The Bliss Book

by Maggie Shayne

  At any rate, on the day she finally left her body completely behind, as soon as I returned home from her bedside, I found a ceramic angel on the ground underneath my rural mailbox. I knew immediately it was her. It had red curls like Mom had, and a dirty face that even looked a little bit like her. A dirty-faced angel was the perfect representation of her Spirit. I have never doubted for a minute she put it there for me to find.

  The Thing We Call Imagination

  We see, hear, speak, and create inside our minds, but not in the same way we do outside in the physical world with our hands and eyes and ears and mouths. Creating from within, we use what we refer to as our imaginations.

  But what we create in our minds is very real.

  So as we begin to align with our beautiful, shining beloved ones who’ve left their bodies, and as we begin to feel their energy again, the first thing we’ll think is, “It’s just my imagination.”

  Our Spirit receives the signal, the radio wave, from theirs. We feel them. They live in us. Their Soul has merged with the Whole, and our Soul is also part of that Whole. We can tap into our Soul to find them there, residing with it. Our imagination is the tool we use to translate their high frequency radio waves into words and images. We can see just the crook of his eyebrow when we said what we just did. We can see the way she wrinkled up her nose when that song came on our headset. We know just how she’d sound when she said, “Really?” and we know just the way he’d smile and tip his head to one side. We “imagine” those things because we are interpreting the signal of them into images and sounds we can understand.

  This is the wave they’re sending us. They’re using the spiritual equivalent of facial expressions and words, and we receive them and translate them into images and sounds. This is real and true communication. Do not write off the imagination, it’s a translating tool. It’s a telegraph operator, translating blips and beeps into letters and words. It’s REAL.

  Don ’t They Have More Important Things to Do?

  No, because they’re not on a mission. They don’t think they exist to get something done. They’re experiencing, same as we are, just on a much broader scale.

  Furthermore, without the limitations of a physical shell, they can be in many places at once, and fully experiencing all of them. Our bodies keep us under the illusion that we are separate beings who can only be in one place at a time, but that rule only applies while we’re physical.

  I don’t think I understood this fully until I read Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. In it, a brain scientist relates everything she thought and felt during a stroke, and there’s a point where she realizes that one hemisphere of her brain has shut down, because she feels no separation from anything. She feels herself expanding and becoming huge, and wondering how she’s ever going to squeeze back into her little body. Our perception of separateness, necessary to our physical journey, is created by our brains. As I read it, I thought, that must be what it’s like to die.

  Seek Relief. Then Seek Acceptance. Then Seek Joy.

  Then Love Again.

  As often as you can meditate or sleep your way into well-being, that’s how often you’ll experience your loved one again. (And we’ll talk more about those things and how they realign you in the next chapter.) So, at first, when the grief is raw, embrace anything that gives even a hint of relief from the pain and make the goal be surrender. It is what it is, and whether I accept it or not, it is. So, I might as well accept it, surrender to the pain that is a mirror of my love for him. The healing cannot begin until I have achieved acceptance. He’s in Spirit form now. She’s in joy now. He’s blissful now. She wants me to find healing.

  When the Pain Eases a Little Bit …

  Begin to look for signs from them.

  Just remember, the best way to honor the ones we loved, is to keep that love alive. That love is a part of us now. Our loved one’s capacity for love is ours. Her goofiness over romance. All of it. It’s a part of us, and we can help that part grow by finding someone to share it with. And our beloved will be a part of all of that. He’ll laugh at everything you laugh at. She’ll delight in everything you delight in. He’ll adore everyone you adore. There’s no jealousy or possession. Just love. Just joy. Just oneness.

  Feeling Guilty

  Some people have a sense of “How can I enjoy myself when my beloved is dead?”

  Think rationally though, what is your sadness going to do for them, besides preventing them from connecting with you?

  Our beloved ones are experiencing the most giddy thrill rides we can imagine. They are having a blast, and not feeling one bit guilty about it. It’s not that they don’t miss us. They don’t need to miss us, because they’re all entwined with our Higher Selves, and experiencing us through them. They’re all tangled with our Soul now. There is no separation.

  And so the vibration of guilt is not a match to them, but it can keep us from experiencing them.

  Survivor’s guilt is just a misunderstanding of death.

  Being the One Left Behind

  There’s no such thing as an untimely death. No one dies too soon. Everything plays out in accordance with the greater good, both of the individual and the Whole. Remember, our vantage point is like the vantage point of a mole standing on the ground outside his hole. He sees a whole universe around him, a forest made of towering grass and wildflowers, an entire ecosystem of insects, and a vast network of tunnels and burrows through dirt and roots. The mole’s world encompasses a relatively small area, but to him, it’s the whole world.

  From the mole’s perspective, when the honeybee flies away, he’s gone. To him, the eagle that soars above him has a lifespan of seconds as he soars into view, and then out again.

  We only see our loved one’s life from the mole’s perspective.

