bliss of meditation

The Bliss Technique.

"Then I meditated for an hour of bone-tingling stillness until I finally felt it again ............that happiness, bliss which is better, truly, than anything I have ever experienced else on this earth." Elizabeth Gilbert, 'Eat, Pray, Love'

”The decline of religion in the west may have begun when the experience of sex became more powerful than the spiritual experience offered by religion in prayer or Meditation” Michael Winn

'Why is sex so powerful? Because we are constantly in search of our original state of pure bliss.'

Dr. Deepak Chopra

'When you start to feel it moment after moment, coursing through your physical, mental, and emotional bodies, you will shed tears of gratitude. It is the most exquisite thing possible to feel in the body. All other pleasures fade beside it. You will be filled with indescribable gratitude. Bartholomew

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MODULE 1. AN INTRODUCTION.

8

MODULE 2 : THE SECRET OF THE BLISS TECHNIQUE

45

MODULE 3: WHY YOUR BODY NEEDS ECSTATIC ENERGY!

60

MODULE 4: THE MOST IMPORTANT LIFE SKILL YOU’LL EVER LEARN

71

MODULE 5: HELL IS OUR RESISTANCE”

94

MODULE 6: WHY NON-JUDGMENTAL AWARENESS CHANGES EVERYTHING?

110

MODULE 7: SILENT AWARENESS

127

MODULE 8:THE POWER OF FEELINGS

149

MODULE 9: A FULL PRACTICE OF THE BLISS TECHNIQUE

165

MODULE 10: WHY ARE WE ALL AFRAID OF PLEASURE?

190

MODULE 11:OBSTACLES TO PLEASURE

212

MODULE 12:YOUR BODY AND THE BLISS TECHNIQUE

230

MODULE 13:THE GREATEST ADDICTION OF ALL

256

MODULE 14:DROP YOUR SELF-IMAGE AND FEEL!

277

MODULE 15: THE SHEER BLISS OF HUMAN ONENESS!

294

MODULE 16

305

AND FINALLY…..

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“Words exist for meaning, but once you understand the meaning, you can throw away the words.” th

Chuang-tzu, a 4 century Taoist sage

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Disclaimer All Rights Reserved. 2012 Brandon Communications Ltd No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical without prior written permission from the publisher. The contents of this publication reflect only the author's views. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information presented in this publication is helpful and of high quality, no representation or warranties of any kind are made with regard to the completeness or accuracy of the contents of this publication. The author is not engaged in rendering any medical or psychological professional service. Please contact a professional person if such advice or assistance is required. The publisher and author disclaim any personal loss or liability caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the utilization of any information presented herein. All product names and/or logos used throughout this publication are copyrights and trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright (c) John Ryan 2011 www.blisstechniques.com John Ryan asserts the right to be identified as the author of this e-book.

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“Throughout this course, I make use of both bold and italicized fonts. My hope is that the changes in font might help the reader in the way a close-up in a film helps the viewer – to pay attention differently. So please consider these fonts as an invitation to linger, to pause, to reflect and to challenge.” Philip Shepherd, ‘New Self, New World

This book is best viewed in 100% Magnification.

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Module 1 An Introduction

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The Bliss Technique.

Module 1. An Introduction.

“Stop talking, stop thinking, and start feeling and there is nothing you will not understand." Chinese Sage, Seng T'san

In this course, I will teach you The Bliss Technique. The Bliss Technique is a simple meditative process that allows you to experience the Bliss Frequency –unlimited levels of ecstatic energy in your body. Theoretically, if I could relax you sufficiently right now and get you to stay in the present moment long enough, you could experience this Energy, this infinite Pleasure for yourself this VERY MOMENT. Right Here and now. But most of us aren’t ready for that – so the first thing I want to do is to help you to experience the pleasure of this energy gradually streaming through the biological and neurological circuitry of your body first .......... ……And then, I want to show you how you can feel it when you are with another person so that both of you together can feel this energy streaming through your bodies together as one. In fact, this is your greatest gift to another person. To bring them to ecstasy. To help them experience their CORE joy. Then you'll feel that what we all really crave: 'an intimacy beyond imagination'….....

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The Bliss Technique. ‘That ultimate pleasure in which your entire being vibrates and pulsates undividedly, in harmony with itself and with another human being’. . Both of you would begin to vibrate together at this orgasmic pleasure frequency. The frequency of real union. However, most of us need training and guidance and periods of practice to achieve this so we need to start at the beginning……and gradually build up to this. So in The Bliss Technique, I’m going to teach you a series of simple techniques that will allow you to easily release all the .....    

Tensions Fears Blockages And barriers

…that are LODGED and HIDDEN in your body so you can fully FEEL the extraordinary, exquisite ENERGY of life streaming through your body...... However, to do this, I’m going to ask you to do one important thing for me: I want you to stop running away from your body. I want you to stop unconsciously hating it. To stop denying the infinite pleasure that your body is capable of experiencing, AS IT IS RIGHT NOW. NOT sometime in the FUTURE when you think your body will be in a better condition. Over the next couple of weeks as you follow the course, I’m going to show you how you can be fully PRESENT in EVERY CELL OF YOUR BODY so that you’ll start to understand the great, perennial truth so beautifully expressed by Deeksha Kiara Windrider:

‘We ARE joy-filled beings all the way to the core. You know, when you really look at the bio-chemistry, you will see that the human organism is designed for the ongoing experience of joy, pleasure, bliss.

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The Bliss Technique. What’s an endorphin? What are the skin and the senses? A fragrant, yellow-bursting flower? There’s no escaping it: We are set up for bliss. But look at us. We’ve missed; we’ve totally missed the mark’. Yes, we have all missed the mark! Yet, if we could all learn how to relax to a deep level of bliss, our bodies would tingle with orgasmic pleasure. Vibrate with pure joy. From the roots of your hair - down to the tips of your fingernails! As Ramakrishna once put it:

“When a person attains [this frequency of energy], all the pores of the skin, even the roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the aspirant enjoys the incredible pleasure of communion with life itself.”

The truth is: Practicing the Bliss Technique should be a real daily treat for you. Something you really look forward to doing every day! Something that feels better and more delicious than sex! It should be a real energy booster. An ‘oasis of pleasure’ where you can daily renew and recharge yourself. All through the ages, in every culture, people have experienced and practiced this universal technique, calling it different names. When it is done properly, here’s how some writers describe how it feels in the body:

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The author Stephen Levine describes how he feels at these moments of deep meditation in his book 'Who Dies':

"In a moment of quiet, we open beyond our clinging and the mind becomes so unclouded that nothing blocks it's inherent joy. Its expanse is so great that waves of energy wash through the body making any satisfaction we've ever, even our profoundest sexual gratification, pale by comparison.

Here's how Dan Milliman, in Way of the Warrior describes how he feels at these moments of deep relaxation:

"If you were free of obstructions - if your mind were clear, your heart open and your body free of tension you'd experience the energy as an

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indescribable pleasure - better than sex.' Dan Milliman, The Way of the Warrior

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her recent best-selling book, Eat, Pray, Love describes how she feels when she meditates at these states:

"Then I meditated for an hour of bone-tingling stillness until I finally felt it again - that specific, constant, clear-sky, unrelated-to-anything, never shifting, nameless and changeless perfection of my own happiness. That happiness, bliss which is better, truly, than anything I have ever experienced else on this earth."

And the famous psychologist and creator of Bioenergetics, Alexander Lowen says this about it:

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"Although we are familiar with the pulsations of the heart, the fact is every cell, every tissue and the whole body pulsates, which means that it expands and contracts rhythmically. The heart expands and contracts as it beats, the lungs expand and contract as they breath. When that rhythmic pulsation is free and full, we feel pleasure. We are pleasurably excited. When the excitement mounts so that the pulsation is more intense, we feel joy. If the intensity of the excitement reaches its maximum or acme, we experience ecstasy. In the absence of ANY excitement or pulsation, the organism is dead, we feel nothing”.

One afternoon in 1903, the writer Katherine Mansfield was walking down an ordinary street when……………

"Suddenly you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss– absolute bliss!–as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?" "Bliss." by Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923)

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The Bliss Technique. In the 'Hathor Material', Virgina Essence describes the nature of this energy as follows:

The feeling of bliss is a cellular occurrence that permeates the entire body. What happens in ecstasy and bliss is that the Ka (the life-force) begins to vibrate at a very fast rate. The harmonics open in such a way as to stimulate the brain and the central nervous system, especially the neurotransmitters, which begin to stimulate the cells into a feeling of ecstasy and bliss. This then becomes a full-body sensation and emanates throughout the entire body in every cell."

And the best-selling author David Deida …in his book, Finding God through Sex writes:

“Sex is only as deeply fulfilling as you are willing (or able) to feel. The capacity to feel through the surface into the depth of any moment is learnable…….”. “…..When you can feel through, say the sensation of a mosquito bite, the moment is as blissful as being massaged by five naked women. The smells, tastes, touches, sounds, and sights are different- and certainly most men would prefer one experience to the other – but

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the bliss of the moment is identical.

The film maker of Twin Peaks, David Lynch, describes it like this:

"The experience, when it kicks in, is so phenomenal, it's not funny. It's intense bliss. It is what they call 'bubbling bliss,' and it is so intense and so fantastic. It's like we're......... light bulbs, it just fills you up with light.'

But as I have pointed out, most of us will never experience any of this. For example, what would happen now, if you went to your room, sat down and allowed yourself to feel this energy? Barry long captured it perfectly in his book, ‘Only the Fear dies’ when he said our ‘old ways’ would begin to resist our desire to be still 'As we sat down, we will temporarily feel pain, fear, doubt, and we will feel threatened.

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The Bliss Technique. These feelings will be our old concealed emotions, rising up through us, being dissolved as they are faced up to. .............Our ‘old self’ will writhe, complain, ache and try to scream through our physical body........................ It will do ANYTHING to make us run away, to remove our searing attention from it. It will try to force us to get up and move about, grab a drink or go out. It will try to convince us to give up and declare the whole thing is pointless' This is what most of us would experience, in the beginning – and we would stop there. Why? Because we would believe that is all there is to us: this ‘uncomfortable, tension-filled self’. Nothing else. So we tend give up. We never take the next step, because we believe there is nothing beyond this ‘uncomfortable tension-filled self’ – so what’s the point?

‘It’s All A Myth!’ Can I quote the following paragraph to you in full. It is from a lecture on ‘The Full Pulsation of Life’, given by Eva Pierrakos. It is so important –because most of us have been taught the exact opposite of these ideas all our lives. I know I was. Now pay special attention to how YOU react to what is written. Here it is:

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The Bliss Technique. ‘The Full Pulsation of Life’

"A very liberated human being with few or no blocks or inhibitions, without distortions or negativity, is capable of a high degree of pleasure, for then the energy of the subtle bodies penetrates the surface body. Only then, when a high degree of bliss is experienced will the person deeply know that human pleasure is essentially the same as the cosmic state of bliss, that they are not opposites, but one and the same.

Real pleasure is intensely fleshly and intensely spiritual. The ultimate state of liberation, of cosmic being, is total pleasure. The ultimate reality is pleasure. Bliss is the natural state of a unified being in harmony with himself and the universe. By this we mean a state of physical and spiritual bliss that is experienced in every particle of one's body and soul, with all sensations and faculties alive, awake and feeling. This state is very much a present reality. It is your birthright, my friends. Your longing for it is the most real and healthy movement within you.

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Pleasure is a state in which your entire being vibrates and pulsates undividedly, in harmony with itself and the universe, and hence with another human being. There is no division within you, no doubt about the rightfulness of your bliss. You feel no guilt or hesitation. On the contrary, you will deeply feel that the greater your ecstasy, your pleasure, and your joy, the more you contribute to the world."

After reading that, I bet you are thinking now: "How marvellous - how nice that would be - but of course, it's not true.” “Life's just not like that. No way. It’s nonsense.” In fact, that’s how most of us really feel. We all believe that real pleasure is just not possible for us ….as we are NOW. Yet, it is this very belief that is stopping you from now experiencing this hidden ecstasy of life in your own body right now. As the Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi once remarked: "The only obstacle to your ability to experience the joy is the BELIEF that you are not already enlightened [the belief that the joy does not already exist]"

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The Bliss Technique. As we grow up, we all absorb and accept, without question, humanity's deepest ASSUMPTIONS about life. Let's be honest. As a race, we don't believe in joy.

We don’t believe in pleasure. I’m going to make the following assumptions about you. I have no doubt that these beliefs about the scarcity of pleasure are embedded in the very marrow of your bones. You accept them without question…..as we all do….. You believe that essentially life is one long, hard struggle……. And you only expect to experience ‘pockets’ of joy and pleasure here and there. You also believe that these never last - and what's more -- if you are TOO happy, you get scared. Isn’t that true?

You believe happiness /pleasure won't last and worse: Something will happen to punish us for being too happy! For enjoying ourselves too much.

But don’t be too hard on yourself for feeling like this. Taking into account our collective history, this belief in the joyless nature of life is understandable.

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The Bliss Technique. Humanity has had to work hard and struggle for thousands of years. We believed nothing else existed but this cold, hard physical world, survival was difficult and death and disease was everywhere

where

We experienced little joy and little bliss except on some rare occasions. So gradually, these memories of a joyless existence began to slip into our subconscious memory banks and to unconsciously colour all our perceptions of life. To day, these memories have hardened into unconscious core beliefs, which have been passed down from generation to generation and which few of us ever question. These beliefs dictate what we believe is possible for us to EXPERIENCE in this life.

Marilyn Monroe, sex, pleasure and the Bliss Technique.

Marilyn Monroe And Pleasure Marilyn Monroe is a great example.

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In tapes made for her psychiatrist Dr Ralph Greenson, Marilyn Monroe gives us all an unique insight into the very personal nature of the ideas that we are talking about here. Here are her words and beliefs about pleasure, and how it affected her ability to experience real pleasure, real orgasmic energy in her life. ”What I told you when I first became your patient is true. I had never had an orgasm. I well remember you said an orgasm happens in the mind, not the genitals. You said there was an obstacle in my mind that prevented me from having an orgasm; I felt that I did not deserve to have the greatest pleasure there is; that it had something to do with something sexual that was very wrong, but my pleasure from getting pleasure from it caused my guilt. That it was buried in my subconscious. Through analysis we would bring it to my conscious mind where we could get to the guilt and free me to be orgasmic. Well, we sure worked it and it got nowhere. I’d go home and cry and vomit from the frustration. Then you said for the orgasm problem we would try a different approach. That you would tell me how to stimulate myself, that when I did exactly what you told me to do I would have an orgasm and that after I did it to myself and felt what it was, I would have orgasms with lovers. (As In the Bliss Technique – you must learn how to feel it in your own body first, then with others) What a difference a word makes. You said I would, not I could. By now I’ve had lots of orgasms. Not only one, but two and three with a man who takes his time. I never cried as hard as I did after my first orgasm. It was because of the years I had never had an orgasm. What wasted years. How can I describe to you, a man, what an orgasm feels like to a woman. I’ll try.

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Think of a light fixture with a rheostat control. As you slowly turn it on, the bulb begins to get bright, and then brighter and brighter and finally in a blinding flash is fully lit. As you turn it off it gradually becomes dimmer and at last goes out. Speaking of Oscars, I would win overwhelmingly if the Academy gave Oscars for faking orgasms. I have done some of my best acting convincing my partners I was in the throes of ecstasy”.

For us all, it is this idea- THIS belief that, as we ARE now, “ that we do not deserve to have the greatest pleasure there is’ that stops us from experiencing incredible, orgasmic health-giving energy in our body. And, as we have seen, this belief can affect us all from a Hollywood sex goddesses to the ordinary person on the street. From today, we need to start to think outside the limits of our past experience. To gradually allow yourself to play around with this new possibility; that pleasure is not bad or wrong. And it is not limited or scarce. And as Osho once wrote, misery is the key business of all the organized religions. He wrote: “If dropping the misery is as easy as I say, then all these fake religions lose their business. It is a question of their business. Blissfulness has to be made so difficult – almost impossible- that people can only hope for it in some future life, after long arduous journeys.” But pleasure is simply the true nature of the energy of life itself- an energy that is infinite.

