A garden of Earthly delights
There’s a salutary tale, taught in India, probably to children, that Shiva had a lifetime as a pig. He loved his wife. He loved his piglet children. He loved wallowing in the mud and sleeping with his wife and children cuddling close around him.
But the gods missed Shiva and saw him lingering in his pleasant life on Earth so they sent Vishnu to spear him (ouch!) and release him from form. Shiva woke up, returned to heaven, and got back to work.
The story is probably told to awaken children to the fact that our pleasures on Earth are all fine as long as we’re incarnated but they’re just a fraction of what awaits us on the higher planes. It may also be told to illustrate how we forget our origins when in 3D.
The story could also be designed to encourage us adults to place our sights on higher realms of development or to spur us on if our sights are already there but wavering.
What are the pleasures of Earth that we seek in our 3D forms? Not mud surely.
If you asked a rocker he or she might cheekily reply: “Sex, drugs and rock and roll.” A sociologist might reply: “Money, sex and power.” An epicurean might add food and drink to the list; others, vacations, fast cars, scuba-diving, and what have you.
Sex appears twice and may be the giveaway to what’s happening here because orgasm is like a momentary experience of bliss and it may well be that bliss is what’s being sought in all these cases.
Mata Amritanandayamayi once said: “The happiness that we get from worldly objects is only an infinitesimal fraction of the bliss that we get from within.” (1)
Nonetheless, most of us have never had a taste of real bliss and so we may not know what we’re missing and we may settle for what’s available down here, right now.
I admit myself that I’ll miss sushi, mango lassis, and many other Earthly delights in the unlikely chance they’re not available where we’re going. But I’ve tasted real bliss and know what I’ll be getting instead.
It can be a problem convincing people who’ve never tasted bliss that the bliss to be won and enjoyed permanently from Ascension is worth the dislocation that might occur in our lives from embracing transformation.
It is, after all, bliss that we seek from our lives here on Earth, at all times and in all places. Love is bliss. Joy is bliss. Happiness is bliss.
Bliss is restorative. It brings all things to remembrance. Yogananda called it “the all-coveted bliss of God.” (2) God and Her bliss cannot be told apart.
It’s bliss that we’ll be winning through our entrance to a world of higher vibration. It’s bliss that’ll accompany us throughout our new lives. It’s bliss that will have us lay down our weapons, take up the ways of cooperation, and want to venture out to help other civilizations (perhaps the bliss that may come to us with 12/12/12. I don’t know).
Even though it may not be well understood by those who’ve never tasted it, if we multiply a thousandfold the bliss we receive from the Earthly pursuits and delights we just named, those who scarcely know what we’re talking about may get at least a vague idea (and they may not believe us. That too could happen).
When psychologist Frances Banks left the Astral Planes (Fourth Dimension) and visited the Mental Planes (Fifth Dimension), the tale she came back with was one of bliss:
“I cannot hope even to transmit the enveloping peace, the sense of tranquil being that envelopes one with this transition of consciousness. It is the breakthrough for which I longed when on earth and which I only experienced in infinitesimal moments of Union. It is the Reality of Being. It is joy beyond words. It is in truth an ecstacy of living, of being a live, alert Self in a world of Live and Glorious Selves within a consciousness of a Great Creative Self. I cannot express this feeling of Inner Spirit more clearly.” (3)
The bliss to be found on the Astral Plane is already much more extensive than the bliss we find here so Frances’ enthusiasm must show that it’s far greater on the Mental Plane.
So if we’re looking for what may be the ace up our sleeves to appeal to those who are epicureans, athletes or lovers of rock and roll, for my money, it’s the bliss. Bliss is what we seek through our pursuits anyways and if they had even a remote conception of the bliss that’s available where we’re going, perhaps their ears might just perk up.
Bliss is the reward for all our actions. Bliss brings with it wisdom and contentment. Bliss is the end of the journey.
Bliss is what God is. I think that, when God meets God at the end of all our wanderings, that meeting will see all experiences, all memories, all yearning erased in overwhelming bliss.
So that is where we’re headed, whether on Dec. 21 or on another day – to a realm of bliss. All are welcome. Even those who must be prodded, metaphorically speaking, to leave the mud behind. Why, they’re even welcome to come along just as they are.
Everything Earthly, everything dualistic, everything Third Dimensional will be left behind, traded for transformative and perpetual bliss. As the President said when the war was won in Independence Day: “Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Footnotes
(1) Mata Amritanandamayi, Awaken, Children! Vallicakavu, India: Mata Amritanandamayi Mission Trust, 1, 8.
(2) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Three vols. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 1, 19.
(3) Frances Banks in Helen Graves, Testimony of Light. London: Churches Fellowship for Psychical & Spiritual Studies, 1975; c1969, 123.
via The 2012 Scenario
