The Bliss Book Read online

  I don’t want us to lie about it. I just want us to look at it in a different way. How long have some of us been saying, “I don’t have enough to pay my bills?” And then not having enough to pay them again and again? Wouldn’t it be worth it to just try shifting perspective, and focusing on what we do have enough for?

  Really, when we think about it, being happy because of what we have, or frustrated because of what we don’t have is very conditional living. We’re hanging our happiness on things. But learning how to find happiness regardless of our finances (or anything else) is worth more than any fortune we could amass.

  Remember, feeling good, basking in what we do have, living in the moment with full attention and appreciation of that moment, those are what we’re here for.

  So maybe the debt seems impossible. Maybe we lose our house. I’ve lost my home twice. The first one in a divorce, and then my second home in a fire. Maybe we lose our job. I’ve been there, too. Twenty-two years under contract with major publishers and then pfffft. My only source of income was gone in the space of a single phone call.

  Those are the times when I’ve made the greatest breakthroughs in my understanding. Let’s face it, it’s easy to focus on the positive when our lives are floating along on sparkling streams, past shores lined with flowers where unicorns dance on rainbows. But when you’re sitting in the middle of a burned-out shell that used to be your home, or sleeping in your car, it gets a lot harder.

  There’s a principle talked about in many circles, from science to the Hermetic philosophy. Science says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. In esoteric-speak, this is called the Principle of Rhythm, and it talks about how a pendulum swings as far one way as it swings the other way. I call it the bowstring effect. The farther I pull my bowstring back, the farther my arrow is going to fly. And what it means in our lives is that the worse things get, the better they’ll be on the other side.

  That’s how it works. Here’s why it works that way. We never long for a home more than when we don’t have one. We never wish for prosperity harder than when we’re without it. We never desire health more than when we’re sick.

  So when hard times come, they are creating the most powerful desires we’ve ever felt. The hard times are what draws back our bowstring. And those desires they inspire in us, are our arrows. When we let go of the pain, the loss, the need, we are releasing the bowstring. The arrows of our desire fly forth to become the house, the prosperity, the wellness, just as fast as we can shift the balance of our attention from the problem to the solution it has inspired.

  On the other side of our hardest times, our best times await. Knowing that can help us get through those times. The way we release our arrows is shifting our perspective from focus on the problem, to focus on how good the solution is going to feel. And then by finding the first faint traces of that feeling even before the solution arrives. We have to find the beginnings of it right where we are.

  So, we actually do have enough. We always have enough. Maybe it’s just barely enough, but it’s enough. We might want more, and it’s natural to want more. There’s nothing wrong with wanting more. Everything is about expansion. But we have to accept that right now, we have enough, no matter how much or how little that is. We have to see what we do have, and nod and say, “Yeah. I can work with this. I do have enough. I’m looking forward to even more.”

  Something shifts inside us when we begin to understand that everything is unfolding in exactly the way that’s going to take us to where we want to be. All of it is perfectly enough right here, right now. That’s the challenge. If we’re sleeping in our car, can we get aligned enough to feel grateful for that car? If we’re sleeping in our parents’ or our children’s basement, are we capable of appreciating that we found a soft place to land? Can we imagine our hardest times as jet fuel for powering our wishes forward faster than we ever could have done had we not experienced them? Can we see set-backs as chances to upgrade our lives? Or will we wallow in all we’ve lost and all we think we lack, complain about it to everyone we know, post about it online, and hold its energy tight for as long as we can?

  Obviously, we’re going to hurt and rage and wail and shake our fists at the sky when we experience hard times. We’re going to grieve our losses. We came here to live the full spectrum of human experience, and grief is a part of that. Of course we’re going to feel awful for a while. And that’s okay, and normal and natural, and it lasts as long as it lasts. It’s important to give ourselves permission to feel our feelings, grieve our losses. And we should neither get angry with ourselves for feeling bad, nor impatient with ourselves for however long we need to linger in our pain. It takes as long as it takes. But it’s good to know when we’re experiencing it, that there is an end, and that as bad as it is, that’s how good it will be once we find our way out of the pain. The sun is waiting, and it’s shining brighter than ever.

  When we can move through the grief to anger, and through the anger to frustration and through the frustration to acceptance, and through the acceptance to relief, and through the relief to feeling okay, and through being okay to looking for the growth our loss has sparked in us, we’re on the path to healing. And when we can find hints of the joy we seek in our lives here and now, that’s when everything changes.

  Giving to the Poor

  I give to others because it makes me feel good.

  I give to others, too, because giving away one’s wealth is the most powerful statement of abundance I can make. I believe in my well-being so much, that I’m giving some away. My cup is overflowing. Why dam up my stream? What flows out, creates room for more to flow in.

  I am confident and secure in knowing there will always be more. If my vibration has attracted abundance, then I know this vibration. I’ve lived it, and I can tune to this frequency at any time.

  Money is just energy. I’ve learned how to let it flow. I’ve attuned to having plenty, or to be more accurate, I’ve attuned to seeing whatever I have as plenty, no matter how little or how much. Plenty is a state of mind.