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An energy that we have blocked from our bodies by the harsh, frozen nature of all our old beliefs. When you practice the Bliss Technique to-night, begin to breath deeply now and to relax, REALLY RELAX your body more and more. Let all the centuries of limitation and fear, that are deposited in the cellular memory of your body be released.

These ideas about pleasure, to a greater or lesser extent, unconsciously control us all. From you and me – and to movie stars! These inherited beliefs suggest to us…… they ‘whisper’ to us - that we can experience some joy, some pleasure - but only sometime in the FAR-AWAY FUTURE. But never now- never as we are NOW. But this is not true. This energy exists NOW. But we all live in postponement. We are all ‘waiting’ for ‘something’…… It’s why we all feel as if our life has somehow not yet begun. As James Alan Conlan notes:

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"The experience, when it kicks in, is so phenomenal, it's not funny. It's intense bliss. It is what they call 'bubbling bliss,' and it is so intense and so fantastic. It's like we're......... light bulbs, it just fills you up with light.'

‘You are the problem ……..You are not connecting directly with the reality of [your problem] because you all believe in the psychological future for making things better………. You live in postponement, in the tentative hope that things might, someday, improve’.

We are always putting things off. Postponing. “I’ll do it later when…… “

But we are here on earth to experience.

To experience what life FEELS like in our bodies – as we are NOW.

We all think it’s all the ‘exotic’ holidays we have missed out on that make us feel life has passed us by. Or all the ‘glamorous’ parties we were never invited to. Or the far-flung ‘adventures’ that never happened.

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The Bliss Technique. Now, there is nothing wrong with those things, but the truth is different. Strip EVERYTHING away and look deeper – and you’ll see a different story.

In truth, what we all really want to experience (and think we have missed) is this indescribable pleasure of the life force, of LIFE itself coursing through every cell of our bodies in absolute union with another person.

Most of us believe we can only experience this force through sexual orgasm, which we can – but the truth is, we must first experience and enjoy it in our own bodies first – before we can fully enjoy and experience it with others. Eva Pierrakos clearly describes here what we are all REALLY after behind the facade of holidays and parties: Let me repeat it again.

‘That Ultimate Pleasure in which your entire being vibrates and pulsates undividedly, in harmony with itself and with another human being’. Union. Connection.

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Freedom from our excessive self-consciousness. A feeling of real unity with another human being. Unity consciousness. As Ken Wilber points out, after a lifetime of reflection: ‘All our desires, wants, intentions and wishes are ultimately ‘substitute gratifications’ for unity consciousness. So, life need not pass us by. It is always within grasp.

Right now, you have the EXACT SAME biological and neurological circuitry as any other human being who is capable of experiencing all the ecstatic frequencies of this energy, from the highest to the lowest – this very moment. It is available to you right now. The truth is: Our nervous systems have been set up for unlimitedness. But we have been simply led to believe otherwise. This is why Dr. Deepak Chopra said;

“Can we grant this beautiful openness of perception at once blissful and all-encompassing to an ordinary person from Connecticut? I think we have to – for the same biochemistry that sustains such an experience is available to all”

And he goes on:

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Bliss is both objective and subjective. You can feel it as a sensation but it also effects measurable change – it can alter the heart rate, blood pressure and hormone secretions in your body”.

The Miracle Of Your Body And this is what your body is truly for. You tend to focus exclusively on it’s ‘shape’ and ‘appearance’ – but in truth, your body is an exquisite, EXTRAORDINARY ‘sensing and feeling mechanism’. It is designed to help you to FEEL, to taste, and to experience all the different frequencies of life. Your biochemistry is one of the greatest miracles in existence. As extraordinary and as beautiful as the most breath-taking sunset imaginable. Listen to this poetic insight from Barbara Marciniak:

“As you venture further into the state of sexual love, it can stimulate exhilarating feelings that will stir you with new wonder for your body’s remarkable capabilities to produce mind-altering chemical responses…Happy hormones conduct an ancient ceremonial rite to keep you in the hold of a blissful love vibration”. Page 27 of 306

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We are feeling beings.

And right now, this moment no-one is depriving you or denying you access to the full experience of these life’s energies….only yourself The truth is: You are blocked. Frozen. Your body is so blocked and frozen so that you feel virtually none of this energy. And even during sexual intercourse, you feel only a tiny, tiny tingle of what you should be experiencing. No wonder the writer D. H. Lawrence described most people’s normal orgasm as a mere ‘sneeze in the loins’

The Time Is NOW Not next week. Next month. Or next year. The great paradox is: There is nothing to do......Nowhere to go......No-one to be.....These states of pleasure already exist, right now in their absolute totality.

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The Bliss Technique, which I will teach you only exists to help you to learn how to consciously tune into these energies NOW. The question for you is simple: When will you do it? When will you allow the possibility that such states actually exist? And then, when will you allow yourself to experience these higher frequencies for yourself…….

“It’s All Very, VERY Real” What I’m talking about is all very real. This energy or pleasure frequency you will feel is a definite, concrete frequency that can be felt in your body. Not only will you feel this experientially, but your whole biochemistry will also change to accommodate this onrush of high-frequency energy. You will experience: 

Lowered respiration



Reduced oxygen consumption



And a decreased metabolic rate.

And then your body will begin to release higher levels of endorphins - a natural pleasure hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that science has now linked to a person's pleasure level and to the experience of unconditional joy. Physically, endorphins are happy bio-chemicals which are NATURALLY produced in the human body. They are chemically similar to opium and it’s derivatives such as morphine, but because they are part of the body’s normal hormone system, they are not addictive or damaging. (In fact, in extreme situations, the body is capable of

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The Bliss Technique. producing endorphins a thousands times stronger than the chemical morphine, to ease pain. That’s how extraordinary your body is.) As Dr. Deepak Chopra explains in 'Power, Freedom and Grace':

"When we are feeling tranquil, our body is making a tranquilliser similar to the one the drug companies make, only it doesn't make you feel like a zombie. When we are feeling anxious, our body is making jittery molecules, and they're are made not just in the adrenal glands; they are made everywhere in the body. When we are feeling exhilarated, our body is making immunomodulators that act as powerful anticancer drugs. Our cells are alive. They are literally eavesdropping on your internal dialogue.

And then this VITAL point:

You have an inner absolutely exquisite.

pharmacy

that

is

You name it- the body can make it in the right dose, at the right time, for the right organ, with no side effects, and all the instructions are contained in the packaging.

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This capacity demonstrates profound intelligence

As William Bloom points out in his ground-breaking book, ‘The Endorphin Effect’, endorphins are responsible for the euphoric rush experienced by athletes during continuous running. And lovers during lovemaking and sexual climax, where a cascade of endorphins saturate and flood the body. Endorphins, in fact are experienced every time that someone experiences a moment of pleasure.

Happiness Is Not Just A ‘Chemical Reaction’ However, it is important to point out that I’m not saying here, that happiness or pleasure is just a chemical reaction in your body. This is important. When we see a sunset, or experience a moment of pleasure, maybe the touch or smile of a friend, or the look of awe in a child’s face - it is this feeling or recognition of pleasure that triggers the body to produce endorphins that create the actual physical experience of pleasure in the body. This is, in fact the real secret of the Master seducer.

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What was Casanova's great Secret? Listen to this description of the real secret of Casanova’s power as described by a contemporary. “It was that he could look into a woman’s eyes and converse with them and never look away, and never be impatient, and hold that moment. He knew how to make every person in his sight the only person in the world. The real secret of his success was that ‘he seduced the intimacy of a person not only their body’. See how Casanova totally focused and concentrated on one thing: making the person feel the only person in the world. Making her feel warm, feel loved, feel special. Making her FEEL as if she and ONLY she existed. All the time, he was totally focused on how she was…… feeling. And it works, because we now know that by making a person genuinely feel loved and special, that person’s body will respond by flooding it’s bloodstream with these feel-good, happy, loving chemicals! And the woman thinks…to herself…: “Whoa, I like this guy. There really is great ‘chemistry’ between us’. This is also the hidden truth behind many of our fairy tales. The prince who genuinely loves the woman always wins her in the end, because his genuine deep feeling for her, makes her feel so loved and cared for that it creates an explosion of love hormones in her that break through and smash the conditioning and spell she is under.

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“No pain. No Gain.” What rubbish! One of the great myths of our civilisation is the idea that nothing of great value can ever be achieved without great pain, struggle or effort. Another great myth is the idea that everything MUST take time. We all know the saying: “No pain. No gain”. Subconsciously, we all believe in this concept of struggle. Very few of us can accept the truth: “The only struggle in life is to realise there is no struggle”. But what a struggle that is! Likewise, the only struggle in the Bliss Technique, which we will learn here……….is to realize that no struggle OR TIME is required to experience it. There is nothing to do. We only have to wake up to what IS. This is a difficult concept for us. In our daily life, we have become used (conditioned) to believing that anything worthwhile can only be achieved in the future and NEVER here and now. The idea that everything requires time, work and phenomenal effort is deeply ingrained in us. We all accept it without question. But the Bliss Technique will shows us that... .....that which you seek exists NOW. That it is absolutely, abundantly, totally and completely present in this very moment. There is no other place or time you have to go to get it. ! So how can it take time to realize what is already FULLY PRESENT. This state of pure awareness, of energy exists now, but most of us have no idea that such a state or energies EVEN exists

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Why? Simply because our minds are continually preoccupied with the stream of 

Thoughts



Wishes



Dreams



Fantasies



And sensations….

that fill and block our waking consciousness, moment-to-moment............... Yet, you are totally free, even right now. You can continue to feel the way you always have (like the majority of mankind) or you can, like a radio, learn to turn the dial and experience, right now, these higher, life-giving frequencies of peace, well-being and bliss. Remember……..These are very, very real states of being, each of which has a very specific and observable effect on your physiology and brain wave coherence.

”No time” ‘Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here. Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled. It is saying, in fact that you need time…..you see Time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth, it is the greatest obstacle.…..” Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Now: this is the hardest concept to grasp. No time needs to elapse for you to experience this blissful energy now. Page 34 of 306

The Bliss Technique. It is not necessary to spend years in the Bliss Technique or prayer or years purifying your body and mind. Unless, of course you believe it should. For example, if you continue to hold to the belief that it cannot be real or any good unless you have suffered and 'pained' for it - then that is the result you will create. But it is not necessary. That is the key message of this age.

Instant Change We all have very fixed beliefs about change. We are convinced that lasting change can only come through a long, laborious and time-consuming process. But this is only a belief we have adopted. It is not necessarily true. Michael Crichton, the internationally known author of Jurassic Park wrote, after he had experienced an 'extraordinary and profound change' :

"'This made me wonder if my ideas about the normal speed of psychological change might be incorrect. Perhaps we could accomplish massive change in seconds, if we only knew how. Perhaps change only took so long because we expected it to take so long.'

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The Bliss Technique. Centuries before that Buddha was pointing out the same thing when he said - to paraphrase: 'You can awaken in seven lifetimes, seven years, seven months, seven days, seven hours, seven minutes, or you can do it now. The choice is always yours.' We need to begin to release from our consciousness this old idea that change must be a struggle. That it must be difficult and time-consuming. It need not be. Nearly a hundred years ago the famous American psychologist William James was trying to wake people up to the same fact. He said:

'Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.'

In other words, all these different states of consciousness exist now. You do not have to 'make' them or 'produce' them - you only have to learn how to access them. Or listen to the thirteenth-century spiritual teacher, Meister Eckhart who summed it up beautifully when he said: ‘Time is what keeps the light from reaching us. There is no greater obstacle to God than time’

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Change is possible in the twinkling of an eye! I want to present this idea to you as a practical possibility in your life NOW. I want you to feel this – to really experience this in your body, in your blood – in every cell of your being NOW. But, it will not be easy in the beginning, because …..

You are most likely terrified to feel. Absolutely terrified. If I asked you if you would like to spend a whole weekend by yourself in an empty house without any distractions…... No TV. No books. No papers. No cigarettes. No alcohol. No Telephones. No friends - in fact, no human contact at all. Just you and an empty house! For most of us, such a possibility would be our worst nightmare. If you don't believe me, try it? Hour after hour -- nothing but YOU. Nothing at all to distract you! Nothing to help you to escape!

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The Bliss Technique. Nothing to kill time! For the first time, in your life, you would come face to face with you. Most of us would barely last a few hours before reverting back to our own favourite forms of escapist activities.

And yet if we could only stop running away from ourselves – and our bodies, we would discover within ourselves…….a great truth. That: Joy, ultimate pleasure is our underlying state

Joy is our underlying state Our idea is based on a simple assumption once beautifully summarised by Arnold M. Patent as:

'Joy is part of our essence, the underlying feeling that we all have access to. However most of us have buried our joy, our bliss beneath layers of judgments and repressed feelings. The challenge before us is to keep peeling off the layers until the joy is uncovered and allowed to fill and overflow from out being'

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Final obstacle. Yet one thing will still bother you, before we start. The irony of ironies! You will hesitate because, deep down some part of you will say: 'This can't be right. It's just to good to be true.” Like the story of the famous astronomer, who was once describing to an old man the awesome infinity of the universe - the fact that our sun is only one of some 100 billion stars in this galaxy alone. The old man shook his head and gazing in the direction of his own tiny home in a tiny street off a tiny village, where he had spent his entire existence….he just couldn't accept such an incredible vision of limitless abundance. The old man just muttered to the astronomer:' Look around you son. What you say can't be right’. ‘It just can’t be.’'

Mass delusions Look around you. Things are not what they seem, are they? You are convinced that the world is flat, because you can walk from here to there yet it is not true - it is a delusion. You are convinced that the world is standing still and you are moving upon it. Why? Because it seems that way!

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The Bliss Technique. Yet, the world is travelling at dizzying speeds, spinning upon its axis and hurtling thousands of miles through space each hour! You are convinced that all the objects around you are hard and solid. Why? Because it seems that way! Yet, one look through a powerful microscope and you will realise that solidity is an illusion - that atoms are 99.9 % empty space. Can we take a leap forward? Open our mind to these new assumptions about the real nature of our true being? News ideas about pleasure? Listen again to Colin Sisson: But as you read this, think: What if he is right? What if this REALLY is the way it is? 'Bliss consciousness is the main essence behind self-observation. It is the essence behind all the great teachings, except it seems to have been lost somehow, or has been reduced to some superficial mythical concept........... No amount of wealth, power, sex, drugs or fine food contain happiness in themselves but only serve to draw out a minute portion of that infinite bliss already latent within each of us........ Bliss is the underlying state constantly present .......... yet most of us don't experience it. Why not? It is because of the state of our mind. It is all clogged up with suppressions and tensions...........it is in a state of constant restless activity..........and until we have cleared the system our experience of joy will be limited to physical sensations or intellectual amusements.........'

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That is why we turn to techniques like the Bliss Technique.

“It is only a simple technique or tool to help us to clear our system of the blockages that prevent us from experiencing in our everyday life NOW our underlying nature of bliss.”

Do Not Discourage Yourself! Matt Engelman in Genuine Freedom gives us this piece of advice, which is vital when you start to experience this marvellous, natural bliss energy streaming through your body, healing and nourishing it. He warns:

“A common mind-trap is to assume, after a great experience, like a great massage – or a brilliant day, that the following day

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or the following massage will be a pile of shit. This is a very common mind-trap. It is encapsulated by the cliché: ‘You can’t always have good days – or great experiences.’. Excuse me, respected reader, while I shout an obscenity…….”Bullshit!”. This train of thought, together with “My luck is running out,” are self-fulfilling prophecies, and it is as simple as that”.

Absolute Simplicity And it is the absolute simplicity of these ideas that will then present you with the greatest resistance. If I said to you now: 'Deep down, beneath all the layers of your mind and conditioning, there are great states of unbounded peace, joy and pleasure- but unfortunately it will take years and YEARS of loneliness, pain and suffering even to get a glimpse of them” Most of you will probably say: 'Yes, that sounds about right. Surely anything good must take that kind of application and time. To suggest anything else would be just too good to be true'. For most of us, that would be our natural response.

