Kindle Edition
Being Bliss on IndigoOcean.org
Amazon
Category:
Self-Help
ISBN-10: 0595357393
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 212
ISBN-13: 9780595357390
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Author Indigo Ocean takes you on a joyful journey to find your true nature in the inspiring and thought-provoking Being Bliss. Written when the author was facing a terminal diagnosis, Being Bliss is a call to action while there is still life left to be lived.
Being Bliss interweaves both humorous and painful life stories with spiritual wisdom and "try this for 3 days" practices you can use to transform your life from one of fleeting momentary pleasures or even utter despair into one of enduring contentment and joy, even through life's ups and downs. It is a refreshing new take on a very old subject, the search for happiness.
The book is available both in paperback and as a low-cost ebook that can immediately be downloaded to many devices, including for laptop or iPhone reading.
Excerpt
In this book I am going to show you that it is possible to live a life in full awareness of human vulnerability and responsibility and do so with joy. More than that, I am going to teach you how. It is from experience that I speak to you, so you can trust that what I say is practical and effective.
Fear and hopelessness ruled my life for decades, but they don't have a grip on me anymore. For years now I have embraced a different way of living that has blessed me with the most important kind of freedom there is, the freedom to grow on a path of joy instead of one of suffering.
I am a happy person. I am a truly, ecstatic, joyful person. And that is not because these years have been easy. In this time period I have suffered much pain and loss. During these years I have seen someone I loved slowly die. During these years, I have found myself in New York City to experience the destruction of the towers, witness the needless deaths of all those innocent people, and watch the militarization of the city for a year thereafter. During these years, more than once I have received news that has shocked me to my core and sent my mind spinning in search of alternative truths. Yet through it all I have remained a truly blissful person.
To be bliss doesn't mean to be untouched. It's not a state of detachment. On the contrary, you feel more. You don't hide from any of what you experience so you feel all of what has always been there. This means you find the horror of life along with the beauty. It means you are fully alive now while you have a chance to be.
I wrote this book because I am dying. At the time I began it I was convinced by my doctor that my death was imminent. That turned out to be untrue, but by then I was already half way through writing it so I decided to finish. This body really is dying anyway, though I will likely have another 50 years or so before I decide to "walk off the set."
This book is an offering to you on behalf of the All Pervading Light. Here I refer to it as "the All Pervading Light," but in other places I will say "God, Goddess, Ultimate All, Source, Infinite, Spirit, Unity, Luminous Emptiness" and a host of other labels. In seeking to name that which is beyond all concepts, what word or phrase can really capture the Truth? So here is an opening disclaimer. I cannot tell you the Truth.
If you read this book with full attention and an open mind and use the techniques found herein, you will experience the truth as it is able to reveal itself to you through me right now. In the process of conveying this to you, I will have to use words, but any words can only attempt to evoke the truth, not be it. Truth is lived. You are living it right now, but are you self aware? Let us take this journey together as partners in discovery.
I believe that everything in this book is something that is worth the time of anyone choosing to live fully while they can. Oh I know, you probably have a few good years left in you, maybe 50 or so – but then even you will have to walk off the set, so let's not waste any time. The time for you to go beyond confusion, despair, shame, fear, lack, and discontent is now. The time for enduring bliss has arrived.
All that I suggest you do, I've done myself and that's how I know that it's effective. I've also seen many clients use these techniques successfully, so I know it isn't just me. They work, and that is the test for me as to whether they should be shared. I can't offer truths. I don't know the truth. I can only offer an approach to living that will infuse your life experience with joy, peace, abundance, and love.
It doesn't matter where you are in life as you begin using these techniques. No matter how low you think you are, how truly justified your sadness, despair and grief may be, I promise you that being bliss is an absolute possibility for you. In fact, bliss is your true nature. I know because I once lived in the pits so long that it became my idea of "normal," yet I came out of it. I can tell you firsthand that there is no depth that is beyond recovery.
My Story
If you had asked me about the average person's chances for happiness 11 years ago I would have offered a tentative answer. My answer would have come from hope, not knowledge. I believed from the words of others that happiness was possible, but I had never known it personally.
