The Bliss Book

by Maggie Shayne

  What About the Economy?

  This is two subjects. There’s “The” economy and then there’s “Your” economy. Even during The Great Depression, there were people who got rich. The economy doesn’t have any impact on Your economy unless you believe it does.

  If we can focus on the things that are going right, and keep ourselves in the moment, and remain confident in the drastic improvement right around the corner, we will thrive regardless of what The economy is doing.

  It’s a matter of happy where I am and eager for more.

  It’s a matter of I’m as confident of constant improvement as I am that the sun will rise in the morning.

  It’s a matter of I’m so sure of my well-being that I never worry. I don’t lie awake nights with my mind racing, fearful, and believing in lack. I relax into sleep knowing everything is good just the way it is, and that it’s getting better all the time.

  The economy never has to be Your economy. We each create our own. Knowing that takes a whole lot of the worry away, doesn’t it?

  Psst! Bonus tip. When our personal economy is one of abundance, that creates a ripple effect through humankind. And it’s even bigger than our giving, our sharing, the people we employ, the dollars we spend, or the taxes we pay. Our example that abundance is possible despite a “bad economy” expands out into the world, and people who thought it was impossible before, now know better. And for them, that changes everything.

  What About the Environment?

  Earth was here long before humans, and She will be here long after humans are gone. She’s had countless warming trends, and cooling cycles and ice ages.

  Are humans causing the current warming trend? Or is it right on schedule? Yes to both. Are humans exacerbating it, speeding it up, empowering it in any way? Yes to all three.

  How can we stop it?

  We can’t. It’s going to keep getting warmer, until it boomerangs into another ice age.

  So what do we do? Same thing we always do. By this point of the book, you should be able to predict the next paragraph almost word for word.

  First, we get aligned. We make peace with what is. We identify the goal that our awareness of the problem has inspired within us. Then we begin focusing on the improved condition we seek.

  The latest evidence shows that humans have survived ice ages before, and we’ll survive ice ages again. Our focus remains on being happy right where we are.

  How Do You Get Aligned With People Polluting the Earth?

  By knowing She (that’s a big She, as in Big Mamma, as in Gaia, as in Don’t Mess with Mother Nature) won’t put up with our bullshit for long.

  So we begin as we begin every other desire we want to manifest. The change we seek to make begins inside us.

  Step 1: Think about what our awareness of the problem makes us wish for.

  I imagine clean, sparkling cities with cars that run without emissions where everything is powered by clean energy. Solar panels and windmills and Tesla coils abound. I see a green rolling countryside with vegetable farms providing rich abundance to all. I see clean, fresh air, and docile honeybees that have evolved past their stinging ancestors, who sometimes land on my lips to leave drops of sweet nectar. I see fruit orchards and sparkling lakes, and oceans where coral reefs thrive and life is abundant.

  This is the vision to hold if we want to help us get there. Look at this, not at the state of reality that inspired it. Don’t protest at oil spills. Plant trees instead. Never act against anything. The attention just gives it more power, makes it last longer. Be for things. Be for the things you love and long for. This isn’t saying not to march with signs. It’s saying paint what you’re for on your sign, instead of what you’re against.

  Step 2: Look for ways to feel like you’re moving toward the goal.

  Recycle everything, turn your leftovers into mulch, and start shopping organic. Do whatever makes you feel like you are moving your own personal environment closer to the ideal in your vision. Go vegan if that’s what you’re inspired to do. Go solar. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Make your own clothes. Live in a tiny house. Drive an electric car. Turn off the lights. Lower the thermostat. Clean up your street or neighborhood. Invent things that will help. Write things that will help. Create things that will help. Create a little microcosm of the world you wish to see, and watch it expand. I guarantee you, it will.

  Step 3: Look for signs its getting closer.

  If we start looking for evidence that our sparkling clean world is coming to be, we’ll help it do just that. So every day, everywhere we go, we should pay attention to the signs of improvement.

  We’ll notice solar panels where we hadn’t noticed them before.

  We’ll see more hybrid cars, more electric cars, more people riding bikes.

  We’ll notice more backyard gardens, and discover an organic farm stand close to home that we never knew was there.

  We’ll find a shortcut that reduces gas use on our commutes.

  We’ll discover how much fuel we saved with our new smart thermostats.

  We’ll hear about more and more innovative, earth-friendly startups, like one of my favorites, Solar Roadways, for example.

  We’ll read about a neighborhood project that’s right in line with our vision, and get involved. Maybe a community garden or a town cleanup effort.

  A recycling center opens near our house.

  We hear about a big environmental bill that makes us happy and more hopeful than ever.

  Step 4: Paradise

  If we keep our eyes on the prize, we will see paradise on earth. I already see it every single day in my own back yard. First, we see it in small pockets and then we’ll notice it becoming more and more widespread. Like ripples in the water, everything we do spreads out into the Whole of creation. Nothing we do is done in isolation. Everything touches everything else. We are so much more powerful than we know.