Yet, it is not natural. It is only a centuries old inherited belief or assumption about life that has been passed down from one generation to another which we have all blindly accepted without question.

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Most of us never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever……question these assumptions. Not even for a nana-second! However, if we can become aware of these old beliefs that lurk in our consciousness, we can begin to free ourselves from them. Never reject anything just because it sounds too good to be true. Prove it for yourself.

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Module 2: The Secret of The Bliss Technique

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Module 2 : The Secret of The Bliss Technique

"All of man's miseries derive from him not being able to sit in a room alone" Pascal

For centuries, we have all accepted that sex was not the only real way you – or you and your partner together - could experience the ecstasy of orgasmic energy . In fact, it seems our brains have been hardwired into believing that this energy is only accessible through sex. If you want or need to feel real, ecstatic orgasmic pleasure – have sex! Now, yes, sex IS a marvellous and fantastic way to experience this energy....but, and this is the important thing - it is not the only way.

We can all just as easily go to the Source

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of this energy – and actually feel, with an incredible intensity, limitless amounts of ecstatic, orgasmic energy in our body.

But, all our lives, we have been…..   

Brainwashed…. Hypnotised…… Hoodwinked…..

…. into believing that there is only one valid, effective and acceptable way to feel and experience this most exquisite and ecstatic energy of life. We believe we must be sexually desirable or look a certain way and then someone will want us, love us - and when that happens we will experience these feelings. But that is only a small part of the picture. We have forgotten the larger picture.

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Right now, this moment, we all have the biological and neurological circuitry to access and experience this energy flowing through every cell of our bodies........

This energy does not belong to you or me. It is not as if some people have this energy in their bodies and others don’t! This energy is universal. It is everywhere present. It is easier to understand this when you remember that everything in the universe is made out of energy including you. We are all electromagnetic and energetic beings, and as energetic beings we are all connected to and interpenetrated by the wave fields and energies of the universe. We take no notice of these energies, because like the blood that pumps through our bodies or the food that is digested in the stomach, it happens below the threshold of awareness. Yet, this is the real reality we live in. The truth is: We are not solid, impenetrable mass. We are mostly empty space and all the energy fields of the universe can flow through our skull and body just as easily as they flow through the air around us. To understand the idea that we are all mostly empty space, consider this: “An atom is about 1/10 of a nanometer (a billionth of a meter) in diameter!

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The Bliss Technique. To put the size of an atom in perspective, consider the following examples: a human hair has a thickness of about 200,000 atoms and a human red-blood cell has a diameter of about 10,000 atoms. So atoms are small, but they are not infinitesimally small. Each atom consists of a cloud of electrons with a tiny nucleus in the center. The nucleus has a radius of about 10-13 cm, which means it is 100,000 times smaller than the atom itself. To visualize this ratio, imagine that an atom were enlarged until it was the size of a baseball or football stadium (300 m). Then the nucleus, similarly expanded, would only be the size of a mosquito (3 mm). Since its linear size is 10-5 times the size of the atom, then its volume is 10-15 times the volume of the atom (since you calculate volume by taking the cube of the linear size). That’s like the volume of the stadium compared to the volume of the mosquito. This enormous disparity often gives rise to the statement that the atom is mostly “empty space.” When we realize that we are NOT, as it appears to our senses, solid, impenetrable mass, but we are composed mostly of empty space through which all the energy fields of the universe can flow through just as easily as they flow through the air around us…….new possibilities emerge! It makes even more sense when you realize that all around you now there are many different frequencies or Fields of energy. We are all familiar with TV and radio wave frequencies that vibrate all around us .........but there are other even more vast and intelligent Fields of energy all around us that most of us are not aware of . These infinite fields of energy vibrate at a very definite and specific rate of vibration all around us. Now when you also understand that your body and your brain also vibrate at a very definite vibrational rate -the goal of the Bliss Technique - or any deep form of meditation becomes a little bit clearer.

When you sit down to meditate your goal is simply to get your body and your brain to vibrate at the SAME frequency rate as these universal ecstatic, bliss Fields.

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The Bliss Technique. And when you learn to do that, your body will be flooded with these exquisite, ecstatic, orgasmic waves of energy.

The World of Sex! When we have sex, we are actually unconsciously doing or ‘reproducing’ the SAME process! We start off kissing and cuddling. In fact, what we are doing here is simply getting used to each other’s personal energies and learning how to harmonize them so that they began to oscillate at the same frequency. When we achieve this, we begin to feel warm and comfortable together. We start to get ‘good vibes’ off each other. Then, if we can relax enough at this stage and let go of all our personal fears, tensions and self-consciousness….the sexual energies……. now starting to vibrate in our bodies should start to take over…... We enter each other bodies and begin to build up a thrusting rhythm together. Using our body’s natural intelligence, we gradually increase the rhythm and pace of our movements until we reach a fever pitch…….. where our bodies finally begin to move and vibrate vigorously of their own accord until their frequency rates match or synchronize exactly with each other and the SPECIFIC frequency rate of universal, orgasmic energy.

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When that happens, the result: There is a perfect match!! Bang! Both fields, the energy field of our bodies and the universal energy field of orgasmic energy both unite by matching each other frequencies and our bodies explode in orgasm! Again, what is actually happening, is that the cells of our bodies are using all this rhythmic thrusting and all the different body positions and movements to effectively raise and alter their vibration until the frequency of our cells MATCHES the exact same SPECIFIC frequency rate of the universal field of orgasmic energy. And when this match or synchronization occurs…….

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‘Each person is truly a microcosm of the macrocosm, and in sexual union each individual has the opportunity to feel, experience, and replicate the original Act of Creation. Stewart Swerdlow, ‘The True nature of Sexuality’:

Bang!! …..And our bodies are flooded with orgasmic energy and we experience union not only with each other but with everything. For a brief moment, our loneliness ends - and we come home. We feel one with all energy and everybody, not just metaphorically but literally.

Every Part of Our Body Pulsates! What we all tend to forget is that every cell, every tissue and our whole body pulsates, not just our heart. This means that every cell of our body expands and contracts rhythmically. The heart expands and contracts as it beats, the lungs expand and contract as they breath. When that rhythmic pulsation is free and full at a specific frequency, we feel………… pleasure.

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We are pleasurably excited. When the frequency rate of that rhythmic pulsation is increased the excitement mounts so that the pulsation is more intense, we feel………… JOY. And then….if the frequency rate of the pulsations reach their maximum or acme, and exactly match the frequency rate of orgasmic energy, we experience …………..ecstasy – orgasmic ecstasy.

We need to remember that ….

…..Orgasmic or Ecstatic energy is a universal field of energy that vibrates at a specific, definite energy frequency or rate. This energy is all around you.

Ecstatic orgasmic people are simply people who know how to effortlessly tune the energies of their bodies into a perfect vibrational alignment with this orgasmic ecstatic energy frequency.

And in sex……..Master Lovers…..male or female are simply people who can hold this

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ecstatic, high frequency of energy in their bodies with such JOY and INTENSITY that their lover’s body has no choice but to joyously yield and start vibrating itself at this high, orgasmic frequency.

The Bliss Technique When we practice the Bliss Technique -meditating to a very deep bliss level, the process that occurs is exactly the SAME as the sexual process! In the beginning, we relax each cell of the body. We learn to let go of all fear, stress and tension. What we are really doing is unblocking and ‘defrosting’ the body so that all the cells of the body can began to vibrate at a faster rate. Then we learn how to deepen the process by applying the more advanced principles of the Bliss Technique. The purpose of all these techniques is to gradually increase the rhythmic pulsation frequency rate of each of your body’s cells until your cells meet up with and match the frequency rate of Joy. When your energies merge at this level, you will experience joy. We will then ask you to even further deepen your meditative practice. I will ask you to sit in even deeper stillness - and learn how to continue to increase the frequency rate of each of your cells through meditation ….until they exactly match the frequency rate of orgasmic energy….. Then when these field meet and match each other, you will experience ecstasy – real orgasmic ecstasy.

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The Bliss Technique. You may seem to be just sitting there in total stillness in your room, but your body’s brainwaves and the frequency rate of each of your cells is vibrating at such perfect, incredible speeds that you are in ecstasy. As these states of orgasmic energy start to stream through your body, they will trigger your body into producing vast quantities of happy, ECSTATIC hormones like serotonin into your blood system! Serotonin, for example is the hormone involved in keeping our moods stable, making us serene and happy, and allowing us to focus and concentrate. A huge release of serotonin into our bloodstream increases joy, pleasure, confidence and feelings of deep intimacy inside us.

Freedom of Choice When we realize that we ALL have the FREEDOM to experience ecstatic orgasmic energy either through meditation or sex, or both if we choose……. ………we finally begin to to realize that experiencing this energy has nothing to do with age, looks, body shape, religion, or nationality.

We are all energy beings, and we can all learn how to vibrationally align our bodies to these universal, ecstatic energetic frequencies.

We can all experience ecstatic energy. And it is actually this wanting to experience orgasmic ecstatic energy that is the real reason why we are all obsessed with sex. It’s why the Great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was once able to wrote:

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"Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will be the tragedy of the bedroom"

It's why the author, Jonathan Margolis wrote in his recent book, The Intimate History of the Orgasm:

"Sexual pleasure will continue to be the Number One subject in everyone's life, to dominate the media, arts and most people's every waking moment

But here's the thing: As we are beginning to see our obsession with sex is not for the reason we all think it is. Dr. Deepak Chopra knows the real inner reason when he wrote:

'Why is sex so powerful? Simply……because we are constantly of our original state of pure bliss.'

in

search

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The Bliss Technique. This is what we have all overlooked: It is not sex per se that we really want. What we really want to experience is our original state of pure bliss pure ecstatic energy. This is the REAL reason we are obsessed with sex. But we have been misled. Conned. As we have seen, over the centuries we have been led to believe that sex was the ONLY way that we could experience this vital energy frequency in our bodies. This belief has been literally hardwired into our brains. We all accept it without question. Yes, sex is a beautiful way to experience this energy, and always will be - but it is not the only way. We can go to the Source of this energy and feel ecstatic energy anytime we want. As much or as little as we desire! Never forget: Ecstatic energy is simply a very specific energy frequency or rate of universal energy and it is possible for anyone to go to their room now, sit down - and through a simple meditative process attune themselves to this universal frequency of energy. Through this process, you can easily feel waves and waves of this orgasmic energy streaming through your body.

ecstatic

In fact, your body has over 72,000 entry or energy points to attract and draw this energy into your body. And when you can experience it, Life will never seem the same again. As Patricia Cori writes in the 'The Cosmos of Soul'

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"The sexual experience will become more of a heart experience, for once you know orgasm as great waves or frequencies of ecstatic light moving through the cosmic sea, you will become aware of it's real significance. You WILL FEEL this energy - this orgasmic frequency race through your hearts with such intensity and rapture that you will wonder how you could ever have enjoyed such union in your animal selves, where physical pleasure limits your experience to four or five seconds of physical release and momentary pleasure".

And here is the important thing: When your body experiences this energy through meditation, amazing things happen: Not only will you feel this energy in your body, but your whole biochemistry will change to accommodate this onrush of high-frequency energy. Your body will produce all the natural pleasure hormones that it would produce as if you were having orgasmic sex. For example, when you experience a sexual orgasm through physical lovemaking, it triggers a huge release of the hormone -oxytocin into your bloodstream. This is the love, pleasure, and bonding hormone. And....... when you experience ecstatic, orgasmic energy streaming through your body through deep states of meditation - this also triggers a huge release of the hormone -oxytocin into your bloodstream Scientists have verified this by demonstrating that the experience of orgasmic energy through meditation is accompanied by more or less the same physiological reactions as ordinary sex, including the characteristic increases in heart rate, systolic blood pressure, pupil diameter and pain threshold.

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….And when you start to really experience this energy at its SOURCE, streaming through your body, ……and then, together with others……no longer will you feel that ..... " life is passing you by………

"Why do I feel as if life has somehow not yet begun, as if I am still a child, as if when I die, it will be as if I have never lived?” Colin Wilson.

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Module 3: Why Your Body Needs Ecstatic Energy!

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The Bliss Technique. Module 3: Why Your Body Needs Ecstatic Energy!

“This is why ecstasy is a new frequency, the vibration of a new frequency. Our sexual energy is usually the only place in our lives where we come anywhere close to ecstasy or rapture because we feel that pulsation, that electromagnetic charge that is part of our own creation. It is the essence of our being.”

You might not accept this now - but all your life, your body has been STARVED of real pleasure. But it is much more serious:

This lack of pleasure is destroying the health, the well-being, the vitality and the longevity of your body. We will come back to this point again and again in these Modules, but right now I want you to realize one vital fact: Pleasure is not just a nice sensation in your body, but a very real, measurable energy. Pleasure is a real, vital, essential ENERGY that our body NEEDS and craves. We need to start to look at pleasure in a new way, free of all the old cultural conditioning.

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The Bliss Technique. The fact is:

Pleasure is a very specific, measurable energy frequency that is essential to our health and well-being. Our body needs to FEEL the ecstasy of it streaming through it's biological and neurological circuitry. Pleasure/Bliss subjective.

is

both

objective

and

You can feel it as a sensation but it also effects measurable change – it can alter the heart rate, blood pressure and hormone secretions in your body”.

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The Bliss Technique. The visionary Eva Pierrakos spent her whole life trying to tell people this:

"Our physical health and well-being are totally dependent on the state of pleasure a human body is capable of allowing. Since the streamings of pleasure are also the forces of life, health, renewal, and regeneration, your health and longevity are results of your capacity for pleasure.

And THIS IS also the reason why you age so quickly with the stress of modern life.

As the author Steven Harrison argues:

"The body needs consciousness, life energy. It is starving. Disease is the starvation of the body. The starvation is not for food, but for the entry of consciousness, of life energy, pleasure into the very cells of the body.

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This chronic consciousness-starvation is manifest in the slow decline and degeneration of the physical body. It is the aging process, mechanically imprinted in our memory, our genes".

But as we have seen, you restrict this energy SO MUCH in your body that you hardly feel ANY ecstatic energy at all in your life now.

Right now, this is a truth you must face.

You have never, NEVER allowed yourself to EXPERIENCE the full, ecstatic IMMENSITY of pleasure in your body.

Never. You can see this so clearly when you sit down to meditate or relax. How do you FEEL when you meditate?

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If I said to you that you SHOULD BE experiencing a healing, body-tingling ECSTASY when you meditate or relax you'd probably laugh at me and my stupid claims! Yet - the truth is: THAT is WHAT you should be experiencing NOW. And not only should you be experiencing that pleasure - but your body desperately needs to be experiencing this form of ecstatic energy for it's own health, well-being and longevity.

Your body is CRYING out for it.

Why You NEED To Feel This Pleasure Every Day? Now here is the really important part. Not only do you have the potential to access these deep, ecstatic states of pleasure NOW -but it is absolutely imperative - essential - for your body that you do so. For example, it is because our body is literally starved to death of pleasure, that we feel so lousy and stressed all the time.

1.

Stress & Anxiety

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The Bliss Technique. Most of us are actually unaware of how deeply....... ..Stressed, ...Frozen, ...Blocked........and dead our bodies are most of the time .........

When your life is busy and stressful, you create feelings of stress and anxiety which cause the production of overloads of the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is known as the “stress hormone”, a hormone that is extremely bad for your health. What’s more, the more of the hormone, cortisol you produce in your body, the more stressed you feel...and the more vulnerable to disease you become! This overload of stress, and your INABILITY to FEEL PLEASURE in your life causes you to experience headaches, irritability, tension and suffer sleepless nights.

2. Inability To Lose Weight! Your body's inability to feel ecstatic pleasure is also the real reason why we all find it impossible to lose weight - and keep it off. We NEED continually to 'stuff' ourselves with 'pleasurable' Junk food because our body has been starved of it's own NATURAL SOURCE of pleasure - so it looks to these substitutes to make up for the lack.

