The following is one of the most famous of statements about bliss and how to utilize it…
What is “bliss”? How do you follow it exactly… like balloons parading in the sky or through a labyrinth?
Some of us, when we hear “follow your bliss,” begin our journey immediately. Some of us have been experimenting with the “how-to” for all our lives. For most of us, it’s as abstract as the term we hear constantly, “Be yourself” … Who the heck is that?
My name is Monique McIntyre, and I’ve been trying to figure out my bliss for all my life. Well, not really… but in a sense. I’ve had a sense of what my bliss could be from the time I was a little child – as all of us do. Then when I got older and my joy in life seemed to dwindle, I thought to myself, Now, where the f* did it go?! I’ve taken seminars and become a leader of those very seminars just to get a handle on what I wanted out of life, until I realized the biggest thing I ever wanted out of life was just to be happy. It seemed like such a foreign concept, to quote a favorite movie. I thought the simplicity had duped me. But it hadn’t been the simplicity… Instead, the complication that the human mind brings to the subject of happiness was what duped me into thinking there was no simplicity. All the confusion led to the conclusion that a constant flow of happiness was agonizingly out of reach. (Sounded like spoken word for a minute… hey!)
Back to the subject at hand… That made me sad. The kind of sadness that completely sets you adrift in waters uncharted. And out of that despair, came my greatest realization: my happiness was my greatest and only priority. And I realized if I continued to make my joy my purpose in life that all else would stream from it, including everything I did for others. Well, that wasn’t some great enduring epiphany that led to happiness being mine for all eternity. But… it was a beginning.
With this beginning – and these thoughts were really fleeting, as most are – my life began drawing in those that would help me define what I wanted. Person by person, step by step, little by little, I began to get that my bliss was with me, and inside of me. Still what followed were many more peaks and dips and sparks that led me to create this website in 2017, for others but also for me – as a reminder. My trajectory definitely had its difficulties because my inner realist wanted to exercise its right to be cynical. It took a conversation with one person, who spoke to me so passionately of ecstasy, for me to realize that bliss was a level of aliveness and thriving I could have. Then, somehow, it dawned on me – who doesn’t like a good dawn – that bliss was never about the doing, and that it was never dependent on whether something outside of me went well or to my liking. It finally became real that my bliss was truly about the being, and I could have it anytime I wanted. While I had understood the concept previously, this was the piece de resistance of experience. It was now in my body, and not just in my mind.
The difference between concept and experience is one we all know, however it’s tricky to always get the distinction between the two. Take this for example, many of us think we have figured out that phrase “being vs. doing”. Yet our actions say differently. We’re still on that hamster’s treadmill, “running” (aka “doing”) to get to the carrot we’ve devised called, “being.” That’s when something is still a concept. We can know that concept up and down, but until it’s a true experience, we won’t live it.
Concept is when you know something and you know that it’s true. But… Experience is when your actions line up every time with what you know. Experience doesn’t take thinking about it, or reminding yourself of it like Concept does. Experience just is.
Another way to say it? Concept lives in our minds. Experience lives in our bodies.
It’s okay wherever we are on our paths. Every one of us has to be somewhere. It’s all about the journey of evolution to me, and not the arrival at a goal.
What I’ve taken away from the journey of my life, I’ve put down in these pages for you. Not as a formula. I never seek to give anyone a formula. Formulas speak to a “one size fits all” standard that couldn’t possibly do our uniqueness and individuality justice. So mine is a simple mantra…
Take what you want, what feels good, and leave behind anything that doesn’t resonate with you.
I am fierce bliss, and I will remind you that it is from a state of bliss that we are most effective, most productive and far happiest in life. Is this how it can be all the time? Hell, yeah! This revolution is about evolution. Yours.
This ain’t your mama’s positivity. This is real, authentic joy – the very nature of our souls. It doesn’t get better than this, kid!
Oh, wait… Yes, it can!
