THE END OF CHASING BLISS Theres only now Theres only here Give in to love Or live in fear No other path No other way No day but today... - Rent, The Musical For many, spirituality is all about seeking the next blissful, exciting, dramatic, transcendent, other-wordly experience, chasing the next high promised by well-meaning gurus and teachers, running after the shakti highs, dancing and singing down the yellow brick road of enlightenment. But at some point, friends, you tire of chasing bliss. The Build-A-Better-Me project - of which the Build-A-More-Spiritual-Me project is only an extension - ultimately leads to exhaustion and disillusionment, because it is founded upon a massive illusion: that there is a separate me here in the first place - a me which will one day become the perfect me or the perfectly enlightened me or even the complete and finished me - and that this me is who you really are. But of course, the perfect me is not the completeness you have longed for, in your heart of hearts, and you could never be limited to a story. You long for rest, to just be able to sink completely into the present moment. You tire of chasing bliss, friend, and this is natural and to be expected and celebrated, and then a deeper invitation reveals itself: the invitation to allow ALL experience, not just the good or spiritual or blissful experience. You come to recognise yourself as unlimited, undivided, nondual potential, capable of holding the pain as well as the bliss, the sorrow as well as the joy, the excitement as well as the fear. How vast you are! What a relief, to no longer have to chase mirages! What peace, to be able to deeply rest where you are! What replaces the bliss mission is a profound trust in your own first-hand experience of life, a letting-go of external authority, and a willingness to meet everything in yourself. Everything. Ah, the bliss of never, ever having to chase bliss ever again...
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 14:02:31 +0000