An Unbothered Bliss

"Pleasure is the partner of pain.
Bliss has no opposite.
In Bliss, pain and pleasure are one."

Georgi explores the Nondual Quality of bliss and how it connects to the dimension of pleasure and pain. Bliss, she explains is a chariot that moves through dimensions, from the physicall, through subtle fields of experience and into the spiritual. As such it has a tremendous healing effect.

Transcript

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This sense of bliss. You know, so often in spiritual circles we find that bliss, love, joy, happiness, ecstasy, they're all lumped together as one thing which is pleasant and painful. And we miss out on so much of the variety of life in just concluding like that, in dividing the vast repertoire of our experience into pleasant and painful or good and bad, And of course bliss is one of those ones which we tend to think is definitely on the good side and yes, we can sneak some pleasure in there as well, but pain, absolutely no way. I think it was Thomas of Aquinas that said that nobody really knows suffering until they've experienced physical pain. Pain is another kind of direct suffering altogether, even an emotional suffering. An emotional pain is hard, but physical pain, and whatever on earth this thing called bliss is. And for some it would seem like pleasure and bliss is the same and pain is the opposite of all of that. But in that sense we then give up all hope of being one with ourselves because we throw ourselves into a conditioning in which we are constantly fighting to get the pleasure and not the pain. And of course, in order to avoid the pain we have to keep our consciousness there. Otherwise it might shock us or surprise us at any moment. We have to stay vigilant. So what often happens in this agenda to get the pleasure and not the pain is we end up with getting the pain and the pain. And pleasure is reduced to being the gaps between moments of pain. And this In some ways necessary, because this is how we're learning right now, but in other ways devastating because it's not necessary. It's not necessary to have so much resistance to the variety of experience of being alive, to fight so hard against experience. And an experience without the spectrum from pain to pleasure is not going to be much of an experience at all. If we spend our minutes, our hours, our days, our years just going pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, at a certain moment we don't even feel it anymore. We become so bored we could cut ourselves to know that we are alive. The richness of being here is always in this vast spectrum of physical experience. We have this strange backflips in our system based on this agenda, this conditioning which goes so deep to get the pleasure and avoid the pain. For example, if you, most people, and you could try it for yourselves, I know it's true of me, when I look back and I say, okay, what happened to me in this life? What have I experienced? What have been the things that I really remember in this life of mine? Often, what we can find is that we are hopping from stepping stones of pain. This painful thing happened, and then this painful thing happened, and then this painful, and we are going from point marks of pain, flashes of pain. One horrible thing after another. And that's how we compose our biographies. It's how we're building our identities. This is our story. Often it's a tragedy and sometimes it's a comic tragedy. But still, it's got this undertone of agony in it. Often some people skate over the top and say everything was fine, fine, fine, great, great, wonderful, fine, fine, fine and nothing ever happened and then only two weeks later when you really get to know them you find the pain story coming through from underneath. We have an attraction towards pain because it seems in some ways more meaningful and more truthful than pleasure. You know we had a really lovely day, we had, we were fed, we were clothed, we were warm, we were with our friends or our family or we saw people, we were content and our friend asks us so what happened to you today? You say nothing! Just another blessed, blissed out day, and nothing happens! And you have a day where you come out of the house and you stand in dogshit and a car goes by and splashes mud all over your coat and the postman curses you and the bank refuses to give you an overdraft and your friend calls on that evening and says, what happened to you today? And you are on a roll. Oh yes, you have, well we have what to tell them. Let's dish up the pain. And it becomes a little bit endemic. So you know, we go to visit our sisters or our mothers or our children and we want to catch up on what's happening. Oh, so and so's husband died and Shirley, she got run over by a bus and you know, the cat's got cancer and it starts the story, pain, pain, pain, pain, because we feel closer when there's pain. There's a kind of bonding going on and yet we don't want it. And of course this is not news, you know, and it doesn't really help to be negative about it either. You know, we can go on about the content of the news, because it is news, pain, or the content of what's there on Netflix, you know. How often do we watch a romantic happy movie in which absolutely nothing happens, where there's no, at least a threat of pain? So we have a double relationship, we are addicted compulsively, obsessively to the pain and we're in a kind of loop. There's a kind of a, and it can often happen also in relationships, it's like you have an argument just to make you feel that you belong, just to feel close, just to feel that bite of vitality, that wake-up call. We really are strange creatures psychologically see. And all of it, because it's fuelled by this agenda, tends to distance us from the field of direct experience, being alive in the here and now. The actual business of sensing the unknown, challenging, unfolding miracle of what it is to be physically here now. Because the agenda to get the pleasure and not the pain. So often confused as a healing thing to avoid suffering, to get rid of suffering. So this agenda, it's always based on time. It's always based on getting to a place where finally we will be free of this pain and it's always based on the pain from the past chasing us into the future. We never really arrive at it in the here and now when we're caught in this agenda. Because the pleasure that we get will be later, the pain that we avoid will be later and it's a little bit like a rat in a wheel, it never really happens. We never come to a place where we cancelled all pain, the end of suffering. That's not what's meant by the end of suffering. Partly what's meant by the end of suffering is the end