Illusion ( part 2) - Happiness (3)

 

Some time back Jill met with a girl at work who could not get over her skiing holiday and wanted to take it up full time. Jill asked her what it was she loved about skiing.

She said "when I am skiing I am extremely happy".

Jill asked "can you describe what this extreme happiness feels like".

She said "in that state of extreme happiness I was totally alert, ecstatic, all my attention was on the skiing, every cell of my body was in that moment. I was just 'present'”.

Jill asked her how wonderful would it be if she could be present without going on skiing. She thought hard and said possibly and said "then I wouldn’t have to go on an expensive skiing holiday to be happy, I could be happy all the time".

Jill said "perhaps you should try to be present without the skiing experience. Give it a go".

A month had passed, when Jill met her again and she said "you will be surprised to know what has happened".

Jill said "what happened".

She said "I had been practising being present since we last spoke and I have observed I am a lot calmer, my stress level has gone down and I am enjoying my work. I no longer think about skiing or my next holiday or how to be happy. The most amazing thing is that when I am in the present I have no concept of time. I am still not as present as I am when skiing but I have started my journey on being present and I am no longer fully dependent on an experience to make me happy".

In the above story the description that was provided to Jill of this extreme happiness is what some people in a spiritual context refer to as bliss.

So what is the difference between happiness and bliss ?

If you ask any person on the street what is the difference between happiness and bliss, they will say happiness is temporary, while bliss is more deeper and permanent. It is evident from the above story that what was described to Jill by the girl she met at work was very intense and could be called bliss. The dictionary calls bliss perfect happiness. Whether we use the word happiness or bliss, it is clear everyone is seeking bliss, everyone wants to be always happy. Colloquially speaking though people tend to associate the word happiness with an object, or a situation or an experience that release hormones in their body to make them happy. Similarly bliss is used to describe an intense state of happiness. However the illusion continues to persist with everyone believing that the cause of happiness and bliss is an experience. So it is the endless cycle of running after all types of exotic experiences starts and one gets trapped in this illusion.

How can I get out of this illusion ?

Jill and her work colleague have clearly figured out that state of bliss arises not from the experience, but from a natural state of 'being' wherein the person experiencing the experience is dissolved to such an extent that the one that is experiencing and that which is experienced is merged and only the experiencing remains.

You cannot get out of the illusion, because you are part of it, however you can be aware of it and not get entangled in it. The below will help overcome it -

1. Knowledge that all that appears is ever changing and an illusion.
2. Knowledge that, that to which all the experiences appear is the self or the experiencer and is unchanging.
3. The knowledge that, that which one experiences is not the cause of true happiness or bliss.
4. Full and complete attention on the experience in front of you (the nature or type of experience is not relevant), in a state of awareness that you are the experiencer, until all that remains is this alert aware presence and all boundaries of experience and experiencer disappear. 

In summary that which we mistakenly assume (experiences) as the source of happiness and bliss is an ever changing illusion and is in fact a cause of much suffering. To abide in a state of bliss we must initially cultivate discrimination and awareness, until we finally become who we truly are "bliss".