Finding My Bliss Path

My knee rests between my hands and under his, skin warm and pink from the sun finding it in the hours we’ve been driving. My gaze moves from the stretch of road ahead, to him at the wheel, to my right at the layers of rose bushes and rock down to a calm blue sea. Our bodies move subtly to the same rhythm of ambient music. Soft smiles left over from an inside joke. Eyes low from a day in sand and sun, fighting to stay open to feel this feeling, to see the environment that brings it.

We’re in Italy. Driving along the quiet, salty seaside of Puglia. Another trip in a string of many I’ve taken in the past 8 months since embarking on the sabbatical that’s become a pivotal life chapter. An amalgam of travels, experiences, relationships, medicine journeys, and teachings that each on their own could encompass a lengthy blog post. Some of which have. All of these layered on top of one another have brought a certain flavor of transformation that has been both beautiful and unexpected. I scan the blurred pinks, greens, and blues to my right, let the breeze move my eyelashes closed, and reflect on what this might be.

I didn’t plan to take this much time. I thought I’d go to India for a couple months, return renewed and ready to dive into my next all-encompassing venture that’d take the next few years of my life. But that’s what true surrender will do. Listening as life paves your path for you day by day, listening and trusting then walking, without always knowing exactly where it’s leading. A liberating and terrifying thing to do. Surrender is a word I’ve used often on here, though I realize I was naive to the meaning. It came from my mind, I knew it intellectually and applied it in that way. The felt sense, the actual experience of letting go to the great vast undulating chaotic ocean of life is another thing. And it’s been a journey…one I’m still understanding and navigating today.

I chose surrender and continue to because I knew I wanted something different. I knew I wanted a life that felt good. A life that felt vibrant, alive, and flowing with ease because it’s in alignment with my truth and what the universe wants. And I knew my life up until that point hadn’t been that way, not to the degree it could be. I’d tasted notes of it in traveling, creating, journeying, connecting, but these were isolated to the rare pockets of life we reserve for joy. I know and trust we can live in that place always. We can design our lives, we can choose. Choose work, homes, partners, lifestyles, that feel good in our hearts not just our minds, aligns with our own souls not others’ scripts.

I’ve discovered this takes realizing our own unique path, then the courage to walk it. And that finding that path first takes surrendering, letting loose our grip on life as we know it so we can be guided towards what it should be.

External pressures make it hard to do that. Jobs, relationships, kids, possessions, expectations and other strings in life can pull us from the voice within trying to tell us what we really want. I was fortunate that nearly all of these strings in my life were cut last November. I left the job that’d been my world for 2 years, moved out of LA, ended a relationship, and set off to wander for a while. I had a seed in mind of what I’d build next, and intended to make the next few months about clearing my head enough to receive what that was meant to be, then go do it.

Clearing my head soon expanded into what’s felt like a death and rebirth. Breaking free from the strings opened a clear channel to all the walls that’d been keeping me from my own bliss. And to the guiding lights that’d steer me back on track. So I started following these.

At first it was a strange journey. It’s amazing how difficult it was, still can be, to allow myself to feel good. To follow the joy, and trusting this was my compass to the unique path I sought to uncover. It felt naughty. Like I was cheating the system or breaking the rules. Like there needs to be a certain level of suffering in life in order to be worthy of it—a grossly false inner belief inherent to the human condition that we must awaken to overcome. A belief that is the root of much of the anxiety, depression, and fear-driven, combative behavior among us today.

Much of that belief for me comes from the fire that’s burned in me for as long as I can remember. The fire that’s always said I’m supposed to do something big for the world. Something great and impactful that makes a positive difference. The fire that blazes whenever I take space for my own rest and relaxation, forcing me back to some semblance of productivity or perceived alignment to my mission in order to justify the time and appease the flame.

I know there’s a reason for this fire. And most of me is grateful for it. And I also know that if I only listened to it, I’d sacrifice myself to the extent that I wouldn’t do any good for anyone. So this has become my mantra of justification, until hopefully one day it’s just natural, that in order to do good I must feel good. That our world is a mirror, reflecting our inner state back to us, impacting our work and relationships. That tuning inward must be our first priority, cleansing, clearing, and allowing the inner voice to be heard, guiding us to our own paths of bliss.

I open my eyes, melt more into the subtle beauty of this moment, let the soft ease of it hold me like a blanket. The best reflections arise from this state. One where the mind and body are merged with what is, in a state of surrendered presence, letting the truth arise naturally from that place.

Bliss. Ease. Joy. Love. What else? The familiar fire arises in response…but we have to…and on it goes. I let the voices pass through like the silly trolls they are, turn and watch a bird glide past my window then towards the Adriatic. Free and at one with the wind and her heart.

