We humans are so self-absorbed. That's the only thing that stands between us and a life of pure bliss.
Sure, there will always be things going on in the world at large, and in our individual lives, that we wish were different. But bliss doesn't depend on lack of friction in life. We can be facing that which we wish to change, and work to change it, and still be experiencing bliss throughout.
At least in theory we could. Most of us usually can't for this very reason: we're too caught up in our own story to have enough objectivity to experience bliss even when everything is going our way, let alone when things aren't!
I can't tell you how many times I've sat outside and completely missed the beauty all around me. Not noticed the gentle touch of the breeze on my skin. Not lost myself in the majesty of a nearby tree. How many times I've eaten a dessert, barely noticing it in my mouth. The first few bites, sure, but then the mind goes to other things and before I know it the treat is simply down to the last bite I'm swallowing.
Letting It In
The secret to letting in the experience of the bliss that is our true nature, an experience that is always available and waiting for us to identify with it, is simply taking a pause in our identification with our own story.
You may not realize this, but there is a running conversation going in your head. It is constantly making shit up. It also gets creative with what your 5 senses are perceiving. It uses perception to conceive of ideas. It filters the data to "make sense" based on what you've already accepted as true.
Most of what is available to your 5 senses gets filtered out as irrelevant. We have to do that or otherwise our computer would overload (brain couldn't process anything by trying to process too much). I tend to think that's what's going on with autism, but for another day. There are actually many implications of this, but I want to make a particular point today.
That point is that we are constantly maintaining the fiction that is "me."
That's why our minds are too busy to notice some of the best things that are actually available to us in any given moment. We don't have bandwidth for beautiful skies when we're busy figuring out how to make that co-worker like us enough to be easier to work with. Or how to pay that bill. Or how to make sure we have a job next year. Or that the right political party screws us over next, and not too bad this time.
Those are all thoughts that can pull people away from the bliss of existence, but the #1 nemesis of present moment experience is the "self" concept.
There is the story of this history of what this body has experienced or been defined by. This person is named Indigo. She was born in this country and to these parents. She lived in this house, went to this school, had these disappointments and achievements, is good at these things and bad at these other things, is of this gender and ethnicity, is tall and skinny, likes this person and dislikes this other one, conceptualizes only in ways prescribed by her culture (though rarely realizing this until she's in a different culture), and so on.
Me.
That's who wants to get along with their co-workers, pay their bills, and so on so that bad things don't happen to it. It's constantly working to make sure that's it's safe. You can see how that job would be very stressful and seem to never end, given that it can't be safe since it's just made up and starts dissolving the second you stop letting it control your focus of attention!
You don't feed it your attention, something else starts to happen! Which I'll talk about later, but first let's clarify more of how things are working normally so that I can address fixing that at the same time.
Keeping It Out
I've got my story and you've got yours, and each one limits us in our own unique ways. It does this initially so that we aren't lost in a sea of overwhelming data. We learn who we are as a coping mechanism. Without this self-concept, we can't plan our lives, see the cause and effect that will get us what we want, or know how to benefit ourselves above others. Much of what passes for achievement in school and work really comes down to advancing one's self-interests effectively. But without a strong sense of self, how could you?
Those who don't learn to do this adequately as they grow up we generally call Developmentally Delayed. (We make up a story for them and give it a name even.) Those who do it well enough to be adequately functional on their own in the world to be left to their own devices we just call incompetent.
Or with some people, they think of them by insults like stupid, retarded, etc. But really it's just that some people aren't good at advocating for themselves.
Sometimes that's because they aren't good at eliminating enough available data so that they're only making sense of what their minds can actually organize. This relates to data about the world and data about themselves.
They're "out of it" and have a "lack of common sense" because they either can't process the same amount of data most of their society can or can't eliminate enough for what their minds can process.
Yet there, available to us, is the world. There within the data is not just the experience of this one body, it's touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight, but of all life. Not only could we be doing a better job advancing our own personal interests if we could only make sense of more of the available data, but we could be doing a better job advancing the interests of our entire species, our entire world even! Instead, we're basically committing genocide against ourselves by either killing each other directly with wars and negligence, or actually poisoning the planet to where it can no longer support our lives!
If they're retarded, so are all of us, just by a different measure of what we "should" be able to interpret of experience.
There available to us right now is the experience of that tree over there. And that squirrel. And even the wind itself.
It's right there. Constantly perceiving, emitting, being, along the same continuum of consciousness that we are. And sometimes maybe you've picked up on it and felt that transcendence.
Allowing Beyond 3D
If you've ever felt like you were using a 6th sense, it's probably because right then you weren't caught up in your own story. It was almost as if you could read other people's minds. You had a deeper sense of communion with all of life, not just other humans. And you had this pervading sense of security and "all is well" despite having no reason to think so. It was a knowing, not a thought.
In that experience, you weren't thinking about yourself at all. That break from the self-obsessed story allowed you to let in awareness of something else's experience of this world.
That's why I wouldn't call it a 6th sense, even though you could process data previously unavailable to you. To call it a sense would say that it was just another way of picking up data from the environment. Maybe, but I think it's more that it's a different perspective. It is a perspective on the same data, but coming from the tree's point of view, not yours.
Might we call that even a dimension? Might different ways of perceiving the same data come from the fact that we are interpreting in 3D while some aspects of life live in 4D?
And might we sometimes be able to tap into them and perceive in 4D ourselves?
Let's Try It Together!
You game?
If you are, right now find some object that is alive to focus on. It could be a plant if you're indoors, but if you can go outside and sit without being so uncomfortable that that's what's keeping you locked in your self-awareness, then outdoors is better. Find a tree. They're big and loud energetically, so easier to pick up on at first.
If there are no trees where you are, then use the effects of the wind. You can't see the wind, but you can track it by its effects on whatever it touches. The wind is aware and alive, so it works.
There have been times when I've been in such an expanded state that I could even direct the wind. I would simply identifying with it, then choose to flow in a new pattern or intensity, then calm to stillness. I just had to imagine it, and it instantly was. But we aren't going to try to do anything so extraordinary today. That's only ever happened to me a few times, and I've sat as we're about to many, many times.
Continuing with our experiment together, once you get yourself comfortably settled on your seat (not thirsty or hungry or too hot/cold or anything that pulls your focus toward discomfort in the body) stop focusing on you, and start focusing on your plant/tree/wind/etc.
Watch it. Focus all your attention on it. Notice things about it, but don't go off writing mental stories ruminating the meaning of what you notice. Give meaning a break for a minute or two. Just watch. Observe. Notice. Feel, but not by focusing on your body. Feel the tree. Open your full awareness to it by giving it your full attention for a minute.
Can you go another minute or two? Go as long as you can without getting restless or annoyed.
When I do this for 5-10 minutes I can "see" things I hadn't "seen" before. See isn't really the right word, but we don't have a word for 4D experiences like that which I'm pretty sure trees are letting in routinely.
I took this picture when I did this earlier today...
If you look at this picture, you probably don't literally see any significant patterns in the branches. They look pretty random to me. But when I "saw" them with the perspective of the tree, there was extraordinary order! It was a masterpiece of logic and precision, in harmony with all forces of life -- sun, wind, water, land -- all of it, and yet also completely intentional!
Then I would drop back into my self-awareness again, and once again I couldn't perceive the tree logic anymore.
In Conclusion
Well this is a long post, and there is A LOT more to be said about this, so I might as well stop for today. I hope you'll keep doing this experiment with me, and tell me sometime what you're picking up on that most of us are usually missing out on.
The more we let in, the more of the bliss and blessing of life that gets to flow through us, for our benefit and the world's.