Throughout my childhood I suffered from clinical depression. I attempted suicide the first time at only nine years of age. The last attempt was at the age of 21. What prevented further attempts after that was not so much that I had a reason to live as that because I was hospitalized on the last attempt my younger sister found out about my suicidal behavior. I was so concerned that she might learn from me to give up on life that I realized I could never kill myself so long as she lived.
What would become of her if her sister, who had for so many years spoken so passionately about her worth and possibility, was to give up on the worth and possibility of her own life? Like it or not, I had to stay in this body until chance provided me with a good enough exit to preserve her sense of hope.
In the meantime, I figured I'd best try some new approaches in pursuit of happiness. After many false paths, I finally came to volunteer at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. I was motivated by a recollection that when I was a teenage volunteer I had experienced some minor degrees of enjoyment within the course of service work. It was worth the time to explore that avenue again.
The first volunteer position I took at Glide was working with the children in the computer lab. I went a few weeks and it was wonderful to be with them, surrounded at last by innocence. I thought I was giving them enough love and that it was all going quite smoothly. Then one day a little Vietnamese boy asked me how I had liked the church service the day before. I told him that I hadn't been there. He asked why I missed it. I told him that I didn't go to church, but only wanted to volunteer to help him and the other children. He was clearly puzzled.
I realized then that the Sunday services meant so much to the children I was helping that I could not call myself committed to them without going to at least one service so that I knew what experience they were having there. So the next Sunday I got myself up much earlier than a Sunday morning generally meant to me and off to church I went.
To my surprise, I felt comfortable there. I went in jeans and as I looked around I saw many young people, many people in casual attire, and people of various races. Everyone was pretty friendly and welcoming and it was easy to see myself getting in and out without any unpleasant experiences, which was rare for me, each scene of my life have pretty much been fraught with pain up to that point.
Then a visiting artist stepped up to sing. Her name was Denise Austin. I recalled the name from childhood and knew I was in for a treat. I had picked the right Sunday to drop in for a look at Glide's service, for sure.
As she sang, the excitement of star power quickly gave way to the awe of hearing the voice of God speaking to me. She sang, "Come on home. It is time to come home to God." Such simple words, but they reached into the very core of me. It literally felt as if it was God singing directly to me, asking me to please come back to Him, to please make peace with Him.
By this time in my life, after 27 years of depressive agony in all social situations, I had nearly perfected the ability to hide my emotions from those around me, but all my discipline broke down in that moment. Tears rolled uncontrollably down my face as I felt something opening within me. As it opened, in rushed a current of light that seemed to cleanse the corners of my heart. I was enveloped in a field of warmth, tenderness and safety as if for the first time.
At home later that day, I remembered that I had once had a very close relationship with God. Up until the age of 9 I had spent hours talking to God each day. When the other children were out playing, I stayed in my room to be with God instead. Already suffering from undiagnosed depression, I felt overwhelmed by the world of free play. Only at school was there enough order supplied by the teacher for me to have enough safety to come out of my shell. And in that arena I was a star. But outside the confines of the class, I was thoroughly incompetent in understanding life or knowing how to respond in pretty much any situation. Afternoons with God and long, deep sleep cycles each night were how I survived until I was old enough to direct my own studies.
Once I discovered that I could lose myself in an endless series of library books, I was off God. I don't know why I made that choice, but somehow I seemed to have forgotten my personal relationship with him and come to think of him only in terms of the judgmental "jealous" god my parents were trying to teach me about. I didn't like that God. He didn't make me feel safe at all. The world of ideas felt much safer. Like many before me, I became a somber, withdrawn, bookworm at war with the very notion of God. By age 19 I had come home from my Ivy League college announcing myself as an agnostic.
Though the years before that had been very difficult, in retrospect I realize that was the beginning of the truly dark times. Only after I made peace with the personal God and began the process of healing did I realize the cost the war had extracted from me. I had made a God out of the intellect and looked to the intellectual as if following in the footsteps of Christ himself. And a cruel and vicious heaven it was indeed.
Once I made my peace and began again on the path of seeking the truth of life and the keys to happiness not through the intellect, but through the heart, I threw off my false gods. It was at that time that I began to study and practice wholeheartedly the very insights and techniques that fill the pages of this book.