  We must believe in abundance in order to have it. And if we believe in abundance, we’ll see it everywhere we look. We will never think, “I don’t have enough to share.” Or “I don’t have any extra.” We cannot harbor those thoughts if we believe in our own abundance. The two vibrations are opposite. If we think we don’t have “enough,” then we won’t have enough. If we believe we have plenty, we’ll never fear sharing, because we know there’s always enough.

  And it’s not just money we can share. There are so many other ways to help. Volunteers are needed at every hospital, homeless shelter, soup kitchen and animal shelter. Just taking a bag along on my daily walk and picking up litter I find along the way, is a way of giving. Visiting nursing home patients is a beautiful way of giving. Donating our gently used clothing and other household items clears our homes of clutter and opens our space. There are hundreds of opportunities in our schools and communities to share not just our wealth, but our time, our wisdom, and our stuff.

  We can test how strong our abundance consciousness is by giving some of it away. How does it feel? Does it instill fear? Panic? Resentment? Or does it make us feel even more blessed?

  Do You Fear Spending and Hoard Instead?

  If putting some wealth aside in savings makes you feel good then, by all means, do it.

  But remember, money is energy. It flows in only if it’s also flowing out. If we dam it up from a place of fear, we’ll block the inward flow. We want a free-flowing stream. We drink water. We hydrate our cells. We pee. We eat food. It nourishes our bodies. We poop. Rain falls and fills rivers which fill lakes and spill into oceans, and then it evaporates back up to the clouds so it can fall again. The seasons flow, one into the next, into the next, into the next and over again. Everything in nature is about flow, cycles, movement. Anything that stops movement, blocks energy.

  Do what makes you feel good. Save for the feeling of accomplishment and pride it
gives you, but never save out of a sense of fear. Saving for a rainy day means you expect rainy days, which is all it takes to bring rainy days. Saving for tragedy brings tragedy. Saving for something fun, brings something fun. It’s all perspective.

  Do Big Bills Make You Angry?

  This is one I’m still working on. For years after a divorce, a friend of mine had to pay alimony. No kids, no illness, just because she made more than he did. I thought this was blatantly unfair and my friend resented it to no end. Eventually, though, she found a way to make peace with it, and almost as soon as she did, her ex offered her a deal to cash out for a lump sum that amounted to half of what she’d have eventually had to pay him, and call it even. She took the deal and the thing she’d been resenting before, was gone. Just as quick as she had stopped resenting it and accepted it instead.

  I used to get very resentful about income taxes. They seemed unreasonably high to me, and I hated that I was sending money to the government to be used for bombs and wars I did not approve of. Eventually, I made peace with it. I told myself resenting those payments was another way of saying, “I don’t have enough!” and if I live my life with an attitude of lack, then lack is all I’ll ever have. I tried to focus on the things my money might be funding that I did approve of.

  I had been livid over having to buy health insurance when it became mandated. I almost never see a doctor and probably never will. For me the cost is more than $700 per month, and the deductible is more than I’d ever spend in a year. I’m a natural healing sort of person. But, nonetheless, it was the law. I’ve been getting my head around it by much the same method as the taxes. Actually, I’ve come to think of it as just another tax, one that goes strictly toward making sure people with ailments I’m blessed not to have to endure, can get health care. That made me feel better about paying it. And as soon as I did, the mandate was removed. I don’t have to buy it anymore.

  But I’m still buying it anyway. It helps those who can’t afford it, and since I nurture an abundance consciousness instead of a lack consciousness, I pay as another way of sharing the plenty I’ve created in my life.

  When there’s a big expense that seems unfair, remember this: the more we spend, the more we attract in. Remove the debris from the stream and watch the inflow increase in direct proportion to the outflow. This is how money energy works.

  So never resent the outflow. It’s just cranking our taps open so more can flow in. Being upset over big bills is telling the Universe we don’t believe we have enough. And what we believe, becomes our reality.

  Afterthought

  It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

  Matthew 19:24

  Does this oft-quoted verse mean we have to be poor in order to be spiritual? Does it mean, again, that wealth is evil?

  I don’t think so. I think it means none of the physical stuff or wealth we accumulate during our life—even if we’re Jeff Bezos—goes with us when we emerge from our bodies. It means the land of spirit is a place where we can’t take any luggage, cash or traveler’s checks. This is another of the lessons taught by The Dance of the Seven Veils.

  We go through the needle’s eye, but we leave our stuff behind. That’s all this verse is saying, and the reason for pointing it out to us is to remind us that physical wealth is unimportant.

  Living and loving and learning to wield the infinite power of the divine beings we are, that’s what’s important. Realizing that we are all one being, at the deepest levels, and that what we do to anyone, we do to everyone, from paying a compliment, to dropping spare change into a kettle. When we love anyone, we love everyone. And if we hate anyone, we’re spreading that hate to all creation.