  It we could see it instead from the eagle’s, (as our Higher Self does) we would see so much more. We’d be aware of the lifetimes our loved one has lived before, with us, always with us, over and over again. We meet, remember and love again. The expanse of new lifetimes to come stretches out beyond the horizons, and we’re always together in every one of them. If we could see from the eagle’s view, we’d see the mole’s entire field, and more, the river that runs through it, the mountains beyond it, and other fields and landscapes. The eagle’s perspective is vast and huge. But it’s a picture the mole can’t see.

  We come into our bodies for the experience of it. Sometimes we choose to live out the story of one who dies young, sometimes old. Sometimes we choose to live out the story of one who is poor, sometimes rich. Sometimes healthy, sometimes frail. Sometimes male, sometimes female.

  Sometimes many things all at once. Oh, yes, our Higher Self has ladled helpings of itself into many bodies. I might also be living as an eagle right now, or a crow, or a dog, or a mountain, or a stream. I might be other humans. I feel them when I encounter these other mes.

  Everything is a part of the Whole, and all is evolving, and death is untrue, and our lifetimes are countless and our existence is myriad.

  Death doesn’t exist. Separation is an illusion. And it is bridged by aligning with our Higher Self. Our Spirit. Our Soul.

  Source. And when we are aligned with Source, we align through Source with all other beings who have ever lived, with all existence, really.

  The Beauty of Surrender

  Every physical life is a part of this cycle. We live here in these physical bodies until it’s time to move out. We leave our bodies behind to process and grow. We create new bodies and return for another round. This is true for every single person, animal, insect, plant, fish and lizard on the planet. It’s true of every cell, too.

  There is a certain freedom and a great sense of relief for me in knowing that nothing I do is going to change that cycle. This lifetime is going to end. The impact that will have on those who love me and will probably outlive me is what tends to haunt me, but only if I let it. Instead, though, I remind myself that their feelings about my eventual passing are part
of their journey, not mine. Their grieving and growing and healing again are all a part of their growth, not mine. I can neither ease it nor deny them the experience. I would if I could, and if I did, I would be robbing them of part of their journey. Not a pleasant part, but an essential part. The truth is, though, that there is nothing I can do about it. And since there’s nothing I can do about it, it’s absolutely useless to waste my energy worrying about it.

  There is deep wisdom in the words of the Serenity Prayer’s opening line: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

  I don’t have to like the notion that I’ll leave my physical world, and the physical versions of those I love, one day. But I can ease my heart by gently accepting it. It’s the way it is. There’s nothing I can do about it. And I can add comfort to my heart by remembering that eagle’s view versus mole’s view analogy, and knowing that our separation isn’t real, and even that unreal separation will be very temporary. We are bound together in an eternal dance. We come close, whirl away, then draw close again. We embrace and let go and then embrace once more. It’s eternal.

  I do not leave my loved ones behind, and they don’t leave me behind. We’re all on the same journey. And if someone in our party takes an earlier flight, that only means they’ll be waiting when we arrive. And they are never beyond our reach in the meantime.

  One Last Thought

  If my soul, the one I carry around with me in my physical body, is a small piece of my much larger Soul, the one that wouldn’t fit in this physical body, then the same is true of everyone else’s.

  Now I’m not sure that’s an accurate portrayal. I think maybe we’re linked to our Higher Self, like being plugged into the Internet. You can only channel as much bandwidth as the size of your cable allows, right? Dial-up allows a weaker, smaller connection than DSL and DSL transmits a smaller, weaker connection than cable. Maybe the human body can only channel so much of the Soul’s true immense power.

  But no matter how you look at it, if the enormity of my Higher Self is more accessible to me after I leave my body behind, then so is the enormity of everyone else’s.

  In my new state of vast expansion, freed of the body and expanding my awareness into the Whole of all that I am, I can also embrace the Whole of all that my loved ones are. I can embrace and be with their Higher Selves, the Souls of all those I love who are still in the physical.

  Now let’s extrapolate on that. If I’m here in my body, then those I love who’ve passed on before me, have expanded their consciousness into the Whole of their Souls, and their Souls can meld fully with the bigger part of mine. The Whole of it.

  And I am plugged into my Soul, yes? I can quiet my mind, and open my internet connection to my Higher Self and let the energy flow from the higher Me to this physically focused littler me. And my loved ones who’ve moved on are a part of that energy.

  Everyone I love, living or dead, is completely accessible to Higher Me, and Higher Me is completely accessible to little me, the one that’s here in this body. They have not left me, and I will never leave them.

  In fact, everyone who has ever lived, or will ever live is also completely accessible to me at all times in this same way. Just by tapping in to my Higher Self. By attuning to my Soul.

  Reach them all from within, using this Soul Connection.

  Conversations With the “Other Side ”

  The person who I seem most able to connect with from among all those I’ve loved who have passed on is my mother in law, Lee. I think it might be easier for me to reach for her in her idealized, shining state, because she was pretty ideal and shiny when she was here. I have a little more trouble with people who were disconnected in life. It’s harder to see some as angelic in nature, even though I know that they are.

  I sometimes jog. Lee used to tell me, when she was still physical, how she envied that. She had health issues that made that kind of exertion impossible for her.

