Bliss in Abyss

This is my version of William Blake’s Jerusalem:

‘I shall not cease, from inner flight,
Nor shall my pen, rest in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem,
On this gross, yet so blessed land!’

My life on earth is abyss.
Transcendental Love is bliss.
Faith is the bridge.

I am inspiring the Being of Transcendental Love.
I feel that Being permeate my being. I say mentally and feel: I am love, I am love, I am love. I hold the breath in until I can. Now I expire into the Being of Transcendental Love. My being submerges in Transcendental Love’s Being. I hold the breath out as long as I can. I say and feel: I am love, I am love, I am love. I continue inhaling, holding breath in, experiencing love and exhaling, holding breath out and experiencing love. Eventually Bach’s music begins to play in my ears. I let my inspiration-hold in and expiration-hold out, fuse with the music. After 10 minutes I experience Heaven on Earth.

Without faith, I used to experience fluctuations only: the agony or mundaneness of life on earth with the occasional ecstasy. Ecstasy, thrown in as a carrot to keep me going and trying to hold on to it. It was always an elusive epiphany: it slipped through my fingers, like water or sand.

Emptiness always returned and remained. Gaping emptiness. I had no control over when epiphany would pay its next visit and how long it would stay. But the stays would always be short and the absences long. I tried to fill the emptiness with achievements, pleasures, relationships, service, nature and material goodies. No use. The emptiness was here to say. Yet I kept searching for the panacea to rid myself of my existential ‘scream’.

First, it was psychotherapy. I was to heal myself and then others. Transactional analysis, Gestalt, behavioural therapy, then Psychodrama; the latter for seven intensive years.

My emotions started to flow as freely as an undammed river. But all this was just laboratory. Real life was not therapeutic. It remained empty.

Then yoga followed. That was going to lead me to self-realisation. It is not about psychotherapy, it is about spiritual self-realisation. Well, I am still on my way to this self- realisation.

Then the panacea became music. Ah, self-realisation is beyond words, beyond the mind, it has to be musical. I chanted, I sang passionate gypsy songs, I whistled Bach. The trouble was that when I needed music most, in the dumps, I became stone deaf, totally amusical.

Then it was laughter. All I needed to do when depressed was to laugh. To laugh at absolutely nothing. Fake it, till making it. It worked. The trouble was that when I needed to laugh most, I laughed least.

Then the panacea became mutual love. Yes, that would save me. I had this, with a dear soulmate. The trouble was that I depended on the relationship for my hit. It could not last forever. Then Buddhism assured me to relax, because nothing lasts forever. Everything is temporary and passes. Life is utterly meaningless. Solomon, arguably the wisest King on earth, agrees. What was there to do?

When I said goodbye to my soulmate before her death, her last words were:
‘Have Faith, heaps of it!’

Yes, there is love and meaning through Faith. Through learning to live in this life without being of it. But belonging to the Being of Eternal Love, transcending this life. Let my life be this Being’s slave.

Liberty by slavery.

What is your take on bliss? Has there been anything that has had a major influence on your happiness in life?

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