of the belief in the agenda to get rid of pain and only have pleasure, because that's the real suffering, being distanced from our own direct experience of being alive. So this is where the bliss factor comes in a little bit. Because the experience of bliss has everything to do with the opening of the senses. It has everything to do with, behind all five senses, the feeling connection, or you could say the sense of touch. So there can be bliss that we receive when we really, really open our eyes, when we really let the nature, for example, be absorbed into us through the eyes. Or when we wake up in the morning and the light is just coming through and we haven't yet quite got into that stage of being awake where we are interfering from our mind with the agendas of the day which are based on getting pleasure and not pain or somehow surviving and not getting pain or not dying or something. And there is just sunlight coming through as we wake up, morning light. There can be bliss in a sound, but to find the bliss which is there in a sound we need to open or relax our sense of hearing, we need to be able to listen in a way that we are becoming sensitive to the music which is here, the subtle music which is here. Maybe it's the sound of the wind, the music of the wind going through the trees, it's a good time for that in autumn maybe it's the sound of the rain and you see it again, it's an opening up of the senses in the here and now, not knowing what we are going to hear maybe we will hear somebody digging up the road, dagga dagga dagga dagga, we can't decide, but it involves opening up the senses in a way which is not deciding that it must be a pleasant sound or an unpleasant sound. First it's an agreement to experience at all and then the bliss of the listener can come forward. Very, very, very interesting how much bliss there is there There is the sense of smell. What's the most blissful smell we have ever smelt? It's very interesting because it could almost be any smell at all if we really allow the essence to be transmitted. Again it's the relaxation of the sense, the experience of the scent of life, of aliveness, the music which is there in the smell. And of course with taste, the taste of raw chocolate, which actually is flooding the brain with dopamine, producing a neuropeptide called anandamide, based on the Sanskrit word for bliss, and bringing healing chemicals all the way through the body. Bliss sensations. So bliss is a very, very interesting quality. So what we know about it is that it's got everything to do with opening the senses, but the senses themselves are just doorways, they're channels, aren't they? As we said, it's opening the eyes, opening the ears, opening the sense of smell, opening the sense of taste, allowing, really allowing the sense of touch. So these are openings of channels. It's not that the bliss is in the sensory faculty. The bliss is not in my eyes, it's not in my ears, it's not in my skin in the first instance. It's in the relaxation of these physical organs so that something can move through it. So all of those senses, it's all the sense of touch in a way. When we open our eyes towards a forest of flowers, the forest of flowers are entering into us and touching our consciousness, or touching our heartfelt consciousness, our sentient consciousness. When we agree to sense anything at all, we are opening up to a meeting position of consciousness with consciousness, a touch. So bliss has a lot to do with touch, whether it's through the touch of the eyes, the touch of the ears, the sound inside the ears, the touch of the scent, the touch of the taste. The metta sense, in a way, is the sense of touch. And when you really look into the sense of touch, wherever it's moving, whether it's through the skin surface or through the nostrils, the sense of touch has everything to do with consciousness meeting consciousness. When consciousness meets consciousness, something happens in that moment of touch. And it's beyond pleasure, it's so very, very alive. There is such a nectar of the miracle there. And this is where we begin to find the effects of bliss, where consciousness meets consciousness and an experience is born. There's a little explosion, it's like there's two streams of consciousness and they flow into each other and it's a party in the confluence. Or two bubbles containing air consciousness which is air and the two bubbles burst and it's a party of bliss. The beautiful thing about this bliss energy is that it really is beyond the so-called polarity of pleasure and pain. We find bliss in pain, we can find bliss anywhere along the spine, we can find bliss in pleasure and in that way it's an energy which can lift us in the most blissful way out of the trap, the spiral of fighting against ourselves and dividing our own experience and cutting up our, closing down our senses and trying to determine what it is we want to sense and what it is we don't want to sense. us a direct transition into true nature where there is the love and the joy and the peace and above all the release. Because in that moment of bliss, somewhere where even unconsciously we were holding on, where something was held back or unable to move into the flow of the whole. In that moment of bliss there is this expansion, there are these bubbles that burst. So in a very, very friendly way that which was caught in fear, that which was contracted in pain, begins to release. And because bliss is from a dimension which is so close to our essence, or you could say is part of our essence, it is having an incredible healing effect throughout all the system because bliss is an energy which moves deeply also through the physiology, meaning it's moving through the blood directly reflected in the form of neuropeptides and hormones and our biochemistry, it's moving through the muscles giving a sense of aliveness and readiness to be alive, it's releasing where there has been stress because stress is a holding like depression is a holding, it's helping it release, not a suffering. Think of the difference in going down a roller coaster between being absolutely terrified and being in a state of bliss from it. The same experience, the bliss carries it into this great expansion where the whole system is elevated, the fear pulls it into a place of utter and total nightmare. So this bliss energy is a vehicle which enables us very, very easily to transition from a place of emotional, mental or physical suffering directly through experience in the here and now. Two dimensions of experience which are more potent, more alive and incredibly rejuvenating at the essence of all that we are and the essence of all that this is. And this is quite important as a