Our body has been starved of it's own

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NATURAL, limitless SOURCE of pleasure - so it looks to these substitutes to make up for the lack.

3. Pleasure And Your Sexual Well-being!

Because most men today cannot achieve tremendous, powerful erections ...... ....And most women just cannot LET GO FULLY and TOTALLY to experience a whole orgasm because, at some deep level, ' we just won't allow ourselves to feel undulating pleasure'. We just won't allow the energy to flow - unhindered throughout our bodies. And..... that's why we feel little or nothing during sex. In fact, it's why our bodies feel 'frozen' and 'limp' before sex. And it's why most of us now avoid or put off enjoying sex. In fact, that in a New York Times Poll this year, one in three men admitted that they actively avoided sex and refused to sleep with prospective partners for fear of failure.

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The Bliss Technique. In a follow-up New York Times poll among 15,000 women, - the simple matter of self-consciousness inhibited orgasm in over 75% of the women interviewed. 75%! Today, most of us are so self-consciousness and divorced from our bodies....that we feel only a tiny, TINY tingle of the sexual energy that we should be experiencing. Less than 10% of what we should be experiencing.

Again, this is the bottom line:

We just won't ALLOW ourselves to relax, let go..... ......and FEEL intense, mindblowing pleasure in every cell of our body.

Unconsciously, we ALWAYS block this energy from streaming through our bodies, so that what we experience is a tiny, pale imitation of what we should be enjoying.. And again, we think this is 'normal' It is not.

When you learn to access deep levels of orgasmic energy through the Bliss Technique - it will also trigger your body into producing hundreds of health -promoting and health- protecting hormonal secretions. No wonder the Dr Norman Rosenthal of the American Government's National Institute of Mental Health said last year:

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"The prevention of heart attack and stroke and actual lengthening of lifespan by an alternative treatment method is exceedingly rare, if not unprecedented.

"If Meditation were a drug conferring so many health benefits, it would be a billion-dollar blockbuster.” Norman Rosenthal of the National Institute of Mental Health.

American

government's

Here are some of the main physical and mental benefits of deep levels of Meditation when the body releases all these hormones, thanks to the research of our colleagues at www.eocinstitute.org

• Strengthened immune system, health, and overall well-being • Renewed feelings of inspiration, vitality, rejuvenation, happiness, and confidence • Improved sleep, with a reduction in episodes of insomnia and a boost of enhanced energy • Permanent reduction in stress, worry, anxiety, depression, irritability, and moodiness • Ability to attain the necessary mindset to reach self-actualization and enlightenment • Renewed understanding of the importance of living in the "now" • Natural boost in DHEA, Serotonin, GABA, Melatonin, Endorphins and reduction in Cortisol • Elimination of uncontrollable habits, fears, and phobias • Significant reduction in "mental chatter" and self-destructive impulses • An avenue of exploration and expansion of your self-awareness and state of consciousness • Restoration of your natural Ph Balance, resulting in a sequence of vast beneficial changes • Increased emotional stability, psychological balance, and mental harmony • Enhanced motivation, personal growth, intuition, creativity, and goal-reaching abilities • Attraction and manifestation all of your personal and altruistic desires • Increased mental processing abilities and instant ‘whole brain synchronization • Increased learning ability, memory, and concentration.

That’s why learning The Bliss Technique is one of the most important life skill you’ll ever learn…………

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Module 4 The Most Important Life Skill You’ll Ever Learn

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Module 4: The most important life skill you’ll ever learn

Hell is our resistance. T. Golas "If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion." Dogen

To successfully learn The Bliss Technique , there is one simple idea that you must never forget. It will be the difference between success and failure.

The Secret The secret of the Bliss Technique is simple. You don’t need to do anything!! Yes, you don’t need do anything!! And yet that is the one thing that hardly none of us can do!

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Over the past 2o years teaching The Bliss Technique - the hardest job I always have is getting people to understand the following idea. Now, this idea will sound strange and paradoxical to you but.......

To experience the pleasure that your body so badly requires.... the whole secret is not to want this pleasure, or to try to 'will' or 'force' yourself to feel this pleasure ...........but to learn HOW to ALLOW it into your life.

That's the great secret. You see, you can’t consciously ‘make’ or ‘force’ yourself to MAKE or pleasure.

FEEL

To FEEL good. It CAN'T be done. You can't consciously 'manufacture' these feelings, or states of being. Similar to a powerful, intense sexual orgasm, you can't 'force' or 'will' yourself to have one. If you try to force or ‘will’ one, it only usually leads to failure and frustration. The truth is: To feel this pleasure, you don't need to do anything. ....Because this feeling of pleasure that you are seeking is there all the time! Here is the extremely difficult idea I now want you to grasp now.

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This state of supreme pleasure, Bliss is our deep, CORE field of Energy, underlying state constantly present- everywhere . Again, I don't want you to just believe this. Or just accept it blindly. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting your time. I merely want you, for a moment to put aside all your old ideas, beliefs and conclusions, practice the exercises - and then EXPERIENCE for yourself WHETHER this is true or not. Isn't that fair enough?? Yes, I know it goes against everything you have believed all your life but……. …..Won’t it be better to experience your pleasure from this Natural Source of Being rather than stuffing yourself with ‘pleasurable’ junk food to make up for this terrible lack? Now here’s the key idea we must consider: To experience the pleasure that your body so badly requires .......

Your ONLY job will be to relax away all the obstacles that are now blocking the flow of pleasure into your body.

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When you go to your room to practice the Bliss Technique, that's the only thing you will have to do. Remember again what Arnold M. Patent wrote many years ago. Let’s quote him again.

'Joy is part of our essence, the underlying feeling that we all have access to. However most of us have buried our joy, our bliss beneath layers of judgments and repressed feelings. The challenge before us is to keep peeling off the layers until the joy is uncovered and allowed to fill and overflow from out being' .

And listen carefully to the author Colin Sisson when he shouts it out even more clearly:

Bliss consciousness is the main essence behind selfobservation. It is the essence behind all the great teachings, except it seems to have been lost somehow, or has been reduced to some superficial mythical concept...........

No amount of wealth, power, sex, drugs or fine food contain happiness in themselves but only serve to draw out a minute portion of that

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infinite bliss already latent within each of us.........

Bliss is our underlying state constantly present .......... yet most of us don't experience it. Why not? It

is

because

of

the

state

of

our

mind.

It is all CLOGGED up with suppressions and tensions...........it is in a state of constant RESTLESS activity..........and until we have CLEARED the system our experience of joy will be LIMITED to physical sensations or intellectual amusements.........' Colin Sisson, Riches Within

So when you start to practice The Bliss Technique, the only thing you will have to learn is how to...............

......To relax away all the obstacles that are blocking the flow of pleasure that should now be streaming throughout your body. When you do this your body will naturally align itself with the specific vibratory rate of ecstatic, orgasmic energy. Your body knows how to do this perfectly itself – IF we will only get out of the way and let it. Page 75 of 306

The Bliss Technique. That's the only thing you have to do. That is your only goal. Your only objective when you sit to practice the Bliss Technique. That is the only skill you need to learn. Yet, in my opinion it is one of the most important life skills you will ever learn in your life. Isn’t it funny, we seem to learn every skill! How to walk and talk. How to read. How to cook and drive a car. Yet most of us never bother to learn one of the most important life SKILLS of all:

How to meditate and relax to a deep bliss level where we can experience healing ecstatic energy. Not ORDINARY relaxation or meditation .........But learning how to EXPERIENCE deep states of ecstasy in our bodies at moments of deep relaxation and meditation.

Most of us never bother to learn how to release all the hyper-stress and hyperanxiety that FREEZES our bodies so that now -we are unable to FEEL the natural pleasure and ecstasy of our bodies. Dr. Deepak Chopra expressed this paradoxical idea perfectly when he wrote:

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"Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet.

It's a way of entering into the quiet that's already there buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day”

'The SUN is Always There, Behind The Clouds!' What we’re saying is that this state of pure relaxation or pure pleasure exists right NOW....... this VERY moment……. It exists as a field of pure energy. And the only reason you hardly ever EXPERIENCE it is because your mind is BLOCKED and continually PREOCCUPIED with an unending stream of ……..

 

Thoughts, worries Wishes

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Dreams



Fantasies



Fears and sensations….

………..that FILL and BLOCK your waking, surface consciousness, moment-aftermoment. In other words, your mind NEVER STOPS even for a moment and is never still.

You are NEVER, NEVER STILL. You are never, NEVER FULLY PRESENT in the moment. Your mind is always on overdrive. Running here, there, and everywhere. Running from this worry to that worry. From one fear to another fear. One dream to another dream. And because you are always in this state of tension, you believe ABSOLUTELY that there is NOTHING more to you than...... all these old regular thoughts, anxieties, tensions, fears and negative sensations. But there IS.... But you must have the courage to take the next step and experience WHAT lies there - beyond your chattering, worrying, anxious, and worried mind!

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'Come on, It's can be that Easy and Simple?' There is good news and bad news! The good news is that The Bliss Technique is simple to learn. However……. …..The bad news is that, in the beginning it will not be so easy or pleasant to practice and apply. For the first 10 days or so, you won't want to do it. Your whole body will resist this practice. You will feel heavy, blocked and restless. You won't like it. This is what most of us experience in the beginning – and when we do, unfortunately most of us tend to stop then and give up..

The Great Paradox But to experience this, we must never forget the main lesson of this Module: We never make pleasure the goal, the purpose or the aim of our meditation or relaxation session. You never try to consciously 'get', 'make' or ‘force’ this pleasure. For example, when you sit to mediate, your GOAL or intention should not be, “'I'm going to make myself feel great pleasure now……...” Instead, your goal should be for the 30 minutes or so…… 'I'm just going to be still .......and enjoy releasing all the tensions, fears, blockages and barriers that are lodged and hidden in my body...................and then ALLOW myself to FEEL whatever happens then'. Page 79 of 306

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Remember:

Ecstasy is not the goal or objective of your meditation but the EFFORTLESS RESULT of PROPER practice. The Bliss happens EFFORTLESSLY of it's own natural accord! When you sit to meditate, as we will learn as the course progresses -your GOAL will be to simply stay fully present in your body….and allow yourself to feel without preference, whatever is present at any moment with a soft, gentle choice-less awareness. Please remember this : Your GOAL is simply to allow yourself to feel without preference, WHATEVER is present, at any moment. That's all. Nothing else. That’s the GREAT SECRET. Of experiencing profound, brain-burning pleasure and joy. The key is to renounce any objective beyond the practice itself. You are not even here in order to relax, or to overcome pain, or even to experience any specific pleasant sensations – the experience is not subordinated to a higher goal – you are just here to be here.

And when you learn to do that –this practice will NATURALLY and EFFORTLESSLY clear away and dissolve all the obstacles that block the Page 80 of 306

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natural flow of pleasure, of orgasmic energy in your body.

Remember it is this gentle, non-resistance attitude of mind that RELEASES all the BLOCKS and TENSIONS in your body allowing the infinite pleasure of the life-force energy to be experienced in your body. Then as this pleasure arises, allow it. That’s the other great secret. Don’t make a big deal of this rising pleasure as you experience it as the course progresses. And don’t try to cling to it or hold it or make it stay. Simply ALLOW YOURSELF to enjoy it. To truly enjoy it. It is your true natural state. It is what we should all be feeling. It is the best healing energy you can ask for.

It is a frequency of energy that your body has been starved off.

A frequency of love, of pleasure, of joy that will make every cell of your body sing. You will FEEL this energy in the very pores of your skin, the roots of your hair, rushing into all these areas that have been starved of this healing frequency for ages.

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The Bliss Technique. That is why we turn to this simple Bliss Technique.

It is only a simple technique or tool to help us to CLEAR our system of the blockages that prevent us from EXPERIENCING, in our everyday life, our underlying nature of bliss.

One night, the author Chris Griscom dropped all limitations, all expectations from her mind …..and just allowed herself to feel, without restriction to the very heart of this energy. Here, from her book, ‘Ecstasy, A new Frequency’, she describes what happened to her one night…. “It seemed perfect to sleep under the stars on Christmas Eve. The beauty, the newness, the vulnerability of it sparked my unquenchable emotion which soared into the night sky. The expansion stirred my body which considered the difference between pressing my heart up against another heart………,it had been four months since I had made love and I mused about the serious possibility that I would never experience those sensations again. I was forty-one, my sexual energy honed to its sweetest, highest pitch….. I don’t know how long I slept, but I awakened to a trillion orgasmic explosions, pulsating electrical spasms shattering the confines of my cells, my body, my consciousness! I was sweating. All borders, all awareness of where I began and ended was gone. After indescribable, timeless moments, it quieted into a sensation of an undulating sea and I realized that I has literally levitated more than a foot above the ground. I felt a sensation of floating down, and for the rest of the night I listened to a wonderful humming within my body. My cells were singing. My mind never stirred throughout, I was so engulfed in the experience. Only now, can I give it a name: I call it a ‘cosmic orgasm’.

The Bliss Technique is designed to help you experience the various levels and intensities of ecstatic orgasmic energy now.

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The Bliss Technique. Gradually...... as you stop running away from your body and practice the technique............all the cells and organs in your body will begin to let go, open-up like a flower petal and start to…………‘breath’ deeply again.

You’ll start to feel streams of energy move again in your body as this terrible tension that kept your body locked, blocked and frozen begins to dissolve and melt away. And as you deepen your practice, all these ingrained, locked-in fears and tensions will begin to drain away. And you’ll begin to feel your body begin to pulsate again.

Don’t Limit The Energy! It is also important that as pleasure rises in your body, you don’t try to put ANY limits on this pleasure as it circulates in your body. Just let it rise and rise of it's own accord. Your only GOAL is to KEEP relaxing, KEEP letting go ….and to ALLOW what happens to happen. And the more you can hold this new attitude…as you practice, the more of this energy you will open up to. Again, drop all mental limits you might have as to what is possible for you to experience. The energy is limitless – so will be YOUR experience!

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The Bliss Technique. Let’s start to practice now……

First Exercise How to Practice The Bliss Technique - The Basics (Read these instructions a few times before you practise until you understand the spirit of this exercise.

At this stage, try doing all the exercises without using my tape, ‘Experiencing the Bliss Technique’. We will introduce the tape to you in Module 6. But to help you to get a better grounding and understanding of the core principles of Bliss Techniques, practice and ENJOY these exercises without the back-up of the tape, until you get to Module 6.

The Bliss Technique

The Bliss Technique is, at its essence very simple. The best time to practice is early in the morning or late at night before you go to bed but anytime where you can be quiet and undisturbed is fine. However, do not practice after a heavy meal. Leave 2-3 hours before you start.

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There is no need for any complicated sitting postures or esoteric breathing techniques. They do not belong to this simple form of the Bliss Technique. To begin, sit upright in a chair with your back straight, your feet together or a few inches apart and your knees spread naturally. Hands can rest on the knees or thighs. The main thing is to be as relaxed and as comfortable as possible while keeping this basic posture. It is not necessary to sit like the Indian meditators do - cross-legged in a lotus position unless you have already practiced this position and find it comfortable. And if you do like that position, keep doing it. People in the East practiced in this form mainly because it was the predominant way they sat in ordinary life. However, it is all a question of choice. Most Westerners will probably find sitting in a chair the most suitable and effective way. Your choice Remain relaxed, comfortable and poised with your back straight. You can face ahead, maybe tilting your gaze a little bit downwards with your eyes half-closed. We suggest half-closed because that will help you to temporarily cut off many of the visual stimuli that may distract you; however by keeping them half-opened it will help you resist the temptation to fall asleep or drift into fantasy or an aimless dream state. In the beginning, you may find this happening. If it does it is fine. Simply note it - without judging or criticizing yourself and revert back to being aware of your body being fully present in this chair or on this cushion. Now make a gentle commitment to yourself:

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‘I'm sitting here to practice. There is nothing else I have to do or think about for the next …… minutes (length of your practise)’ If there is, go and do it or think about it and come back to your the Bliss Technique. Now gently start to be aware of your body. Be aware - feel the sensation of your bottom on the chair. Sense the hardness of the chair. Feel your feet on the ground. Again feel - sense - note the firmness and solidity of the floor on which your feet are firmly planted. This

is

important

to

ground

you.

