Today, let us calibrate if we are leading a life filled with ananda or bliss. Out of 21,600 times we breathe in and out every day, how many minutes are you feeling blissful? The fact is that more than 90 per cent of us have only experienced joy which is nowhere close to the feeling of bliss.
Bliss can be experienced only when we are living in the spiritual state of awareness and consciousness. Then we understand that our state of happiness, joy and bliss is not subjected to conditions. In life, there is a constant rhythmic movement towards bliss always as long as we are breathing. Awareness teaches us this truth.
Then we experience a state of total freedom without any self-imposed conditions or obligations imposed by the society. We always expect an eventful life. Life without money, soulmate, status and fame becomes very dull and boring for most of us. The movement in our life stops if any of the above is missing or deficient. Knowingly or unknowingly we cease the growth of our own life with such ignorant conditioning. Bliss is not subjected to eventful life or events itself.
Sadness and boredom are signs of deep-rooted ignorance in us. Enlightened beings feel that there should always be a flow of energy in the form of inner joy, which ultimately translates itself into pure bliss, that originates from the centre of our heart. This can be tapped through instilling calmness in the mind, awareness of our breath—Prana Shakti—establishing unconditional love in the heart and developing presence of mind.
Dedicated sadhana, as prescribed by the enlightened master, carves our inner personality with poise. Then we become aware of our state of mind. Are we hurrying things up? Are we really calm or are we pretending to be calm? These pointers will always assist us in maintaining our composure and using the presence of our mind.
Composure is the starting point for bliss to flow to us and through us to others as well. The power of bliss is all-encompassing that it envelopes us as well as our near and dear ones. It is an energy that can never stop itself from spreading to others. When our hearts fill with such force of unconditional love, there will be no strangers in this world.
Bliss becomes our first name, middle name, and last name too. That is why we may observe that many ancient masters were reverentially addressed with the suffix of ananda along their names. With a blissful state of heart, we are keeping our minds free of stress at any point of time. We start operating much beyond our self. That is, we operate at the cosmic level and not the human level.
Our definition of samsara, which was hitherto confined to only our family and close friends, expands to the entire cosmos. Being established in the state of bliss, the whole world becomes our friend and we become Ajata Shatrus (one without enemies). We become powerful and solid with the power of our consciousness and awareness. We enjoy the pure existence of our self every moment—‘Nimisha Ananda’.
ashram-india@ shrinimishamba.org