Letter from the Field: What’s Up with the Bliss Thing?
I just got this email and felt it was a general enough question that many of you are surely pondering (I know, because I did) that I wanted to answer and share it. I don’t teach via email, and satsang is the place for direct questions.
Hello Fred,
Yesterday I watched your video, “I understand this all intellectually..” and was quite surprised. I couldn’t believe something like that exists. So useful, instructive and most importantly – funny. Believe me, I’ve never laughed so much alone in my room. I really appreciate it.
If I can ask you a question which I always wanted to ask Mooji, Echkart, Spira, Adyshanti or someone else from that branch, it would be this: In your daily experience, tell me honestly, are you in a constant state of bliss, samadhi, satori, “aha!” etc? I hope you know what I mean by that. If not, can you induce these states at will?
Maybe I’m missing the point, but after few of these experiences in the past, my conclusion was that enlightenment, a.k.a., awakening, must be a non-stop state of that, and at the same time, these experiences were a proof to me that non-duality really has truth to it.
Thanks again, and sorry for my junk English and long email. 🙂
Dominik
First off, Dominik, your English is more than fine. If you hadn’t told me it wasn’t your first language, I would never have known.
Secondly, I’m glad you laughed at the video; that’s very helpful for you. You cannot imagine how many people I’ve been with who woke up laughing. Just because this is the only subject of universal consequence doesn’t mean we have to approach it with deadly seriousness. As a matter of fact, that approach might even prove to be what’s appearing to hold one back.
Are you in a constant state of bliss, samadhi, satori, “aha!” etc.?
No, not like you’re thinking about.
And I know exactly what you’re thinking because those very same thoughts were once experienced – and believed – over here.
What is experienced is what I call the Great Okayness. Bliss, as it’s understood in the West, has an opposite, which we could call no-bliss, or not-bliss. The Great Okayness has no opposite, which also means it can’t be adequately described. We know things by way of their opposites, hence the yin-yang polarities. This Okayness is simply the recognition of things as they truly are coupled with the understanding that they can be no other way.
The blissful moment, hours, days, etc. that you are referring to are temporal spiritual experiences that arise and fall within or upon True Nature. We all want to prolong the orgasmic feeling which can arise as an accompaniment to real insight, but the unit would, on a practical basis, become completely unusable. I would say that the Great Okayness is “superior,” but it has no comparison.
Maybe I’m missing the point…
Yes, you are.
Everyone is “missing the point” until awakening occurs, and can even miss it afterward.
I am awake to this arising. That’s as good as it gets, and I notice that it’s plenty. But again, that’s what satsang is all about. Come join us!
January 25, 2017 @ 5:53 pm
I’ve had ears to hear this message come up repeatedly for me. My non dual therapist always comes back to “is it a problem?”. I listened to a student in a video saying he wasn’t seeking anymore, BUT he was really perplexed about how things have their suchness (eg how is blue blue?). The teacher brought him around to whether suffering was alleviated from his life, and the answer was yes. The teacher said then the teaching had served its purpose. This reminded me how Buddha’s noble truth is “there is an end to suffering”. Fred uses the Great Okayness.
The momentum of the conditioning from seeking and its suffering is still noticed. Sometimes I think that conditioning USES the contrast with the Great Okayness to call attention to “see, there really is something wrong”! One of the funniest thoughts I’ve run across is that the Reality I Am has to lend itself to any appearance to give it any seeming reality it has. FEAR: false evidence appearing real. How does something false get the wherewithal to do anything, much less seem real? From Me!
Ease (evidence appearing solely ephemeral), Mike
January 25, 2017 @ 5:57 pm
Very good, Mike.♥
January 26, 2017 @ 12:13 pm
Thanks, Fred. I was somewhat disappointed when I woke up and realized constant bliss would not be mine. But then the awakening wasn’t even mine, either. The dream character doesn’t benefit at all from awakening (poof, it’s gone!), but the dreamer, who was stuck in the dream character’s cockamamie adventures, is set free.
Blissful states happen to the character, whereas the Great Okayness is an attribute of Oneness. Highs and lows come and go. But the background sense of being safe and secure and loved is eternal. The character may or may not tap into that, depending on how awake she is to this moment. But it is always there for her. It is Her.
Love,
Kathleen
January 26, 2017 @ 9:25 pm
It’s really about how much or how little belief in a character is present, because the character is just an idea, and thus is never awake or asleep. What isn’t here can sleep, not awaken.
If there’s lots of belief in a character, there will be no Conscious Awakeness present. If there is lots of Conscious Awakeness, there will not be much experience of character, and even less belief in one, because the idea is seen through by Conscious Awakeness; it is noted to be false. ♥