We want to keep you in the here and down - in this chair - in this moment, not drifting away into the never, never - into dreams or fantasies or old memories. You can do that any other time – now, we want you to remain fully present in your body. Now place your attention - your awareness in your foot. Be there. We don't want you to do anything - just beware of your foot. Open to any feeling or sensation that may be there. We are not looking for anything in particular, but simply noting whatever is there at that moment. You may feel warmth there. Fine. You may feel nothing.

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Equally fine.

The goal is not to feel anything in particular, but just to be aware - to note ANYTHING that may be there without judgment or evaluation.

Now gently move your attention into your ……. 

Arms



Your hands



Your fingers



Even the hairs on the back of your hands……….

Again just a simple awareness …………. No desires. No expectations. No trying to feel or do anything in particular. Just a gentle, soft spacious, awareness ……….. Now gently become aware of your stomach ……… heart……… lungs …… throat…….eyes……the back of your neck…….any tension or tightness in your scalp……… Just open to each in the moment gently, playfully, totally impersonally - as if you are a total stranger looking at yourself without the slightest care or interest in what you see or feel. No personal involvement. Always try to stay present in the body. To get an overall feel or sense of it If you become aware of any tension in your body now, just let it drop, fall away into your stomach.

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Gently scan your body again. Let all the tension, everything, just drop down. Feel as if it is all falling down towards the stomach. If you wish imagine it as a cloudy energy that is falling out of every cell of your body. Gently. Easily. No effort. No trying. A gentle relaxation.

All the tension falling out of your face…..out of your head…….out of your shoulders………out of your lungs….. Kidneys……out of your entire body. You don't have to think about it. Just let it drop. At a deeper level, the stomach represents a furnace where all the tension and emotion is automatically destroyed. Like the digestion of food, it is all done for you. So stay easy, relaxed, open, fully present in your body. Once again, gently become aware of the solidity of your body on the chair. Open to and become aware of any sounds or noises that may be around you. Or smells. Or physical sensations in your body

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Do not get 'involved' in any of these temporary phenomena. As you become aware of a sound, simply note 'sound'. A smell - simply note 'smell'. Then gently come back to the awareness of yourself sitting in the chair. Your goal is simply to be aware of whatever is present at that moment always coming back to your body as the primary object of attention. Your anchor A soft gentle awareness…… Thoughts will arise. Gently note them: A thought. Or: A flow of thoughts.

It is important to stay present in your body rather than go off drifting into these pictures and images, analyzing or getting lost in them. As thoughts come simply acknowledge them - note them -watch them as they come and go like the clouds in the sky and ………. return to being present in your body If you try to stop them or shut them off, that will only intensify them. Remember it is OK to have these thoughts but don't believe you have to 'do' anything to them. Again treat them like the clouds - just passing through. If you don't get involved with them, they won't 'stick' to you and will just arise and pass away. (In later lessons we will deal more extensively with this - but for the moment if a

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thought arise simply treat it like a hotel guest - they check in, stay around for a while and then check out. No big deal.)

Again, come back to your primary object of attention - your body sitting on this chair. Maintain your soft gentle playful awareness……….. Emotions will arise. Certain feelings. Again no judgement Simply note them and allow them to come up and be there. Don't get lost or start to label them as good or bad. At this stage simply beware of them as if they were happening to someone else. Note how intensive the feeling is. Where in the body you can feel it the most? A gentle soft awareness Let the feeling be.

Don't try to 'do' anything to it. Don't even want it to go away. That would be interfering, trying to change it. Just let it be there, and as you don't make a big deal of it, like everything else, it will arise and pass away of it's own accord. Your soft, gentle, non-interfering 'not making it wrong' awareness will dissolve it

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naturally if you will let it. Again return gently to your anchor - you sitting here on this chair. Relaxed. Open. Gentle. Playful. Fully present in this 'now' moment. Alert and yet calm.

What to Do? Practice this simple opening to the Bliss Technique for at least 10-15 minutes every day, this week or for as long as you want.

Don't try to do it perfectly. In fact, don't try to achieve any particular result at all. At this stage, just play around with it. Don't practice as if you are doing an exam. Stay open and relaxed. As you practice for the first few days, notice particularly how your mind reacts. Will it stay still or will it go off in a gallop and then quieten down?

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The Bliss Technique. Notice what feelings - what deep physical sensations you experience as you try to stay present in your body in this 'now' moment? Watch especially, how you react to these feelings and sensations? Whatever happens, welcome it all. We have lots to learn (remember?) but make sure you spend at least 10-15 minutes or longer if you prefer this week, practicing this basic opening to the Bliss Technique. Remember 1 hour or 15 minutes of actual the Bliss Technique is better then 10 hours of reading or studying about it. Accept that many times you won't feel like doing it, especially if you are a beginner.

Again don't worry if you feel like this. In fact, it is a good sign - it shows that all the old repressed energies that have made your life so dull and miserable in the past are coming up to the surface to be released.

And soon, you will discover – EXPERIENCE- that great essential joy that was there all along ……the joy and bliss of Pure Awareness

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Module 5 Hell is our Resistance

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Module 5: Hell is our Resistance”

Hell is our resistance. T. Golas "If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion." Dogen

In

the

eighteenth

century,

the

French

genius

Blaise

Pascal

said:

"All of man's miseries derive from him not being able to sit in a room alone with himself" This is indeed true, but what Pascal overlooked is that most of us find it almost impossible to be alone with ourselves. To be still. To simply sit with ourselves with no distractions to escape into. After a while, we all get a terrible urge to get up - to stop. In fact, to do ANYTHING but sit and be still with ourselves…….. gently observing our thoughts and feelings. This resistance, this unease we feel is very real. But here’s the key: Do not regard this as a disadvantage or as a hindrance to your ability to sit and be still.

This ‘resistance’ you feel is a great blessing.

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The Magic of Resistance This resistance – which you will experience when you start to practise the Bliss Technique is, in fact a valuable key. It will provide you with a TREMENDOUS opportunity to understand and practice all the principles that will allow you to experience, NOT JUST TALK ABOUT OR THEORIZE ABOUT, but to actually experience that state of PURE pleasure that we talked about in the Introduction. By not running away from this resistance to be with ourselves , we will allow ourselves to face this resistance once and for all and to discover what really lies behind it.

The Power of Fear ‘You are born alone, you die alone and between the two you live alone in yourself. Even if you are living as part of the crowd in the dark corridors of time, or enraptured by the embrace of a lover, still the lover must sleep, as must the crowd, and you are still alone in yourself’ James Alan Conlan, ‘In Celebration to Life’

One of the main reasons, most people won’t practice the Bliss Technique is that they can’t be alone with themselves. They can’t face themselves. And the reason we can’t be still and alone with ourselves is fear. We all have a TERRIBLE anxiety – a terrible fear that we are not ‘ good enough’; that we just don't measure up; that we're 'not all there'. Or to put it another way: We fear that if people saw us as we really are --- no one would really like us, want us, accept us or love us. We would be unlovable and unloved.

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The Bliss Technique. Even more: The subsequent fear that we will be left alone, neglected, ignored, isolated, existing in a world of total indifference. The fear that, deep down we are of: No meaning. No significance. Don’t be fooled. This fearful, anxious, sweaty FEAR runs all our lives, to a greater or lesser degree. Virtually, every moment of the day, this fear is there– whether we are conscious of it or not. Even when we are dreaming. As Stephen Levine once wrote:

"No wonder we are all crazy, so fractured, trying to protect ourselves from whom we fear we are. We dare not share our minds with anyone, even ourselves.” “We are so frightened of who we might be, of not being loved or loveable for the convolutions of our thoughts."

THE VOID All of us experience this fear – this sense of worthlessness, of emptiness in our lives, but most of us unconsciously repress it, ignore it or try to cover it up through meaningless, frantic activities – 

Overworking



Endless parties and entertainment

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Meaningless genital sex



Always on the move



Arguing and debating everything under the sun



Drink



Drugs



And hours and hours of TV.

Another popular form is an endless obsession with self-improvement. We are never still.

ANYTHING –- but go

In fact, we will do ANYTHING –and I mean into the stillness of our being. Be alone with ourselves. We pretend this is because we have no time. We have responsibilities. We have to work and survive. We have to relax and enjoy ourselves. All this is true. This is not a negation of these things. 

Work is fine.



Enjoying a nice drink or having sex is fine.



Watching your favourite TV program or looking forward to a great party is fine.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with these things per se, unless you become attached to them and they become a way for you to avoid or escape yourself. If we are honest, we will admit that we use them, a lot of the time, as excuses to continually distract ourselves - so that we will never be alone with ourselves. Never still.

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The Bliss Technique. Never silent And even if we are alone, our mind will be in a constant state of frantic activity, either running over old conversations or disappointments or painting terrible, fearful pictures of the future.

A Vital Question What would you do if you found out that you had to spend 6 hours tonight looking after someone's house? The first thought that might occur to you is: "That's fine, but I wonder what I'll do for 6 hours." You'd probably make sure they had a TV or some food in the fridge. If not that, maybe they had a music system. If

not

that,

then

maybe:

"Well do you have some books or magazines lying about?" "Sorry. No. Nothing at all." "Well have you got a phone. Can I talk to my friends?" "No. No phone." "Well what have you got?" "Well nothing I'm afraid. The house is empty. We've just moved in. Could you please just look after it for 6 hours. There'll just be you. We will have the TV, phone and some food when you come next time?" Isn't it strange? Only 6 hours - yet most of us would dread it - having to spend all that time with nothing to do to 'kill' the time.

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The Bliss Technique. Only the company of ourselves. That person we can never escape from. The person that is with us from our first breath when we are born to our last breath when we die. In the end, it is all that we have. There is only us. Everything else will come and go, stay for a while and then pass on. 

Our friends



Our processions



Our jobs



Even our children.

We are left with ourselves. There is only us. [This seeming horror of total aloneness seems all encompassing and terrible – yet just beneath this ‘aloneness’ lies what we are all looking for – Unity consciousness……...More about this later on. But first we must face our fear of being alone]

“Ordinary men despise solitude, but masters make use of it. Embracing aloneness, they realize oneness with the whole universe.” Lao-Tsu, Tao Te Ching

Yet, then fear raises its head.

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The Bliss Technique. What if we are not good enough? Not strong enough? Not intelligent enough? Attractive enough? Young enough? What if the 'person' that we are, is not likeable, loveable or desirable? It is one of our greatest unconscious fears.

Hypertension It keeps us unconsciously in a state of tension, anxiety and dread all our lives. It keeps us continually on the move - always hypersensitive to what other people really think of us. It prevents us from really enjoying other people's company.

Total Eye Contact? How many of us can sit opposite any person and maintain total eye contact without looking away, fearful of what that person might be thinking of us? We are afraid he or she may say something or give some indication that will confirm or awaken our deepest fear: that we are just 'not enough', not really likeable or wanted. Unacceptable. It is not the person's comments or lack of them that cause us the pain but this unconscious frequency of fear that runs our life. Let’s go back to what Andrew Cohen says in his book 'Enlightenment is a secret':

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"Most people are suffering from the same agony, tormented by ideas of who they are, who they want to be and who they don't want to be. It helps you when you realize that this predicament is the human condition. It helps you when you realize almost everyone is suffering in this same misery. Realizing this can help. It can help you see through the illusion that you are suffering in your misery alone and isolated……when you realize that it is the average condition of almost everybody. It is the beginning of a big change in perspective."

The Joy Of Freedom In The Bliss Technique, you will come face to face with yourself. There is no escaping this. You'll meet this fear and taste it's heavy, chaotic and fidgety energy. Most of us will want to run away - give up and put off this practise when we feel this discomfort. You will think: "This is a waste of time. I should be out there doing something really useful instead." Or:

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The Bliss Technique. "I don't like this feeling. Maybe if I stop now and practice later, this uncomfortable feeling will be gone. Please, don't let it put you off. The Bliss Technique will give you a golden opportunity to open to and transmute this fear. To literally transmute agony into ecstasy! As one of our students once described it: " The joy, the relief, the bliss and freedom you'll feel when you release the hold this energy has over you is like the feeling you get when you're standing in a park that is covered by a dark hazy cloud - when suddenly the cloud dissolves and in that incredible instant, everything becomes enveloped in a bright, glowing, warm golden light." Let me repeat: Don't let this fear of what you may be, stop you from being alone with yourself in the silence of the Bliss Technique.

AN ILLUSION ”This self-image, this ego-self is the phantom rider, the ghost of the past, sucking the juice of your essence.’ James Alan Conlan, ‘In Celebration to Life’

After a while, as you ‘be’ with yourself in stillness, you will realise that this ‘self image’, which you spend so much time, worrying about and maintaining -- is not you. It is just a series of ‘mental pictures’ or as one writer described it 'a frozen thought-form' - a detailed mental picture of yourself that changes moment-tomoment.

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The Bliss Technique. As you continue to practice The Bliss Technique, you will get the experiential understanding that you are not this self-image but you are THAT which is watching, observing all these changing images.

You are Pure, Unchanging Awareness. Pure, Unchanging Energy This will not just be an intellectual understanding. Please don't force yourself to believe this now just because it sounds nice. As you practise the Bliss Technique, you will naturally and effortlessly realise this for yourself.

You will experience it. You will realise words are useless. And you will realise one other thing: The resistance you had to this practise will turn out to be your greatest blessing. It will be your greatest teacher.

Pain And Boredom "All this is true", beginners will say, "but it is not the whole story, is it?” When I start to practice the Bliss Technique, all is fine," they will continue, "but after a while, I start to feel restless, bored, fed-up. I get a terrible urge to get up and stop. This is why I don't want to do this. I hate these feelings". This point of view is entirely true.

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The Bliss Technique. It is another one of the main reasons why people don't want to practise the Bliss Technique in the beginning or any form of insight meditation. I don't want to discourage you -- but when you sit down to practise, you will get the same feelings in the beginning. But, please bear with me when I add the following: this is something that you should warmly welcome. Let me explain. When I first started this practice, I started under the assumption, which is deeply ingrained in our culture, that certain thoughts or feeling states are BAD bad and undesirable. That we should do everything we can to avoid them. For example, none of us like to feel bored, frustrated or fearful if we can avoid it. If we do feel any of the above, we believe we should take immediate action to change these feelings into more 'desirable' ones.

But …….. This belief that certain feelings are 'bad' keeps us in a state of constant judgment. We are always unconsciously monitoring, evaluating and judging how we are feeling -- hoping that we won't have to experience any 'bad' ones. When I started this practise, if I began to feel bored or restless or if I had the feeling: ‘I can't do this properly, its hopeless’ --- my old conditioning would set in and mentally I would try to 'push' these 'bad' feelings or sensations away. I stared to fight them To resist them Or, I would stop the practise and hope that when I started again, they would be gone.

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I made no progress until I realized it was NOT these 'unpleasant' feelings or sensations that were causing all the trouble but how I was relating to them. It was : 

My judgment



My resistance



My fear of them .. …….

…… that kept me struck. It was my conditioned tendency to either cling to them if they were pleasant, or push them away if they were unpleasant that kept me in pain.

A Simple Truth ‘Hell is our resistance’ T. Golas

It was then I realized a simple truth, which we will explore throughout this book:

The pain, the discomfort and the agony we feel is not in the feeling or sensation, but in our unconscious judgment and RESISTANCE of it.

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The Bliss Technique. The secret is to simply let them be. To just …….. watch and observe them. And not to have the slightest like or dislike of these feelings. Just a gentle watching ……… Not trying or WANTING to improve or change any of these so-called ‘bad’ thoughts or feelings. And when you do this, an extraordinary thing happens:

By not interfering or tampering with them, or WANTING them to be any other way but the way they are, in that present moment-- THEY WILL SIMPLY DISSOLVE AWAY NATURALLY, without any trying on your part.

