The Challenge of Bliss

Bliss and Years End

The transition from years end to a new beginning is challenging, even when things are going well. When the going is bad, we want to let go of the worst and ready ourselves to embrace the better and best. But, as we've all noticed, things can follow us. No matter the time, place, people, or space, things follow us. Stability, well being, and bliss is a challenge.

I like bliss. It's not some mind-popping state. In actuality, mystics of old and seasoned depth psychologists would describe it as subtle energy. Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher and psychologist of archetypal realms, wrote of the Platonic ideal of bliss: ". . . to stand over every single thing as its own heaven, as its round roof, its azure bell, and eternal security." We soon discover that such a perspective and experience comes with a price.

Bliss as State of Mind

Bliss is a challenge because it requires we move out so we can move on. The end of a year and transition into a new year calls us to take stock, let go of what no longer is meaningful and embrace the unknown. It's filled with potential. Inevitably, there will be ups and downs, dark matters to go through, and, hopefully, light at the end of dark tunnels.

Bliss is a state of mind, one we can lean into and trust. It can be with us, in the background, during trying moments. It's consciously experienced when things go well. However, we realize it's always there once awareness is raised, appreciation for self and others discovered, and we immerse ourselves in each moment of life.

Bliss as Moving Out and On

Treating patients all year in depth psychotherapy, has brought to mind gratitude for the human capacity to move out so we can move on. As long as we're willing to make the sacrifice, pay the price, the bliss of knowing and feeling ongoing growth and change will be sensed. It's subtle. Patients report, and I, from experience, confirm, it's like a butterfly landing on your shoulder or a snowflake on the palm of your hand. It's there, comes and goes, and leaves the sense of it behind, the wonder of nature at work. Patients move out of what no longer works and into what does, butterflies and snowflakes and inspiration and insight alighting then departing, internalized as soulful nourishment.

Bliss as Subtle Current

So, moving out of one year and toward and into the next means letting go. It means embracing. Then, the subtle current of bliss arrives with surety as a genuine sense we are growing and going on. To be stuck leaves us unhappy, perhaps emotionally and spiritually unstable. As we sort through how we're stuck, then working on letting go and moving on opens us to the subtle current of bliss that is the nature of a soul always growing and moving on.