Embodied Bliss
By Kiva Rose

“Bliss is not ‘found’ but revealed. Acknowledged. Allowed. Engaged. Embodied.”  
-Jesse Wolf Hardin

My sweetie and I watch our six year old daughter as she crouches naked up to her shoulders in the crystalline river.  Her head is dipped down as she drinks the cold water in quiet gulps while her hair falls in wet ropes around her face. She is effortlessly comfortable and completely aware, surrounded on all sides by the rich riparian green and raw red cliffs of the Gila Wildlands.  A single vivid blue damselfly rests tentatively on one small brown shoulder.  Rhiannon stops drinking to motionlessly watch her visitor with intent eyes and a huge grin.  She waits until the damselfly takes flight on its own before she whirls in wild circles, growling and howling in wordless delight.

While I am watching her I cannot help but think that this must be the original and intended state of being: perfectly present and aware, a blissful extension of the land itself. That this wild-eyed child is the embodiment of bliss.  And I also cannot help but feel my own bliss, constant here as it never has been before, defined not as the absence of cares or shallow and conditional happiness but as a deep seated oneness with land and purpose, no longer lost or lacking.

I have not always been able to claim such a state.  For most of my life I wandered, searching and discontented, all too aware of every trouble and misery ever visited upon my life.  It was a revelation to discover that life was not inherently ugly or burdensome, tedious or mediocre. Instead, I found that it was meant to be beautiful, a celebration and prayer manifest in every action and movement.

Unfortunately, it is that attitude of futility and cynicism that is most common.  We are born into a culture that seems to believe there are certain sets of rules that must be followed.  That life is a multiple choice test and that we must choose one of the preselected answers. What tell our students and the folks who come on retreats, is that bliss – like truth and contentment – are not a question of “how can I get through life as comfortably as I can?” or “How can I succeed just enough to get by?”  Rather, we suggest asking “What gives me the greatest joy?”, “What passion/purpose could I dedicate my life to?” and/or “What do I need to be more whole?” If we are honest with ourselves we will find that the answers to these questions have very little to do with societal standing, monetary status or even our comfort level.  And that they call for response, change and action.

Suffering is a vital teacher not to be ignored, but neither is it supposed to be a constant, nor are we meant to get attached to it.  One of the things that the inspirited natural world teaches – and that we at this magical Anima Center try to impart – is that we are each intrinsically worthy of our natural bliss.  That it’s our native condition and not something outside of ourselves to seek.  That it’s our true state of being whenever not crippled by acute pain, once we get over our self judgment and discomfort and learn to embody our real selves.  We are naturally blissful whenever not wrought with worry, obsessed with life’s pain or ruled by our fears, whenever the masks are taken off and the clouds over our hearts lifted.  Whenever we embody our physical and more-than-physical senses, our intuition and instinct, our meaningful purpose... walk our talk, and live our dreams.  Joy inhabits the breast of the inner child and all of our glorious wildness waits for us there.  We need give ourselves license to awaken our senses, engage the universe we are an intimate part and extension of... to be passionate about existence, and to play, play, play again!

Our daughter dances on the riverbank, arms open wide and spinning, beckoning us to join her in her canyon dervish ecstasy.  We forget our self consciousness and rush to her side, bared feet in the wet sand, smiles on our wonder-filled faces.  In the act of opening to our bliss, we are delivered back to the center of our own beings: wildly awake, authentically and responsively ourselves.