A Turning Point It took me a long time to realize this, but it was the mayor turning point in my practice. As we progress, you will get the experiential realisation that ANY feeling state when opened to and allowed to be without resistance can be blissful to experience. As a wise man once noted:

"All emotion at a higher octave is joy." That's why I say to you: When you start this practise The Bliss Technique, you'll experience a whole range of feelings from ecstasy to discomfort.

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The Bliss Technique. Please allow and welcome whatever you feel, especially the so-called 'negative' ones as they can reveal this great truth to you. They will give you the actual opportunity to experience this life-changing truth. At this point, some people may think this all sounds very negative and unappealing.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. As Stephen Levine notes in 'Who Dies':

"To some, this encouragement to acknowledge the blockages of the heart and the confusion of the mind may seem quite negative. But actually what we are speaking about is the path of joy. The acknowledgement of the stuff which closes us allows a softening, a melting away at the edges. And the spaciousness which results illuminates that which has always been there, our original nature shining through, the joy of pure being………"

Cultural Attitudes As you start to learn the art of the Bliss Technique, it will take patience and a gentle, daily persistence. At times, your conditioned mind will question your decision to practise. It will whisper doubts into your mind suggesting this is ………… 

A waste of time

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

An excuse to escape from reality



A cop-out from real life



Not normal -a weird practice!

Please expect and allow all these doubts and questions. They are fine. They are merely the manifestation of our old cultural attitudes to meditation techniques like The Bliss Technique. Although attitudes to these Techniques have changed radically, especially in the last thirty years and meditation techniques are now practised by millions in the West and recommended by most doctors and health care professionals --- these old attitudes still linger on in our subconscious and we need to be aware of them. Let them go…..

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Module 6 Why Non-Judgmental Awareness Changes Everything?

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The Bliss Technique. Module 6: Why Non-Judgmental Awareness Changes Everything?

"Learning to allow pleasure is the most celebratory, radical change you cam make in your life " Sarah Ban Breathnach

In our first practice, we asked you to sit down and be present in your body. To just to be aware of it, and all the sensations that were present. We asked you, as your mind wandered, to gently come back to being present in your body. How was it? How did your mind react? What sensations and feelings did you experience? Were they pleasant, neutral or unpleasant? Were they heavy or light? Did your body feel hot or cold or, maybe, alternatively both? Did your attention wander? At one moment, conscious of your body in the chair - the next moment was your mind 'in' a distant memory or caught in a process of associative thinking - with one thought leading to another? Did you feel uncomfortable, ill-at-ease just sitting there, observing yourself? To be present - to be still, is not as easy as it sounds, is it?

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A New Realization However, as we continue to practice, we will begin to realize that the problem is NOT the wandering mind or the unpleasant feelings or sensations we experience as our body reacts to these thoughts.

It is in how we relate or deal with these reactions. When you sit down to practice - yes, your mind will wander - in fact, it will seem to go all over the place. You'll become aware of many thoughts, ideas, images and memories chasing each other through your mind. Good thoughts. Unpleasant thoughts. Meaningless thoughts. Repetitive thoughts. Thoughts about yourself Thoughts about how other people are treating you. Thoughts about what you will face tomorrow in work. As these thoughts - mental pictures - arise and come into your conscious awareness, you will probably react as you have always done (and most of us do) and try to push them aside or force your mind to disregard them - to repress them - and try to think of something else --- wishing they would go away. Your ‘past conditioning’ will tell you: "It is bad to focus or allow such 'negative thoughts' and the 'negative feelings' behind them to be present. If you want to be happy and successful you must, at all times fight these negative thoughts, resist them and instead, by force your mind to think other thoughts, more positive ones."

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Positive Thinking? In fact, this is what we have been told in the past is the ‘secret of positive thinking’. But positive thinking, in this manner, is hardly ever successful and in most cases only leads to the creation of more tension and internal conflict. Why? It keeps you constantly in fear of your thoughts. And it keeps you exhausted, as you believe you have to spend all your psychic energy --- monitoring, judging, fighting and changing all these thoughts. In the Bliss Technique - every type of thought imaginable will arise followed by certain feelings or moods. As you sit in silence, you will experience many different states of mind. We refer to a state of mind as an attitude, a predominant emotion or mood that acts like a filter or coloured lens through which mental objects such as thoughts and sensations are experienced and related to. In the Bliss Technique, you will experience many such states of mind as different thoughts, ideas and memories arise and fall in your field of awareness. But how will you respond, relate to these different states of mind?

Because it is your response to these states that is the very essence of the Bliss Technique.

The Key To The Bliss Technique The key is simple. Accept the ‘wandering’ mind. The ‘wild’ mind.

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The Bliss Technique. Accept WHATEVER feelings or sensations you experience, moment-by-moment. Allow. Acknowledge. Embrace. Simply notice. Observe. Witness whatever thoughts, feelings or states of mind that arise. Let them be. Don't attach or identify with them. Stand back from them and let them arise and fall of their own accord.

Like a scientist monitoring an experiment. No personal involvement. Just an impersonal awareness. Don't deny, resist or judge. Don't try to change or make wrong whatever thought or feeling arises. Just watch as these thoughts and feelings arise, stay around for a while and then pass away. Allow yourself to discover their ephemeral, impermanent nature. The key is not to avoid ANYTHING. As the ancient writer Dogen once said: "If the least like or dislike arises the mind is lost in confusion." Simply watch and note WHATEVER arises without comment, resistance or judgement. Repeat: Don't avoid anything. Don't push anything away. Don't want it to be ANYWAY but the way it is at this present moment.

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Never forget when you do this, an extraordinary thing will happen:

By not interfering or tampering with them, or WANTING them to be any other way but the way they are, in that present moment-- THEY WILL SIMPLY DISSOLVE AWAY NATURALLY, without any trying on your part.

A Simple Law If an unpleasant thought arises, or you feel an uncomfortable sensation in our body, don't immediately label it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Don't try to escape form it or try to push it away - try this approach.

Simply watch it. Observe it without resistance. Without judgment No pushing away. Just resistance awareness

simple

non-interfering

non-

That is the key. As Deepak Chopra says in 'The path to Love: "There is a law in the unconscious that whatever you avoid will come back, and the more you avoid it, the stronger its return……… Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it, and see through your resistance." Listen also what the famous Eastern mystic Krishnamurti has to say:

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" Awareness is observation without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding, because there is no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. There is no end in view but an awareness of everything as it arises….." Both authors are saying the same thing: Just observe the thing you dislike or have been conditioned to dislike. Don't condemn it, or identify with it in anyway. Simply stand back and observe it. No goal. No expectation.

No wanting it to be any way but the way it is. No wanting to change it in even the slightest way. This is clearly highlighted by the following Zen line written nearly two thousands years ago: "Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinity apart" Just let it be…. Rising and falling……..raising and falling…. A silent observation. No judgement of it as pleasurable or un-pleasurable. Just a soft, non-judgemental allowance Listen to what Bartholomew advises in 'Journeys with a Brother' if you experience a feeling or sensation you don't like:

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The Bliss Technique. "Instead of thinking about the pain, or making up ways to get away from it, simply allow the feeling to fully enter you. No resistance, no ideas, just feel it fully - really experience it with full gusto. Welcome it with interest, and you will find on close observation what the true nature of the feeling is. And when you, discover that you will no longer fear it. At the center of the emotional pain is the very same mysterious force that is at the center of all energy, all form and formlessness." You will discover pure energy the nature of which is joy.

Later on, he gives this advice whenever you have a feeling or sensation you have previously been conditioned to avoid. He says: "Feel it, understand it, get close to it and find out what it has to say to you. Experience it in your body fully. Watch what images come up in your mind. No judgment. That is the path. When you stay with the feeling without judgment, you discover what is at the very center of any feeling. It is the same at the center of everything. Pure awareness. Pure energy." Bliss itself. Nearly two thousands years, a Chinese wise man wrote the following tract which we have briefly quoted from before. See how it explains, in extraordinary simplicity and power the point we are trying to make in this lesson. He begins his tract in this way:

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The Bliss Technique. The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the slightest distinction, however and heaven and earth are set infinity apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail. (From a translation by Richard B. Clarke.)

Non-judgmental Awareness Please come back, again and again to this tract as you practice the Bliss Technique. As you practice everyday, your understanding will deepen and were you to study this tract, say, one year from now -- you WILL discover even more meanings that are now blind to you. In fact, it describes in a few lines, the whole essence of The Bliss Technique. But, at this stage please note the key point it emphases: Simple non-judgemental awareness.

You watch, you observe without preference, without opinion or comment. Without the slightest like or dislike in fact not even to make the slightest distinction - just simply to observe whatever is present at that moment without getting personally involved in it. Simple non-judgemental allowance

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The Bliss Technique. Allow thoughts and feelings to come and go. Just watch them. No involvement. Let them think themselves out. Feel themselves out. And you will discover that as you watch them without attachment they will just fall away……… Naturally. Allow. Allow. Allow.

Your Conditioned Self Your old conditioned self, your ego-self will resist this new approach very strongly especially in the beginning. To our old way of thinking, it sounds crazy and dangerous. We believe that surely if we don't 'do' anything to these 'bad' thoughts and feelings when they arise they will never go away. They will get bigger and bigger and make our life a misery. We all believe this. But has this old approach helped us in the past? We have spent our whole life fighting, resisting, hating, invalidating, running away from and suppressing all the thoughts and mind states we are afraid of, or more accurately, conditioned to be afraid of. And have they gone away? When we are alone, do we experience perfect peace and stillness? Has our old approach worked? Some people refer to the Bliss Technique as ‘crazy wisdom’. Like all techniques of meditation, it has been practised for thousands of years by some of the wisest people on this planet and they have all said essentially the same thing:

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Don't fight. Don't resist. Allow. Embrace. Love what you have judged unlovable. The exact opposite of what most of us do. This ‘nugget of wisdom’ if you will open to it and apply it as you are meditating is a vital key to your success. It is the very essence of simplicity, yet it's crazy ordinariness hides its incredible power.

If you will allow yourself to feel - to embrace, without preference or without judgment whatever is present at any moment you will experience pure awareness - your natural state. Pure Pleasure. Joy. Now. Again no belief is required.

Prove it for yourself? We don't want you to believe anything we say. Maybe all of this is nonsense? There is only one way to find out. To practice it now in your own life. However, be gentle and patient with yourself. This ‘old conditioning’ is very strong and again and again you will fall back into the old ways. However, if you are willing to apply this simple new concept, you WILL see the results for yourself.

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The Bliss Technique. This week, as you practise, introduce this simple principle of embracement into your practice. It can be stated in this way:

No thought, no feeling and no mind state is bad, painful or unpleasant in itself. It is our judgment, our resistance and our fear to what we are thinking and feeling that causes all our pain, discomfort and agony. In other words: Hell is our resistance. The opposite is: Simple, non-judgement allowance. Begin to apply this simple principle in your Bliss Technique practise now. Don't try to force yourself to understand how it works - see if it works. It will add a whole new dimension to your practice. We are now slowly beginning to realise it does not really matter what type of feelings or thoughts we may experience - but what is important is how we respond to them. As Stephen Levine comments:

"People do not recognize that what leaves the negative residue - the pain, is not the thought, no matter how dark or fearful but the negative holding on (resisting), as opposed to the healing response - letting go (nonjudgment allowance)

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An Exercise Start with the basic practice we learned in an earlier Module . Again, at this stage, try doing all the exercises without using the tape, ‘Experiencing the Bliss Technique’. Again, this is to help you to get a better grounding and understanding of the core principles of Bliss Meditation, practice and ENJOY these exercises without the back-up of the tape.

The Exercise

Sit down. Make sure you are comfortable with your back straight. Gently scan your body, noting how it feels - letting all tension and emotion fall out of every part of your body towards your stomach. Feel it all falling away from every cell, every organ - feel the tension and pressure leaving your skeleton system - from all your bones and muscles.

All the time, fully present in the body, in this 'now' moment. Your only goal now for the next fifteen minutes is to be present here and now with yourself. No goals. No expectations. Just a gentle, impartial self -observation of yourself……… …………..Of all thoughts as they arise, present themselves and pass away, …………Of all the different feelings and physical sensations as they arise, present

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themselves and pass away. Now as you watch, try to introduce this new quality simple of nonjudgemental impartial awareness. This awareness does not care what thoughts you have or whether your mind is jumping all around the place or is as quiet as a sleeping baby. It does not care what you are feeling - either bored or ecstatic. It treats everything the same and knows their true nature:

Oddly impermanent, temporary and impersonal mind states that are just passing through. It knows that thoughts rise; they are there for a while and then pass away. No big deal. It knows feelings rise and pass away. No big deal. It knows that this is their nature. It knows there is no point getting upset about them or getting personally involved in them. It knows the simple law: What you resist persists. No point trying to change them, or condemn them or resist them in any way. They come and go. They arise and fall. As we practice, we, ourselves, will realise the simple truth: When we let them be and simply observe them without the slightest care or preference about what they do they will play themselves and simply fall away. We realise ‘hell’ was not the thought or the feeling or even the uncontrollable mind. Hell was our resistance.

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We realise: "Our resistance is so painful, the pushing away of the mental state that we have simply judged as 'bad' so fearful that a feeling of helplessness arises. The more we resist the more we contract and the more painful it gets and the more restless we become" Allow whatever thoughts may appear. Don't get involved in their 'content' when you are meditating. Don’t ask: “Is this a negative or positive one?’ Simply note: 'Thought.' Feelings Also, watch your reaction to the thought as it arises and falls away. Watch as you 'like' some thoughts and 'dislike' and resist others. Gently observe this resistance. Allow it to be. Don't resist your resistance. Don't make it wrong. Maintain your soft non-interfering awareness. Treat your resistance like everything else. No desire for it to change. Just a gentle observation of it's movement. We will experience the same truth again if we can maintain this attitude:

When we let it be and simply observe it, without attachment - without taking it personally - it will simply fall away.

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One Last Thing…… It is a simple idea. A simple truth. But knowing it intellectual will not help you. You must practice it. Really experience it working. For the next week, introduce this new principle into your practice. Remain relaxed, gentle and playful.

Don't force to get results.

This is the Key. As you allow whatever thoughts and feelings you previously didn't like to be present in your awareness, notice what happens now as you allow yourself to accept them, to simply observe them in WHATEVER they want to be in. Notice how again and again, you will fall back into your old ways, automatically judging and resisting certain mind states. Its fine It’s Ok Just note it all, without judgement or self-criticism. Just take your time and practice. And never forget:

When we can let it be and simply observe it, without attachment - without taking it

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personally - it will simply fall away – naturally itself. Don't worry if you don't understand it all now. As you enjoy your practice, day after day everything, will become crystal clear.

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The Bliss Technique.

Module 7 Silent Awareness

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The Bliss Technique. Module 7: Silent Awareness

"I think the most essential thing in one's life is silence. What is silence? We think if we are quiet, we are silent. But we must come to silence without desire and wanting; otherwise, we are not silent. Tara Singh.

As you practice The Bliss technique to a deep level, you’ll start to feel better. And you’ll start to look better – and younger. You’ll soon begin to experience what Bartholomew experienced when he said:

'When you start to feel it moment after moment, coursing through your physical, mental, and emotional bodies, you will shed tears of gratitude. It is the most exquisite thing possible to feel in the body. All other pleasures fade beside it. You will be filled with indescribable gratitude.

But, you may now claim, wait a minute: If this is true, why isn’t everybody doing this? Why am I one of a few doing this?

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The Bliss Technique. Why isn’t everybody doing this? Why isn’t everybody enjoying these moments of ecstatic bliss? The answer is simple. Most of us have been and remain hypnotised into believing that pleasure can only come from OUTSIDE us. i. e. from ‘external’ things.        

A beautiful meal. A glass of wine. A walk on the ocean, at moonlight. The embrace of a loved one. A night of intimate, hot sex. A party. A long overdue holiday. A concert.