I began life with a physical condition and family history that magnetized me towards depression. Some might say that only through medication could I ever be healthy or happy. But I stand here now as a truly happy person, happier than most and even able to bring the light of happiness into the lives of those around me. I don't take drugs, not Prozac, alcohol, marijuana, or even much caffeine, and I swear to you that what I have done you can do too.
The turning point for me came when I experienced the unconditional love of the All-Pervading Light moving through another person, the guest singer at Glide. I was then able to find the courage within myself to choose life over safety. As beaten down as I was, I chose to face the possibility of even more pain for the chance at something greater. I regained hope that maybe, just maybe, this was a kind and loving world that I could emotionally face without being destroyed. I then seized the opportunity and applied all my focus, skill and energy towards learning the secrets of the happy people, hoping that if anyone could be happy so could I.
It is out of my love for you that I write this book chronicling what I have learned, pointing out the principles behind the lessons, and guiding you in their application. May my voice reach you wherever you are and remind you that you too are loved. You are not so odd that you have been excluded from the flow of Divine Love. You simply need to learn how to be happy, and were never fully taught that.
Through the inspiration and insight of this book, may you find the courage to face what must be faced, learn what must be learned, and do what must be done to joyfully embrace your responsibilities as a Divine creator within a vulnerable physical vehicle. I want you to give it your all. I know you can do it.
What's Inside
Work at this book for a month. Give it 30 days of your wholehearted effort and be willing to let it change you. Study and contemplate the insights in the three chapters of the first section, the keys to happiness, and the following three chapters of the second section, the powers that activate those keys. Practice the techniques in the next 5 chapters making up the third section, skill development, so that you can access the full potential of the most essential key to happiness. And finally, rest within the container that is found within the final chapter on Relationship.
I write this book as both a professional and a fellow traveler on the road of self-healing. I am a dedicated spiritual practitioner and have studied Buddhism over the last 15 years, training under some of the most advanced teachers in the world. I have studied a number of other spiritual paths as well, in addition to holding a Master's degree in Integral Counseling Psychology. All of that experience influences my point of view.
I have also offered one-on-one assistance to others as a spiritual healer and a trance channel. A channel is someone who is able to connect with their higher self so strongly that they are able to receive clear information through the connection. Though a connection with the higher self is the pathway, the source of the information varies. Common sources include the higher self, angels, spirit guides – and some would even include life-forms from other planets on the list, though I have never knowingly had such contact.
You will find a few channeled passages in the pages of this book, though I try not to lean heavily in that direction. I know some of you are skeptical about the entire field of channeling and I believe it is possible to convey most of the wisdom of my guides using my own words. Whenever I feel something would be lost in translation, however, you will find italicized "thought transmissions" I have channeled while writing this book.
A great deal of the insights that infuse this book are a synthesis of information I have channeled during individual sessions with clients. So often when I am sharing a guide's wisdom with someone my intellect will silently be running in the background, saying, "I need to remember that myself," or "I am going to do that spiritual practice sometimes too." This is the difference between being a spiritual teacher and a spiritual channel. Just because I can channel the information, doesn't mean I have learned the lesson. I am learning as teaching comes through me. (I love having work that allows me to be a full-time student of my favorite subject, spiritual growth, without taking out anymore student loans.) I periodically re-read this book myself to keep myself focused on the most essential lessons for my own spiritual development.
If you are more comfortable with humans than with spirit guides, rest assured that despite the inclusion of wisdom from channeling sessions there is still quite a bit of everyday-people personality in this book. You will also find a little quantum physics interwoven with corresponding insights from spiritual traditions. (I did graduate from a science and math high school, after all.) And more than anything else, you will find stories from life.
I believe that the best teaching comes from example and as I have had to practice and learn the wisdom of the beings I channel in order to see countless blessings unfold in my life, I have many stories I have collected along the way. I'm happy to share those life lessons with you.
Immerse yourself in this journey. Give it a month. And I pray, by the end of the 30 days, if not before, may you be peaceful and at ease. May you be full of love and laughter. May you be happy.
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