I feel bliss there too.

I also noticed that doing all this requires my full attention. Bliss is being in the moment and choosing to focus on the yumminess of whatever is happening instead of zoning out. Truthfully, my life is full of moments of BLISS that if I am not paying attention, I would just gloss over, ignore and let them pass me by.

What if part of bliss is in being in love with whatever is happening in the moment, no matter what?

What if bliss is a choice?

Here are some moments of bliss that I have lately.

  • A sweet moment with my daughter.
  • A really good cup of coffee.
  • Snuggling with my dog.
  • Talking shop with my colleagues.
  • Noticing the beauty of the world, so easy to do now that spring is really  here. I love the color of the forsythia in bloom after the winter and each day you can see the earth waking up.
  • The feeling of the sun on my skin after such a long winter. The world is full of sensory pleasures and having a body is fun!

And that was all this morning, in about an hour after I woke up! It all adds up if you pay attention. Maybe feeding the Bliss Body is a choice about where we put our attention, memory and significance.

I was just on vacation this past week and one morning I was up early in a Café in the old city of Quebec. It was a gorgeous morning, spring warming the air and the day full of promise.

Behind me was a cranky, pain body couple. They seemed like the type that has been married a long time and quite enjoys arguing and bickering. In my head, I dubbed them “The Bickersons.”

“It’s so cold here. We should have gone to Miami.”

“Is there a Starbucks here? Why isn’t there a Starbucks?”

“Everyone speaks French. So inconvenient, I can’t tell what anything is!”

“You’re having a croissant and a muffin? Remember what the doctor told you about eating too much sugar.”

Oh the pain body was having so much fun!

Then there was the young couple in front of me. So happy to be anywhere interesting and to be together. They were full of joie de vivre.(Which is really just French for bliss!)

“Look at all the lovely choices they have here! So much to choose from, how do we pick?”

“Aren’t you glad we came here? Thank god we are in this is areal French style café and not Starbucks!”

“Isn’t it lovely to be on holiday? So nice to get a break from work…”

And there we all were in the same place, same day, same café. But not the same experience!

Bliss is a choice. Not be happy all the time, but to appreciate the richness of life.

For me bliss is living full throttle and enjoying every minute, like you ride the roller coaster. And also for me in dropping into whoI am in very minute, for realsies and not pretending.

Not pretending to be someone else, but to be fully me, accepting all my thoughts and feelings as being good, right and worthy.

Bliss is the choice to be real and also to tune the channel to the “glass half full” channel when I can.

An Empath in New York