  One day after she’d left her body, when I was jogging in the sunshine, I felt her so clearly, so vividly, riding along inside me, that there was no denying it. She was feeling the wind in my hair and the sun on my face and relishing it. I was wearing a headset, listening to music, and a particularly hard rock song came on. As clear as day, I saw her wrinkle up her nose, squeeze her eyes tight, and give her head a shake. She hated that song. The expression was so real, so vivid, I laughed out loud, and skipped ahead a song.

  Another time, I was getting ready for a business trip, and had waited until the last minute to shop. I desperately needed some little cami tops to wear under my blazers and things. I had been in 4 or 5 shops at the mall, and no one had them. Must’ve been the season, I don’t know. Anyway, I paused right in the middle of the mall, suddenly compelled to ask Lee for a hand. She was a great shopper and one of her hobbies was buying clothes for other people. I said, “Lee, help me out here. I need camis and I’m almost out of time.” I listened, but didn’t hear an answer. So, I heaved a sigh, kept walking, turned a corner, and there was Lee’s favorite store in the entire mall, Charlotte Russe. I smiled, because I knew that was Lee’s influence. I went inside, and they were having a huge cami sale. Buy one, get one free. I wound up with one in every color of the rainbow, enough camis to last the rest of my cami-wearing life, I bet.

  These seem like small things, but that’s kind of the point. It doesn’t have to be a life-changing, “Tell me where to find the treasure” sort of interaction. It can be little things, everyday things. Their energy is subtle compared to physical energy. We have to feel for it. We have to be quiet to hear it. But we can still reach them, and they are always there, interested and eager to be involved in all we do.

  * * *

  Assignment 12

  The Blissful Dead

  * * *

  Think about any time you’ve had an encounter that felt like a loved one from the other side. Journal these experiences.

  Begin talking to your loved ones on the other side as if they’re right there in the room with you. It will go better if you can try it with someone who’s been gone a while, someone for whom your grief has lost its sharpest edges, but you can reach anyone if you can rise above your heartache. Imagine them as angelic, glowing beings of light, filled with wisdom they didn’t have before. See them evolved and perfect. When you imagine what they’d say or do, or look like, that’s not imagination. That’s them. Trust it and embrace it. Keep notes in your journal. These are great conversations to look back on.

  The Goddess Speaks

  You are creating your physical world by your observation of it. You are beams of me. Each beam fills a physical body to be my hands, my eyes, my ears, so that I can see and hear, taste and smell, be my own creation. And by experiencing it, I continue creating it. All through you.

  * * *

  Chapter Eleven

  The Soul Connection

  * * *

  A User ’s Guide

  We can get a glimpse of our meadow from the eagle’s point of view by tapping into our Source or Higher Self.

  I think what prevents us from constantly streaming Source is all the stuff that’s taking up our bandwidth. Let’s use our internet example. If I wanted to stream a movie on my old DSL network, I would first have to go through the house and shut down everything else that was connected to the net. Our tablets, phones, laptops, desktops, video game consoles, even the wireless printer. Our net is better now, so we no longer have to do that, but even now, I can’t do Facebook Live at the same time hubby is playing Arc Survival online. (Or if it’s cloudy, or raining, or a dozen other things.) We can only stream one of those at a time.

  If I want a good, solid, clear connection to my Higher Self, I must turn off all the other stuff I have streaming first.

  Now as a physical being, I am plugged into my physical world, and that’s as it should be. That’s what we’re here to experience, after all. My eyes are streaming images to my brain. My ears are streaming sounds. My skin and nerve endings are streaming sensati
ons and so is my body. There’s a constant dialogue happening between my cells and my brain and all my systems, keeping things in balance. My nose is noticing scents, and my tongue is picking up tastes and flavors. My TV is on, and my computer is on and my cell phone is nearby in case of a text from my daughters, and there’s always music playing in my head. Not to mention the thought-riot that’s almost constant in we humans. We can’t even finish a task before we’re thinking of ten others we ought to be doing. And we continue rethinking everything we’ve already done, been, said, thought, and experienced, too.

  It’s no wonder we’re mostly stuck with seeing our meadow like the little mole, peering out of his hole, seeing only what’s right in front of us.

  If we want to plug in to the perspective of the eagle, we should try shutting everything else off to let the signal flow steady and strong.

  Unplugging Our Input

  Because our brains have an inborn aversion to quiet (I don’t know why that is, but it is), it’s pretty much impossible to silence them. But we can lower the volume. And there are different ways to do that, and different methods work for different people. I recommend spending 10 or 15 minutes a day quieting your inner noise to allow Source to download whatever you need for that day. People call this meditation, but that word tends to trigger a lot of false notions about what it is and what it isn’t and how one must do it and so on. We don’t want any of that. We just want to sit quietly for 15 minutes and try to shut up our inner Chatty Cathy.

  Step 1. Start by getting very comfortable. No bra or shoes or tight things. Be cozy. If it’s chilly, a sweater is nice. If it’s sunny, sit in the shade. If you’re outdoors, a light shawl or something over bare skin, so a bug doesn’t tickle your arm and ruin your serenity.