realization that bliss isn't just a hedonistic sexual thing. It's not something we have to feel ashamed of or something that we have to hold back or something that we have to fear. It's something which is immensely beneficial, not just to ourselves but to other people, to the physical environment, to animals. It's something which is asking to be shared, like an overflowing cup. When we try and keep it, we lose it immediately. Its movement is so fast that the whole request of bliss is to be allowed to move, to move, to move into this world, through us into this world or from this world through us and to be received in two directions. It's asking for this and when we start to play with it and say yeah but I might have pain later so I want to tweak this bliss a bit and I only want it after 8 o'clock at night and when nobody's looking then we're getting into trouble because it stops and if bliss does show up and begin to flow through the whole system and it starts moving and immediately what comes forward like in the peace meditation, is some place which really we think does not deserve to have bliss. And we say, okay, no bliss for you, sucker. That's the end. It's gone. Because bliss demands. It's so pure, it is unconditional in its nature, so it demands to be shared unconditionally with whatever. The effects of that, bliss is quite intelligent. We don't have to worry about that, but it's asking to be shared, to be shared, to be shared. And we're hard-wired to not share it. We're hard-wired with shame, with a kind of trauma around selfishness, as if it makes us like a narcissistic monster to experience bliss. We're hardwired with judgment, that some people around or some parts of ourselves really don't deserve bliss, we deserve punishment. We're hardwired with guilt. so that if we have bliss then there has to be no pain left we can only experience bliss in the body even for a moment when the pain has gone which means that we can't possibly even open up to bliss because there's pain here and there is pain here always beautiful thing guilt, it really screws us over, it creates by itself in its logic, an eternal hell, without us having to go anywhere at all. Because if bliss is in a competition with pain, then there is no hope for us. We can give up on the experience of being alive. So a beautiful movement, and one which is so needed through all the avenues of experience, whether it's through our connection to sound, to rhythm, our sense of the deep listener, our connection to music, whether it's through our connection to taste, to food, whether it's our appreciation of beauty through the eyes. The invitation is to begin to open up to bliss, whether or not we are suffering. And this is interesting because it's almost like weaning out of an addiction, this idea that we could have the most horrible pain in our legs for example and still find somewhere in our body, maybe it's just the top of our foot on the skin surface or maybe it's a patch behind our ear or maybe it's off the body in the air around us but we can still find somewhere where we can access the vibration of bliss, we can still create a window with our consciousness where bliss can happen, where the party of consciousness can come to life in its purity, at the meeting position of the physical and the experiential. It's such a simple equation, we can be in pain and experience bliss at the same time, or maybe in the same five minutes, so we can go from the pain to a memory of bliss and we can go from the bliss to the memory back to the pain we can move backwards and forwards and within five minutes, yes we did a big moment which is five minutes, we experienced bliss and pain at the same time and after a while we will find that that moment of five minutes can be smaller and shorter and shorter so that maybe in a second we can experience bliss and pain at the same time, and then maybe like this it begins to be possible to realize that there can be an inner sweetness of bliss which is always here, irrespective of the suffering and changing conditions which are there in the physical experience of the body. But again, to experience that inner fire of bliss, to get a sense of it, to get a taste of it, we need to be ready to open up our senses and now we're not opening them up outside and looking for the bliss out there, in the flowers and the trees and the sun sets, we're opening up our inner senses. We're opening up our inner senses towards the wonder of consciousness, where consciousness meets consciousness on the inside. The wonder of inner sight, the wonder of inner sound, the wonder of inner rhythm, the sense of weight in the body. Moments where, for example, memories of bliss can come forward. We're walking down the street and coming towards us, unexpectedly we see our beloved. It's not the physical sight of them which is blissful, although it might be blissful, but it's not that. It's not the sound of them which is blissful, although it might be blissful, but it's not confined to that. There is something inside, inside, inside, behind all of those effects which leaps, which opens up like a love bomb of bliss. Something explodes. And in that moment it's pure aliveness of consciousness, consciousness plus life. It's the nectar of true nature, very, very, very for real, and it's got a subtle nature, just as we have subtle sight, subtle hearing like thought, or the inner voice, inner subtle sense of smell, deep subtle feeling, there is subtle intuition, there is this subtle sense of bliss, and just because it's subtle doesn't mean it's weaker. The subtler it is, the more powerful it is, because we're coming closer to the source of consciousness. There's a potency there which is having a tremendous centering effect, a releasing effect, a healing effect, all the way from the spiritual into the physical, through the physical, into the world and back again with a kind of infinity to it. An amazing healing energy. I know some of you have worked with healing touch, just the touch of consciousness. Knowing based on scientifically researched evidences about the effect on children in pain when the mother's love is there, knowing that this touch, this conscious touch, is transmitting a healing energy, that miracles can come through the conscious touch, and in this, bliss as a quality is very much involved, and our ability to allow the transmission of bliss is what will bring an elevation and a deep healing to us, to them, to the environment, to everybody backwards, forwards, sideways that we've ever been connected with. It's like in the human network there is a reverberation of bliss. It's so much connected with what we're here for, learning to allow the quality through this frequency.