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  Assignment 7

  Give Some Bliss

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  Go to https://smile.amazon.com and register for the Amazon Smile program. Choose a cause, and every time you buy anything, Amazon will send your charity a donation. It costs you nothing, and it adds up. Jot down which charity you chose in your journal.

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  Assignment 8

  Share Your Bliss

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  Donate to a cause you care about. You can give cash, time, or share your skills to help someone else, but I strongly encourage you to give at least a portion of your contribution in cash, to demonstrate your belief in your own abundance. Give $1. Give $5. Give enough to make it meaningful to you, but not enough to make you feel fear. Do it because it feels good, and as you do it, let it validate for you that you have plenty. Jot down in your journal what cause or causes you donated to and why those causes spoke to you, and how you felt about the giving. Watch your accounts for the next several weeks. What you give always returns to you, and usually it’s bigger than it was when you sent it out. Remember to make a note right in this section of your journal when that happens.

  “Don’t give until it hurts. Give until it feels good.”

  —Dennis Kimbro

  The Goddess Speaks

  In the calm and generous confidence of plenty, all trace of lack is obliterated, and only plenty can abide.

  There is no stronger statement of belief in abundance than sharing what you have, no matter how little, with those in need.

  Those living the hardest lives are creating the strongest leaps forward for the Whole. So help them. Give them moments of joy and ease. Help them see that they can move forward into the better that they’ve created with their desire. They can let the pain go. Help them let it go.

  You all explore the darkness in your own time. You live something awful, sooner or later, and usually more than once. And every time, it creates its opposite, its solution, its cure.

  So give to the wretched ones. Be kind to them. Love the addicts and the drunks, the sick and the poor, the ignorant and the violent. They are living what they are, and creating the desire for it to be better. They are creating the solutions.

  Let them be the most honored ones among you. And give them comfort.

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  Chapter Seven

  The Care and Maintenance of the Temple

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  I believe the body is a natural extension of the Soul. I think the bodies we have, grew from our Souls to be the perfect physical reflection of them. We, our Higher Selves, created these bodies for our physical selves down to the tiniest molecule. I think “created” might not be quite the right term. I think we sort of…expressed them. I think our bodies are the precise physical mirror of our Souls and that they emanated from our Souls. So all those things we complain about, our height or weight or hair or skin, all the things we see as our defects, faults and flaws, are what our Souls expressed. And so they are perfect. They are perfect whether they have ten fingers and toes or zero. They’re perfect whether they have one leg or two legs or no legs. They’re perfect whether our brains work like everyone else’s or in their own unique way. They’re perfect no matter what.

  The first piece of wisdom about the care of our physical forms is knowing and accepting their perfection, and as a result, truly loving our bodies.

  Every day that I’m aligned, and I’m aligned more often than not, as I shower, as I dress, I praise my body, the temple of my Soul. I wash it lovingly and anoint it with lotions that thrill my senses. I adore my hair as I comb it and dress it in richly scented creams or oils that enhance its softness and shine.

  I praise my eyes, as I decorate them in gold or silver or kohl. I praise my skin, and my lips, and my chest and my neck. I praise my ears as I dangle jewels from their lobes and delight in the music flowing from my speakers into my ears, filling my entire being. I move with it. I sing, and praise my voice, my lungs, my mouth.

  When I go walking, I praise my legs and my feet for carrying me, and my back for being so strong.

  I drape my temple, my body, in soft, delicious fabrics, in bright, pretty colors. I adorn my temple to make it even more pleasing to my Soul.

  Fa
ith is Healthy!

  As we’ve already discussed, worry is a form of stress, and stress is the cause of most (all, in my opinion) disease. The very word disease gives its own meaning. Dis-ease. Un-ease. Lack of ease. But faith is the opposite of worry.

  Worry is: I fear what might happen because it’s not in my control.

  Faith is: Whatever happens is part of the plan. I have more influence over it than I used to know, and all is well, even when it seems otherwise.

  Everything is fine. Even death is part of the natural cycle, and we’re all at different points in that cycle. Fearing and fighting off death is a major source of stress and worry in our society. We act as if we can beat death back. We act as if there’s some sane reason to try. But there’s not, no more than there’s a reason to fight against falling asleep. It’s part of the natural cycle. We sleep, we wake, we sleep, we wake. We don’t fight it. We don’t have emergency rooms to race into every time we start to nod off. Imagine what those would be like. They’d splash cold water into our face, right? Or blow air horns behind our back, or smack us silly.

  And eventually, in spite of it all, we’d fall asleep anyway, and then we’d wake and start the cycle again.

  When we truly believe that all is well, and that everything happens for a reason, and that we can solve a problem just as quickly as we can shift our focus to the solution, and that we truly do have enough, even if we have nothing, and that every force in the Universe is always working in our favor, then the need for worry ends.

  If we eliminate worry and stress from our lives by replacing them with absolute faith, our health will benefit tremendously. Faith is, therefore, the healthiest habit we can cultivate.

  How to Build Faith

  I’ve probably heard a million times that faith is believing in something you cannot see. But in my philosophy, believing inevitably results in seeing whatever it is I believe in. What we believe in tends to come into our experience.