  Compare This to What Most People Do Instead

  They protest, preach, shout, cry, lecture, boycott, form a human chain, block traffic, destroy property. Write books and make television programs that follow half-starved polar bears and shrinking glaciers. They fear and spread fear. They panic and spread panic. They grieve and spread grief.

  And while we need to know, we can’t put so much attention on anything without making it grow. Attention is fertilizer. Our focus is an engraved invitation into our lives, hand delivered to the things we do not want. Fear. Panic. Grief.

  So, all those who fear that man is harming the planet are creating harm to the planet. And those who spread that fear are creating it exponentially.

  To bring about positive change, be for solutions rather than against problems. Focus on what we do want, and not on what we don’t want. And live fearlessly.

  Instead of putting all our attention on the factory that’s polluting the lake, we can praise the hundreds of businesses that are green and earth-friendly. Instead of spending all our time organizing a boycott of that business, drum up support for the green ones that are doing things right. We can spend our money to support the good companies, and write reviews and share their info.

  And yes, of course we should tell the powers that be about the bad business and that we want it shut down. If our building is on fire, we’re going to pull the alarm. And yes, we can boycott. If a business is doing things we don’t like, we’re going to stop spending our money there, and we’ll tell our friends to do the same. Do these things! Just don’t make them your focus. Do them and move on. As soon as possible, we must shift our attention to what’s going right, what’s happening that’s good right now, and what we can do to focus on and support the solutions into being. By doing that, we’ll feed them and help them grow.

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  Assignment 11

  World Bliss

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  Think of the global problem you worry the most about. Then think how the world will look when this problem has been solved. Spend some time writing about or even drawing the solution in your jour
nal. See if you can begin to build this kind of world in miniature right in your own home, and then do so. Start noticing other places where this problem has been or is in the process of being eradicated to prove to yourself that it is indeed possible. Because as you know, if you believe it, there’s no stopping it.

  The Goddess Speaks

  You aren’t just on me, you’re of me. Just as your flesh and bones are your Spirit’s physical shell, so the earth is the temple of my Spirit.

  Like your body, the earth is finite. But I, Her Spirit, Gaia, I am eternal.

  Now, the deeper secret, my children, your Source, and all the Sources of every other living being, are each individual, and yet parts of a greater Whole.

  The mirror reflection, the non-physical version, the Spirit twin of every animal and bug and bird, those are eternal. And they too are part of the greater Whole.

  The ethereal side of every rock and mineral and grain of sand, and every drop of water, and breath of air, every solid, liquid and gas, they too are a part of the greater Whole.

  And every element on the chart, and those not on it yet. And every star and planet and moon, and every body of anything, anywhere, has a spiritual counterpart.

  To be otherwise would be like having a movie showing on the wall, but no projector to project it. Impossible. The physical is a projection of the spiritual.

  Further, the Whole isn’t behind you, something you return to. We move only outward. Never in. Forward, never back. The Whole is a NEW Whole when all you are melds into it. It’s more than it was before, bigger with all the information your lifetime has added. And from that new Whole, you spring forth again, and you are different, too.

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  Chapter Ten

  Death Isn’t What We Think

  * * *

  What Happens When We Die?

  When I finish with my earth body and emerge from it, I believe I will bring with me all that I am, all I saw, felt, touched, thought, did, didn’t do, everything I tasted and smelled and intuited, everything and everyone I loved, and all my pain, too. I’ll bring it all to the Whole. And then I’ll nestle there, connected to ALL, loving and loved by ALL as the sum total of my lifetime uploads. I’ll get to process what I’ve learned, and then I think I get to see others uploading their lifetimes and I will realize that I’m plugged into the mainframe. I sort of AM the mainframe. I’m getting all of it. All those lifetimes of new knowing. I get all of it. We all do.

  It’s not that each of us is a part of the Whole.

  It’s that all of us ARE the Whole.

  Instead of all are one, we should be saying, All are All.

  So the wisdom I gain between lifetimes is the wisdom of many billions of lifetimes.

  And when I’ve absorbed it all, I’ll mull on it for a while. Yes, I’m sure we must mull on it. I just love when I learn something new, and can sit and mull on it for a while, and write it out, and interpret its meanings in as many permutations as my mind can conjure, and decide how I understand it. What it means in my truth.

  So I think I’ll take some time to mull, to weave a story from this lifetime, and to choose how to interpret the lifetimes of all those others, and make it all a part of my new and improved knowing.

  And then I think I’ll be different. And so when a new physical body emerges from all that I now am, it will look different than the last one. It will be different. It might be a different gender. It might have different skin tones. It’s not an expression of who I was last time. It’s an expression of who I am this time.

  We ’re Never Gone.

  There ’s No Such Thing as Gone.

  This is a hard one to grasp, but when I finally did, it gave me a deep and abiding peace. And I’ve seen it give that same peace and comfort to those who are still physical after someone they love has moved on.

  Heaven isn’t a different place. It’s just a different frequency. They’re not gone from us; they exist simultaneously with us, but physical has a different vibration than Spirit does, and so it’s harder for us to experience them as real and present in our physical reality, that world we see around us. It’s just a different station on our radio dial, and it might be right at the highest edge of our receiver’s range.