Now: All these things are GREAT – and we should appreciate and enjoy them to the full. But the problem comes when we become convinced or hypnotised into BELIEVING that pleasure can ONLY come from these outside external sources. But this is what MOST of us believe. We have not realized as Colin Sisson has when he says:

“No amount of wealth, power, sex, drugs or fine food contain happiness in themselves but only serve to draw out a minute portion of that infinite bliss already latent within each of us........”.

But all our lives, we have been conditioned to look ONLY to the external world to find our joy, our peace and our happiness. Again, as we have emphasised here, there is nothing wrong with this.

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The Bliss Technique. But this joy and pleasure will be temporary and short-lived, unless we recognise the source from which all joy originates.

Then we can enjoy the ONE AND the MANY. But our problems begin when we forget this simple truth and only look exclusively to the external world and believe nothing else exists. Yet, buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day, lies an ocean of pure joy and pleasure . It is our nature. Pure ecstatic energy …..waiting to stream through our body’s biological and neurological circuitry. We are not ‘creating’ or ‘producing’ this pleasure – we are simply uncovering it. Experiencing what was ALWAYS there. We keep repeating what Dr. Deepak Chopra’s has said:

"Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet. It's a way of entering into the quiet that's already there buried under the 50,000 thoughts the average person thinks every day”

But…… ….. most of us still can’t or won’t believe this …….so we miss out on easily accessing this energy at ANY time.

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The Bliss Technique. The truth is most people will never experience this pleasure because they are too hypnotised by the idea that all ‘real’ pleasure lies in external things. Or that orgasmic energy can only be experienced through the medium of sex.

What Meditation really is? Another reason a lot of people won’t practice The Bliss Technique is because they totally misunderstand what meditation really is. Most people think it is a cold, harsh discipline that they must practice, or ‘endure’ everyday in the hope that they may reap some great benefit or joy from it in the future. But for centuries now, we have been conned. Meditation has been ‘presented’ to us as something that we must FORCE ourselves to do everyday if we want to reap all it’s great benefits. It was presented mainly as a ‘means’ to an ‘end’. 

Meditate every day…….AND you’ll reduce stress…….



Meditate everyday……….AND you’ll reduce signs of aging.



Meditate everyday……….AND you’ll health will improve.

Yet, it WILL do all these things - BUT there is one thing they (mainly the main religions who hate pleasure and sex) didn’t tell you. You should meditate everyday …simply because it is SHEER PLEASURE. And pleasure and joy is GOOD for you!

"The decline of religion in the west may have begun when the experience of sex became MORE pleasurable than the spiritual experience offered by Meditation” Michael Winn

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The truth is: Meditation can feel as good as, and even better than sex! If we do it properly, meditating IS simply a joy. It helps us to access and experience pure orgasmic energy. Something to be enjoyed for it’s own innate pleasure. It is something we will want to do everyday. Something that we will look forward to doing everyday! That's why Thich Nhat Hanh says:

Why do I practice meditation? Simple. Because it is so pleasurable’

But because most of us don’t know this, or believe this - our bodies remain starved of this vital energy frequency of pleasure – and we remain addicted to sugary, processed sweet junk foods, or trashy tv or magazines.

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‘Infinite Bliss Energy’ Never forget that all the time, you are surrounded and interpenetrated by infinite, omnipresent Fields of Energy. Or what scientists now term zero-point energy. Think of a fish in a might ocean! (To give you a little idea of the amount of this energy we are talking about, scientists now estimate that the zero-point field has an energy density of 1094 ergs per cubic centimetre - that’s ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion times more energy in a single cubic centimetre of “empty space” than you have in all the matter in the known universe. ) And that’s just one cc of empty space. Imagine what you’d have in a quart of empty space!. You could soak every single atom and cell of your body in this pleasure-tingling energy a million, a billion times over- and that still wouldn’t be a drop in the ocean. And yet most of us only ever experience a tiny trickle of this energy. Why? Because we are totally blocked, cut off, and closed to this energy. To experience this limitless energy- we need to relax, REALLY relax each cell of our bodies and allow this…… LIMITLESS nourishing, healing, rejuvenating, lifegiving, ecstatic energy to flow through us. First, we need to acknowledge it’s existence And then we must ALLOW ourselves to receive this energy. Up till now, we have been so….. Tight, Fearful, Anxious , Page 132 of 306

The Bliss Technique. ……And frozen in our bodies that only a tiny trickle of this energy has been able to flow through us, barely keeping us alive. A tiny trickle! So how can you turn this ‘tiny trickle’ to an OCEAN of this energy, waiting to flow through you.......

You need to be still. Stiller and stiller. To release: 

All judgement



All condemnation



All resistance.

…..and simply to be present in the moment. To be still. To just watch whatever is happening without the slightest preference. We make no distinctions no matter what we are experiencing, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. If we experience resistance (which we definitely will) we simply note: ' resistance' and dispassionately watch it's movements and it's various levels of intensity. If we find ourselves judging or trying to change things, we simply note this too. We don't get involved. Just note: 'Judging' or 'Trying to change'. We watch it all impersonally.

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The Bliss Technique. All different states of mind, coming and going, coming and going. As we maintain this simple attitude, nothing can 'stick' to us. We get a glimpse of true freedom.

An Urge to Stop If we start to feel a strong urge to stop, don't avoid this feeling or wish it wasn't there. Accept, WELCOME it fully. Allow this desire to stop practising to be there. What’s wrong with it? It’s just another temporary thought /desire passing through It is OK. It is valid. But now, instead of giving in to it, we let it play itself out.

It becomes our gentle and soft object of attention - our object of investigation. It is as valid a movement in mind as any other. Because, now, we have no preference. Or at least, we are now learning to begin to have no specific preferences when we practise.

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The Bliss Technique. We are learning to have no desire for anything to be anyway but the way it is, in the present moment And, so we simply allow ourselves to watch this desire to stop without attachment. Yes, we simply ‘open’ to this desire - this urge that used to totally ‘control’ us. In the past, if we had this feeling, we would probably have given in to it and stopped. We were not in charge. It was. Now we give it equal validity and as we learn to approach it in this new way by not fighting it, resisting it or making it wrong in any way: "I wish I didn't feel like this’. ‘I hope to God it goes away."; we will no longer be giving it energy. And soon -- without energy to sustain it, like all living things, it will weaken and simply fade away. And we remain there, calm, gentle, relaxed and free. We just stay in the moment, attentive to it, without judgement.

Lost In Thought. And yet, as we stay in the moment, many thoughts will continue to rise and fall. Old conditioned thoughts that we will be very familiar with. Thoughts like: "This stillness is fine, but I bet I won't be able to maintain it. Or maybe: "Oh. no, I shouldn't be having these thoughts. How will I get rid of them? " Then, maybe, another thought may sneak in: "Will these thoughts ever stop. They are always breaking my silence".

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The Bliss Technique. After a while, if you're not attentive to this subtle process going on, you'll find yourself lost in these thoughts and a part of you will unconsciously revert back to your old ways of judging, fighting and pushing away them away. You'll start to feel tense, heavy and uncomfortable - and begin to hate this Bliss Technique thing. What has happened here, though, is fine. Relax. Lighten up. Never forget it's all a learning process.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Many times, you'll find yourself being carried away by your thoughts and without thinking about it --fighting, judging and resisting. To help you, lets look more closely at what many writers refer to as 'the wild mind'.

‘The Wild Mind’ This week, as you practice, become more and more aware of your mind and it's subtle thoughts processes. Watch it, without judgement. Watch as different thoughts rise and fall away. Watch, as sometimes you get totally lost in them.

If this happens, simply acknowledge it and gently revert back to your simple, dispassionate non-judgmental observer mode. No big deal.

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The Bliss Technique. Just observing all the thoughts and all the feeling sensations that accompany them, rising, taking centre stage and then passing away.. Watch as one thought gives rise to another thought. Watch all these different mental pictures just arising and falling away. Watch, also, how you react to all these different thoughts

Don't censure yourself. Don't think that you must think a certain way or react a certain way. Simply watch yourself reacting in whatever way you do.

Incredible joy Later on, as you get more proficient in the art of the Bliss Technique, you will start to experience incredible joy as you learn to master this ability. Listen again to Stephen Levine, who writes:

"The unconscious becomes conscious when nothing censors even the least arising of suppressed material. When nothing is eluded or left unexamined, that which lies hidden - from the terrifying personal to the rapturously universal - comes into the healing of effortless awareness. No words can describe the absolute joy, freedom and peace of a liberated mind. It is synonymous with the open heart"

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Your Unconscious Reactions So just continue to watch as ‘thoughts’ come and go. There is no judgement, no comment -- just simple, neutral awareness as if you were a stranger asked to compile a totally objective, impersonal report of the reactions taking place. The following thought may arise as you continue to practice:

‘I wish this would end. How long more much I do this - anyway what's the point of it. Let the thought be. It is valid. Remember, no thought or feeling has power over you unless you give it that power. What is important is how you respond to it. In your daily practice, watch how you react to it. Do you feel yourself resisting it? Fine. Just note it. Are you judging it, trying to push it away? Are you making yourself wrong for reacting like this? Fine. Just note it. This is simply an extension of what we have being doing in the past two lessons.

Now we are including not only the thoughts and feelings we have, but we are observing our mostly unconscious reactions to these mind states. Simply watch your response to the 'negative' thought.

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The Bliss Technique. Don't make it wrong or try to change it or judge it as right or wrong. Simply observe it. Simply open to the thought and to your reaction to the thought Remember, the pain, the agony is not the thought or your reaction to the thought but your resistance, your judgement. Pure and simple.

Non-resistance is the secret.

Who's In Charge? As we continue to watch our thoughts in this manner, we'll realise that our thoughts, these seemingly ‘insignificant, insubstantial, ghostly mental objects’ literally run our lives. They control us to an extraordinary degree.

The reason we can't be still when we practice is not because of the thoughts themselves, but because we are afraid of them. We believe we are powerless before them. When we are silent, we are terrified of what thoughts may come up. Thoughts of failure, of lack, of shame. Thoughts of ‘who I am’ and ‘who I might be’. Thoughts of what other people may think of me. Thoughts of not being liked. Thoughts that all of this is pointless. That nothing will ever change. And during the live ‘meditation’ of sex, thoughts, will of course dominate.

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The Bliss Technique. ‘Thoughts’ of possible failure: ‘She’s not going to respond’, or, ‘I’m not going to last.’….He won’t like me, find me attractive.’ It’s going to be a disaster.’

When we practice the Bliss Technique, we are learning now in a safe, comfortable, tension-free environment – how to respond and deal with all negative, debilitating thoughts as they arise and not be affected by them. To learn how to naturally release them so they do not affect our performance We do this by understanding their true nature. Soon, dealing with thoughts in this way, will become second-nature to you – and when you start to apply this practice when you make love – you’ll see now how these seemingly ‘terrifying’ thoughts of the past now have no power at all over your performance – as they did in the past. Because, now you are learning how to respond to them -and not too make a big deal out of them. That’s why this practice is so important, because when we can master it during the practice of the Bliss Technique, we can then effortlessly, and successfully apply it to all aspects of our lives.

Lost In Thought! However, most of the time, we are 'lost' in our thoughts. Liking some. Hating others. Or trying to encourage others, or trying to repress and get rid of the rest. Literally, all our time is spent in ‘a continuous nervous monitoring and evaluation of our thoughts’. We can never be still when we are engaged in this ‘game’. It leaves us tired, anxious and slightly neurotic - not to mention exhausted.

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The Bliss Technique. This is one of the main reasons why the practise of the Bliss Technique gives us such a great buzz and surge of energy and vitality.

Pure Awareness As we practice, we slowly begin to realise…… we are not our thoughts. We are that ‘Pure Awareness’ that lies just beyond our thoughts and feelings. Yet, because we have spent so much of our lives totally identified with and totally engrossed in our body-mind process we believe, no we are CONVINCED there is nothing else.

As Dr. Deepak Chopra makes clear:

"We would not ordinarily suspect that such a state [of pure awareness] exists because our minds are so preoccupied with the stream of thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies, and sensations that fill waking consciousness."

We think we are our thoughts. As Levine clearly shows:

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The Bliss Technique. "We call our thoughts "I". In letting go of thought, we go beyond ourselves, beyond who we think we are. Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind" It is our TOTAL identification with our thoughts that make it so difficult for us to experience this wider reality - to taste this hidden bliss that is nearer to us than our breathing.

A Taste Of Freedom So how can we free ourselves from our incessant thoughts? And how can we let go of our fear of them? By doing the unthinkable. By allowing them. By giving them validity. By realising we don't have to get rid of them - we only have to choose not to identify with them - not to fight them, cling to them or push them away. If your mind wants to run a hundredth miles an hour with thought after thought --- we let it. I repeat: We let it. We allow it. We don't wish it were another way.

Our goal in the Bliss Technique is simply to beware of WHATEVER is happening at that moment with absolute clarity.

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To be attentive without preference As we maintain this simple, non-interfering awareness, we will discover that our wild uncontrollable mind is like everything else. It is impermanent.

If we don't fight it or 'do' anything to it, we are not giving it life - energy - or substance and it will soon settle down and pass away. So, if though our message may ‘seems’ negative, it is anything but. What we are detailing here is the most POSITIVE way available to deal with all these thoughts that disturb our stillness and peace.

The Space That Has No Name! As we get stiller and stiller, we will soon notice a 'gap', a 'space' gradually emerging between our thoughts. This gap will be slight at first, but as we get quieter and quieter, this space will begin to grow. We will begin to lose our obsession concern and identification with our thoughts and we will start - to feel - to sense, the 'ground', the 'space' from which all these thoughts emerge and dissolve into. We will begin to actually experience a tiny glimpse of that state of pure awareness - pure being - "that unchanging background against which all mental activity takes place." We will begin to experience the pure energy of life itself.

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The Bliss Technique. A new insight begins to dawn on us……. We realise we practice NOT to master our minds or just to get rid of certain undesirable thoughts habits. We practice to help us to actually go beyond our thought formations, which we have up to now exclusively identified with, and to actually experience the truth of our being.

Not to read about it or theorize about it but to actually experience it - to actually taste it. We realise the Bliss Technique, or any genuine form of meditation is not an end in itself, but just a tool that allows us to experience who we really are - right now in our life. To give us the actual chance to touch upon and taste the Energy of Life itself. This is what Stephen Levine felt on one of those occasions when he felt it:

"In a moment of quiet, we open beyond our clinging and the mind becomes so unclouded that nothing blocks it's inherent joy. Its expanse is so great that waves of energy wash through the body making any satisfaction we've ever, even our profoundest sexual gratification, pale by comparison. The natural energy of the mind is released. Grasping has stilled long enough so that we experience the immensity and intensity of our deepest nature. We experience the joy of what in Zen is called the One Mind, shining through."

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An Exercise Here is a fascinating exercise. Sit down to practice as you have done in previous exercises and when you are relaxed and focussed -- just be present with your thoughts. Interestingly, when you do this, you may find no ‘thought’ will present itself and you may think: "There's nothing there" - yet that itself IS a thought -'There's nothing there' is a thought. Simply note it. Another part of you may respond: "No it's not. That's not a real thought. Oh, God, I can't do this exercise." Fine. Don't you see that is just another subtle ‘thought’!! Watch it. Just mentally stand back and let ALL your thoughts come forward and any emotional energy they may bring with them. Let go of any tendency to try to control or select specific thoughts. Just watch and observe WHATEVER thoughts pass through. No censure. No repression. Stay open, relaxed and playful. Watch how you 'stick' to some thoughts and don't bother with others. Watch how you are attracted to some - how they control you. If it is a happy thought you feel rather happy. The next moment a fearful thought-picture may arise and your joy is gone. You may feel nervous and anxious - all because of that new thought - an impermanent, temporary mind bubble passing through you.

