The practice of Apophatic bliss

The practice of Apophatic bliss

The attainment of satisfaction is not so far out of reach at any given stage of your journey as you might think. That’s also the message of Apophatic Mysticism.

The removal of personal obstacles, a stasis of bliss (ecstacy even) is largely dependent on factors we all have very much under our close control, if we choose. There are many recognised practices which help us to offset or eliminate attachment of various kinds.

We can “do” non-dual ways of thinking and even “get” the fundamental ideas which help us to act with non-judgement, and discover that outcomes negative and outcomes positive have essentially equal value to us, regardless of how these present to us as subjective extremes.
This merciful release from dependency on the “satisfaction” with life becomes turned around, when life lived fully and in the richness of the moment “lives” us.

Every single activity of the mind or body can be experienced with a passionate focus, with no regard or need for “outcome”. Which, being intensely lived in the moment, releases burdens of acquisition and the trappings of results measured by time past or time future.

I find it hard not sound like a steam engine, chuntering my words, to describe or transfer my own experience of these processes of surrender and show how there is easy access to an unshakeable and constant love of life, which in turn is grounded in all our deepest existence.

I now think I can trace back my own deliverance from fruitless striving after illusory goals. I was shaken out of my personal boundaries by my first, rather ecstatic, experiences of my self, subsumed wholesale and all on a sudden, into the eyes of my first few Biodanza partners. This marked the start of 2013, the Year of my Life.

The rush out of my entire selfhood and my entry, by consent, disembodied and without words, into the most sacred heart space of another shook me and created lasting fundamental changes in my appreciation of life and what I am doing in it.

These changes were at first devastating and incomprehensible. I even had no English vocabulary to describe what was happening. I had to learn so much from first principles. I read hungrily and learned a lot from Googling new words, like Non-attachment and Self-sabotage. A few Soulfriends, wiser and more travelled, shared their time with love.

What was happening with me was bewildering but undeniably beautiful, so I began to journal, to create a type of daily order from my emotional chaos. Journaling continues to be of great benefit. What I am composing right now is journaling.

I soon understood that my Apophetic Ecstasy had arrived, though I only stumbled on this technical term eight years later. I knew it was here to stay. The fact of its presence shows up as a constant feeling of being in love with no person or object of the love.

All my adult life, I have been fascinated by the mysticism and awe which so often accompanies the act of surrender.

Surrender here is me releasing my own will. This surrender can be a willful and willing acceptance and yielding to whatever else is occurring other than what I personally believe, think or want.

In the moment of release into such a state of surrender, acceptance becomes everything, and I see everything as containing and contained in sufficiency. A sufficiency where I want nothing, want for nothing, and Loving Kindness and Goodness follow me all the Days of my life!

Honestly, the veil is thin as thin can be between the “hard labour” we so often take to be our lot in life, and the permanent lightness of heart which relates to our innate and primal human state of being and which is available to everyone EveryNow

Postscript

I was surprised recently to discover much of what I have become aware of since 2013, as I negotiate these ripe orchards of newness, is described in scholarly detail in the book by Raymond Carl Sigrist, published by Infinity.com, titled “In love with everything – Apophatic Mysticism”.

From my personal perspective, the wanderer filled with wonder, Sigrist’s treatment of the subject skips over the transformative effects of the application of bliss in daily thought and action. The shifting ground of bliss welcomes my feet on my stepping stones to wakeful gratitude.