  It’s just the same way a dog can hear sounds beyond the range of human hearing, sounds whose waves have a more rapid pattern than we’re able to interpret with our physical ears. The waves of Spirit are at such a high frequency we can barely perceive them. But we can perceive them. It’s just different.

  Dreams and Physical Senses

  Did you ever think about how we can see in our dreams, even though we’re not using our eyes? Scenes unfold in our dreams just as vividly as they do on our TV screens. Sometimes even more vividly. They’re in 3D. And we don’t just see, we feel and hear and speak. We’re cold or warm, there’s wind in our face. But we aren’t using our ears to hear or our skin to feel.

  We’re using the spiritual version of those senses. Everything physical has emerged from Spirit. Everything physical is a “denser” version of something spiritual. Everything physical has a mirror image in the non-physical. The Spirit version has no resistance, no scars or flaws. Everything like that is just an illusion that we leave behind when we emerge from our physical forms.

  So, now, let’s expand this to people, our people, those we love. They too have a spiritual version, their Higher Self, and when the body is left behind, the bit of Spirit that used to occupy it (the Soul) rejoins its spiritual version, which is much bigger, bringing with it all the new experiences it has gathered.

  We often refer to the spiritual world as heaven, or the afterlife, or the other side. We identify it as if it’s a different place, where our loved ones have traveled, and where we can no longer reach them.

  But there’s nothing to be on the other side of. No wall, no curtain, no door. Our loved ones are right here with us. They’re just vibrating at a different frequency. All we have to do is tune in to them to have our strongest chance of communication.

  How to Tune Them In

  We must drop the notion of being able to find them outside of us. I know that sounds cliché, but bear with me and explore this more deeply. They have melded with Source, Divinity, Soul. We need to talk to them through our own Spirit or Soul, which we generally perceive as residing inside us.

  We have to turn inward to try to meld with our Higher Self, with our Soul, and from that aligned place, we can visit with our beloved ones again.

  The Higher Self, or Soul, Vibrates Higher and Faster

  That’s because there is less resistance. In Spirit, we have a much wider, broader view. It’s like the difference between seeing a meadow from the point of view of a mole peeking out of his burrow, and seeing it from the point of view of an eagle, soaring high above. While we’re here, in these bodies, we can only see from the limited perspective of the mole. When we leave our bodies behind, we can see from the eyes of the eagle.

  From the broader, greater perspective, we will know for sure there’s nothing to fear, and that all is well, and that everything in our lives made sense, and that even grief creates more love, more joy.

  To be able to tune them in, we have to get as high as a physical being can get. We have to be in a place of pure alignment, pure surrender to all that is, absolute confidence that all is well, and in a state of well-being. Because that’s their vibration now. And to tune in anything, we must match its vibration.

  This is very tough to do in the throes of grief and mourning. And that’s why at first, the feeling of separation from our beloved is so sharp and so acute. Because our grief is so strong, it holds us far from the state of alignment they now enjoy.

  As the pain’s sharpness begins to subside a little bit, we must reach for moments of relief as much as we can. Our loved ones are always eager to let us know they’re all right. And they’re trying, but they can’t find us, either. They are vibrating far from where we are weeping for them. Missing them. We’re all the way on the opposit
e end of the dial, vibrating at a low frequency, with big peaks and valleys that occur far apart. They, on the other hand, are vibrating so fast, the peaks are small and close and rapid.

  Bit by bit, though, we can begin to look for them, not where they used to be, but where they are now. Picture an exalted, idealized version of them, the most perfect version of them. See them that way. We cannot over-estimate how light they’ve become. See them weightless and radiating absolute joy and love, right here with us, and reaching out to us from the inside, through our Soul, our Spirit, our inner Divinity.

  Start to look for signs. For some reason, their efforts to let us know they’re okay are most effective on other airwaves. Radio waves. The signals transmitted and received by our televisions. The electrical systems in our homes and cars. So pay attention to the sudden bursts of static, the odd behavior of lights and other electrical things and wave things.

  Look for coins. I have no idea why, but they seem to throw a lot of coins into our paths to get our attention. Especially dimes and pennies.

  Watch for other signs, too, especially watch for things they loved that we readily associate with them. I was officiating at my best friend’s daughter’s wedding, when a dragonfly came and danced around the front row. It landed on my friend’s shoulder, fluttered around the others there, and lingered throughout the ceremony. My bff’s sister had passed years earlier, and she loved dragonflies. She collected representations of them in jewelry and images. There was no doubt in my mind that she had attended the wedding, and used the dragonfly to let us know she was there.

  My mom passed away a few days after her 60th birthday. She was sick for a long time, and I’d been agonizing with her for the final few weeks. She just couldn’t seem to let go, and her suffering was probably more painful for her family to witness than it was for her to experience. I think as her body grew weaker, its frequency slowing, her Spirit was vibrating higher and higher, and I think most of her consciousness had shifted from her physical body to her spirit days before her body stopped living.