From the poet, Rumi,

Lose yourself,

Lose yourself.

Do not fear this loss,

For you will rise from the earth

and embrace the endless heavens.

Lose yourself,

Lose yourself.

Escape from this earthly form,

For this body is a chain

and you are its prisoner.

Smash through the prison wall

and walk outside with the kings and princes.

Lose yourself,

Lose yourself at the foot of the glorious King. When you lose yourself

before the King

you will become the King.

Lose yourself,

Lose yourself.

Escape from the black cloud

that surrounds you.

Then you will see your own light

as radiant as the full moon.

Now enter that silence.

This is the surest way

to lose yourself. . . .

What is your life about, anyway?—

Nothing but a struggle to be someone,

Nothing but a running from your own silence.

Spiritual Ego Check: Heal Yourself, Heal The World

Getting back to the states post-India has been interesting. Landing in one of the most doer cities, NYC, has been a shock to say the least. Despite all my years spent in this environment and mindset, just two months in the east shifted me to a new place. Probably because of how natural and human it felt. Makes you think maybe this is how we’re all meant to live—a way of being so foreign to my years of American conditioning, yet one I so quickly internalized.

There have been many little moments I’ve noticed since getting back that represent this. Things we do differently here that now feel pointed, unconscious, cold. Things that urged me to sit down, ruminate, then write here.

Then I remembered my Vipassana learnings…this sounds like a craving or aversion arising…pause. What’s the Dhamma view?—our reality is our own responsibility. My perception of the external world is simply a projection of my internal world.

Post redirect.

I’m an observer. I’m also a problem solver. And, with my first-principles mind, I like looking for the core of problems and solving through the roots. This was I think what drew me to mental health. I believe the root of many if not all of our problems in the world stem from a diseased and asleep human mind—a mind that Eckhart Tolle would say is not even human at all, but a conditioned ego holding us hostage and separate from our true divine nature as connected beings.

A lot of my writing reflects this—problem-solving and mental health. So it’s been an interesting, humbling, experience going deeper down my own journey, and realizing that the core of many spiritual teachings stems from the ever-returning cycle of coming back to self. That all ‘problems’ I notice begin from within—the place inside in the moment I decide to label something as a problem. And the truest way to overcome the suffering caused by these perceived problems is to cleanse my lens.

^I reworded that many times, knowing if not framed correctly I’d lose most of you, perhaps thinking: “What about poverty? Racism? Climate change? COVID-19? Are these not problems? We’ve lost her to the woo woo ether.”

This is where I ask you to either stick with me or, if inclined, pick up one of these books that might help you bridge this way of thinking towards where I’m speaking from:

Awareness by Anthony de Mello

Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj

The idea I’m trying to express with the limited words available to capture it is that our perceptions create our reality, not the other way around. And deeper…our collective perceptions form our collective reality.

In Alan Watts’ words,

“Cheer up. You can’t blame anyone else for the kind of world you’re in”.

Or, more poignantly, a quote from Maharaj now taped to the journal I carry everywhere,

“You can spend an eternity looking elsewhere for truth and love, intelligence and goodwill, imploring God and man—all in vain. You must begin in yourself, with yourself—this is the inexorable law. You cannot change the image without changing the face. First realize that your world is but a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault in that reflection. Attend to yourself, set yourself right—mentally and emotionally. The physical will follow automatically. You talk so much of reforms, economic, social, political. Leave alone the reforms and mind the reformer. What kind of world can a man create who is stupid, greedy, heartless?”

How do we set ourselves right—cleanse our lens? Through all the methods I’ve written extensively about on here. Mindfulness, meditation, yoga, psychedelics, whatever helps one tune in, and it’s a continuous practice. Not an hour in your morning to check off the list, but a practice one chooses to live by, to be a better human for themselves and others. It’s pausing in an inevitable moment of ego, humbly checking in, then choosing the way of compassion.

So here I am, taking a pause and shifting this post’s topic after wanting to drone on about the contrasts between the east and the west…and all the perceived problems that arose in my mind and heart.

The question I’m now pondering is, what’s the balance between acceptance and action? What’s the balance between striving to solve world problems, and cultivating acceptance for all that is?

What’s become clear to me after my time over there, and after years spent unpacking my problem-solving, achievement-focused, mission-driven mind, is that in order to create positive change for the world, I need to

1. put as much energy into my own mental wellbeing as I do for the work, and

2. create for the collective, not the self

And the paradox is, when building from that place, upside is empowered, not sacrificed.

I’m in the midst of testing and exploring these ideas, with the help of these timely books:

Healing by Dr. Tom Insel

Leading from the Emerging Future by Otto Scharmer

More to come❤️