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The Bliss Technique. The secret is simple, non-judgemental awareness. Simply observe all the thoughts whether they come in a quiet, silent procession or if they come racing through your mind. It's all fine. No preference. Simply observe. Be careful not to get drawn into their 'contents', no matter how vivid or real they may seem. You can do that some other time when you are not meditating. Your job now is only to see them all clearly as they arise. Essentially they are all the same - the same energy arranged into infinity of different forms. Just stay simple and easy. Treat it as a pleasant game. See how again and again you will get 'pulled' in by the thoughts and become completely identified with them. See how they will drag you in emotionally and nothing will exist but them. Watch how some thoughts will be attractive and seductive while others will be negative. Smelly. Nasty. Watch how we judge and resist. All the time staying relaxed and easy Fully present

Conscious in your body, simply noting the thoughts as they arise. "I'm getting tired. I don't want to do this anymore". Fine. Just another ‘thought’ - another mental bubble passing through. Treat it exactly the same as the others.

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The Bliss Technique. Simply observe it. Watch how you have a tendency to compulsively identify with such thoughts and blindly obey them. If we are not aware even the subtlest thought can control us. "This is stupid. This is getting me nowhere. I'll do it tomorrow." Fine. Just another ‘thought’. At this stage, don't give in to this thought no matter how seductive it is. Just open to it. Let it be. Or: watch how you wrestle with it. Notice the heavy, negative, and defeatist energy behind it. Just watch, notice and observe it's motions, its movements. Watch your own unconscious reactions to this strong desire to stop. Stay easy and relaxed and enjoy what you learn and discover doing this simple exercise.

A Simple Insight Again, stay easy with this exercise. Don't look to do it perfectly. Don't get uptight and adopt our old Western-style 'the-only-thing-that-mattersis-the-result' type attitude to it. Play with it and as you practise every day, suddenly something will click and you will see for yourself how the Bliss Technique boils down to one single activity. Essentially, every lesson in this course is a description of that process JUST viewed from many different angles.

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Module 8 THE POWER OF FEELINGS

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Module 8:THE POWER OF FEELINGS

"When anger arises in the mind, when fear becomes present, it can either make life hell or reveal another opportunity to enter into heaven. It can be another moment of resistance, of pushing away, of becoming lost in the mind. Or it can be a remainder to let go gently into the vast ness, into the essence of acceptance itself." Stephen Levine.

Lets take another leap in consciousness and make this statement: No feeling in itself is good or bad. Any feeling – and I mean any feeling you may have, is simply ENERGY vibrating at a different frequency. We give all these vibrations different names and labels - the energy at one frequency we label fear, at another level, anger or if the energy is vibrating rapidly -- we may label it joy. However, most of us have lost sight of this fundamental truth. Because of our ‘cultural conditioning’ we believe that some of these feelings (energy frequencies) are 'bad' and that we should avoid or escape from them at all costs or, at least block and repress them. The idea of having to feel any of them fills us with dread. Must better to get rid of them and try to feel something else instead. But this will once again limit our understanding of their essential nature. As Keith Sherwood points out:

"The emotions of anger, pain and fear aren't in themselves negative, and they don't feel negative when they are permitted their natural expression…… when they are not blocked by contractions. It is these reservoirs of blocked emotions, which feel bad. Page 149 of 306

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In truth, anger, pain and fear are merely the names we give to different frequencies of Prana [Energy] which flow through the subtle energy system."

Feelings just are. Different frequencies of the same energy Or as the writer Virgina Essene describes them:

"True feelings are neither positive nor negative. They are simply neutral reports, a kind of barometer about what is happening in your own energyresponsive, energy-attuned world

She continues: "Allowing yourself to experience all feelings and emotions is a powerful means to move energy through your body. What happens for most human beings, however, is that in a difficult or challenging situation, they mentally label that situation as 'bad' and resist the resulting emotions. When you resist feelings, your emotional body cannot vibrate properly and it 'freezes' or 'locks-up' "- you cannot think clearly and the feeling is experienced as heavy and uncomfortable.

Again, feelings just are. Neither good nor bad in themselves When you experience any of them, you're simply experiencing the same ENERGY in all it's different frequencies.

It is your resistance and judgment of some of these frequencies that cause you pain.

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The Bliss Technique. Another great visionary American writer, Arnold M. Patent has this to say: "Feelings are forms of energy. When we are centered and at peace, we allow feelings to flow freely through our bodies. When we disrupt the free flow of feelings, we create an energy block that we feel as discomfort……. Feelings just are. They are like colors on an artist's canvas. There is no objective standard for colors, and one color is not better or more meaningful than other. Colors just are. When they occur together, colors provide a contrast for each other. So it is with feelings. One is not good and another bad, nor is one more important than another. However when we intrude on the free flow of feelings by judging them and assigning then values, we create an energy block and thus discomfort and pain in our bodies."

The Law This is simply a restatement of the law we discussed earlier. The pain and agony we feel is not in the feeling - but in our unconscious, preconditioned judgement, resistance and fear of these feelings. We distort. We block. We twist and constrict our feeling sensations by our non-allowance. Then they feel heavy, painful nauseous. We forget or never wake up to a simple truth:

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Free of any resistance or evaluation, the vibration of any feeling is joyful. We can express this in another way:

The pain of your life, when carried to a higher octave is joy. All emotion at a higher octave is joy. As you read these statements, note your disbelief and resistance. This is our cultural conditioning coming to the surface. However, like everything else in this course, please don't blindly accept it as true. If you do, that is only a cold, dry intellectual understanding. Although helpful, this alone will not change your life. Instead let these statements challenge you to move to a higher understanding. To motivate you to test their validity in the laboratory of your own consciousness.

Freedom Of Choice In your earlier meditative practises, you will have experienced a wide range of feelings, moods and all the physical sensations that accompanied them. Everyday, you probably felt different. A lot of the time, you probably felt a sense of great resistance, impatience and restlessness? What did you do then? How did you respond to these feelings in your body? Probably in the beginning, like most of us, you stopped, got up and did something else. Fine. This is one choice we have. Page 152 of 306

The Bliss Technique. However, after a few days practise, you may have stayed a little bit longer with these feelings and prolonged your Bliss Technique practise. But you still probably found it very uncomfortable and unpleasant and wished "These bloody feelings and pains would go so that I can practice properly".

Internal Fighting Now, at this stage of the practise, we are getting a clearer idea of what we were doing during those first meditative practises that caused us all the pain and unpleasantness. Outwardly, we may have looked a picture of serenity and peace, but inwardly, we were probably waging a subtle WAR of resistance and internal fighting. The cause? Our total unconscious ACCEPTANCE of the simple IDEA that certain feelings and moods are 'horrible' and 'wrong' and should not be experienced. Because of our acceptance of this BELIEF at an inner level, we were ALWAYS trying to PUSH them out of the way, and substitute 'better' feelings in their place.

Consequences Again, pushing away or resisting feelings is not bad in itself or right or wrong. You are free to respond anyway you wish, but then you must accept the consequences. If you resist, it will be very painful and rob you of your inherent joy. For example, I am perfectly free to jump off the Empire state building - if I really want to - but if I do, I must accept the consequences of that action! Likewise, we can judge and resist our feelings all we want - but we must be willing to accept the consequences of that approach. Page 153 of 306

The Bliss Technique. Pain. Discomfort. And agony.

From Agony To Ecstasy As we sit in the Bliss Technique, we will experience EVERY type of feeling sensation available, in all their different intensities -- rising and falling momentto-moment. Most people will say: "This is why I just couldn't sit there and practice. I’d hate those feelings of boredom, loneliness and restlessness, which I would feel. Although I’d love the feelings of peace, calm and sheer bliss which I would also no doubt experience -- yet how can I get rid of the 'unpleasant' ones?" Lets look at this carefully. Yes, when you practice you will experience every emotion. There is no escape from them and, for this you should be ecstatic! Yes, ecstatic! Every emotion should be welcomed and experienced fully with no judgement or resistance, because until you do this, we will NEVER EXPERIENCE THE SIMPLE TRUTH we are trying to get across in this lesson. Not only in the Bliss Technique, but if we truly want to experience the fullest intensity of pleasure imaginable when we make love, we must learn how to feel deeper and open to all the feeling state we will experience, even so-called 'negative' emotions. This applies to us all. The lesson is the same for us all, whether you are a king, a hungry beggar or silent monk. But there is a million miles separating the understanding of all these different people.

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A Fairy Tale Like most of us, the king and the beggar unconsciously believe that they are at the mercy of these 'negative' feelings of fear, angry, restlessness or boredom. They are in continual fear of them. If they arise, they both run away in order to escape from them. They may try to block them out, or hope to change them by overworking, drinking, excessive partying or empty sex, etc. (Again, it is important to emphasise there is nothing wrong with these things in themselves. It is our attachment to them and our obsessive use of them to escape from ourselves that is the problem and not the activity itself. We don't want to fall into the extremes of the Victorian Age again and blame the activities themselves and believe that if we can only get rid of them i.e. no drink, no sex, no fun our problems will disappear. They won't.) Lets get back to our king and beggar. They hope they can change how they FEEL by indulging in these activities, and indeed, they may experience a temporary respite. Yet, the next day these feelings will rise again. As they do for all of us and, this time the king and the beggar have to work even more, have more parties, more drink, more drugs or more empty sex to block these feelings that they hate experiencing. But, the next morning always comes………. The drink wears off, the room where the party was is silent and empty, the effect of the drugs gradually declines, the bed is empty and the feelings they were used to subdue come back with an even greater vengeance.

The Meditator Now, the person who meditates, the meditator EXPERIENCES the EXACT same feelings and desires as the king and the beggar.

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The Bliss Technique. H/she knows pain, boredom, lust, fear, frustration and all the physical sensations that accompany them. Yet, he doesn't run away from these feelings. He doesn't avoid them. And, more importantly, he doesn't judge them or label them as inherently 'bad' or 'unpleasant'. He does, what for most of us would be the unthinkable. He allows himself to experience them as they arise in the MOMENT in his BODY. He just stays in the MOMENT. Allowing the energy to be HOWEVER IT WANTS TO BE, MOMENT-BYMOMENT without interfering with it, without comparing or judging it to anything else, and without the SLIGHTEST resistance to it's continuous ebb and flow. He ALOWS himself to experience it without attachment, without the slightest identification. It is just a feeling, an energy passing through. It is not 'his' fear, 'his' frustration unless he identifies with it as 'his'. It is just a feeling state passing through. MOMENT-BY-MOMENT. MOMENT-BY-MOMENT: He ALLOWS. HE WATCHES HE OBERVES.

THIS ALLOWS HIM TO REALLY EXPERIENCE THE FEELING, AS IT IS - PURE SIMPLE ENERGY - THE EXPERIENCE OF WHICH IS PURE PLEASURE. H e experiences the simple truth we mentioned before:

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“Free of any resistance, judgment, comparison or evaluation, the vibration of any feeling is enjoyable." Now, the meditator does not believe he is better than the king or the beggar. He is only different in that his UNDERSTANDING allows him to see the true nature of feelings and how to deal with them in a different way. It gives him more options, more freedom in how to respond to them.

Freedom Of Choice Let us listen again to what Bartholomew advises in 'Journeys with a Brother' if you experience a feeling or sensation you don't like. It's meaning should now be clearer to us: "Instead of thinking about the pain, or making up ways to get away from it, simply allow the feeling to fully enter you. No resistance, no ideas, just feel it fully - really experience it with full gusto. Welcome it with interest, and you will find on close observation what the true nature of the feeling is. And when you, discover that you will no longer fear it. At the center of the emotional pain is the very same mysterious force that is at the center of all energy, all form and formlessness." You will discover pure energy the nature of which is joy.

Is this process of non-judgemental allowance now beginning to make more sense to you? Listen to Bartholomew again as you open yourself to a deep feeling:

"Feel it, understand it, get close to it and find out what it has to say to you. Experience it in your body fully. Page 157 of 306

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Watch what images come up in your mind. No judgment. That is the path. When you stay with the feeling without judgment you discover what is at the very center of any feeling. It is the same at the center of everything. Pure awareness. Pure energy." Bliss itself.

Non-Dependence. The person who practises The Bliss Technique still FULLY ENJOYS working, a nice drink, the joy of sex, an all-night party, if that is his choice. Of course he does, but because he is now beginning to understand the true nature of mind states that we have all been conditioned to run away from and hate -- he does not need or depend on these activities to help him escape from himself and or what he may be feeling at any particular time. That's why we say, don't run from these feelings when you practice.

Welcome them.

They provide you with a golden opportunity to actually experience this truth in your life now. Ask yourself:

Have you ever really sat with and experienced fear, boredom or the feeling of being fed-up? Or the feeling of joy or bliss? Not your description or resistance of them, but the actual ENERGY itself as it raises and falls moment-to-moment.

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A Commitment Make a commitment to just stay with any feeling when it arises. Just watch it. Gently observe it. Especially watch also your resistance to do this, your desire to stop, which will arise again and again. Watch the urge you'll have to put it off till another day. And watch how your mind responds. The thoughts that arise The excuses. Remember, nothing to do but a gently staying in the present moment……. being aware of the emerging feeling, with no goals, no expectations or preferences. As far as you are concerned, for the period of this Bliss Technique practise, the feeling and the subsequent thoughts that arise can be ANYWAY they want. You don't interfere or try to change anything. You just watch and experience the transformation taking place, naturally and of it's own accord. As Barry Long says in 'Only Fear Dies': "Just stay with the feeling sensation. You do this by holding the sensation with your attention. Perceive it, feel what is there. Don't draw conclusions. Conclusions are thinking, not looking………the beautiful simplicity and effectiveness of this process is a most difficult thing for people to grasp……the simple truth is that your conscious attention focused on that inner feeling will destroy whatever is false in that feeling………….and what is left behind is your joyous, natural, vibrant self".

Please be gentle and patient with yourself as you begin to apply this idea to the Bliss Technique.

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Never forget when you sit down to practice, your goal is not to feel or force yourself to feel any particular sensation. It is simply to open up to and experience WHATEVER feeling is present at any moment, and allow it to move in whatever forms it desires, without judgment or resistance. You have no preference, only a gentle, openness to the present moment. As Bartholomew says in 'Planetary Brother':

"You cannot feel God-awareness [bliss, ultimate pleasure] until you allow yourself to feel, without preference, whatever is present in any moment". Please commit that line to memory and, when you are practicing, gently repeat it to yourself and reflect on it's significance.

Suffering The Bliss Technique is not about avoiding 'unpleasant' feelings. It's not about being in a state of perfect peace all the time. It's not about learning to force our mind to concentrate on a single object in the fervent hope that we will never feel anything 'bad'. It's not like ordinary life either, where we either submit to or are controlled by these feelings or try to repress them. The Bliss Technique is about staying in the present moment, and opening up fully to the feeling as it presents itself. We don't make it right or wrong. We don't try to change it. We simply allow it and watch it all without comment, without personal involvement and without the slightest attachment. We watch as it arises and passes away. All the time, moment-to-moment arising and passing away.

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The Bliss Technique. As we experience this truth in our lives, our feelings begin to lose their power to control us. We realise we have more freedom in how to deal with them.

We are no longer feel tyrannised or obsessed with them.

A Subtle Idea Yes, this idea goes against all our past conditioning. Deep down, we feel we must fight, resist or get rid of anything we don't like. Surely, we believe that is the natural and right thing to do? Yet, the secret is the exact opposite. Simple, non-interfering, conscious mindfulness is the real secret.

moment-to-moment

awareness

or

It dissolves the pain, the discomfort and the agony in our feeling states and reveals their essential nature - pure energy that is in constant motion raising and falling. Listen now to Larry Rosenberg from his recent book ‘Breath by Breath’ and see how he explains this same truth so simply: "The spiritual path seems to be creating more suffering, because it asks you to experience more suffering (those 'unpleasant' feelings) that you used to avoid. Actually, of course, this paying attention is the way out of suffering. Our instinct is to do almost anything else. Take the feeling of fear, for instance, which is behind many of our unpleasant feelings. One thing we commonly do is deny it. We're experts at that. Many of us deny fear so well that we're not even aware of feeling it. We no longer recognize it. We also repress it. We escape from it. We find countless ways to do thatone of the majors ones is to theorize about it. "This is what Freud said about fear. Jung. Here's what the Buddha said". But verbal explanations never free us……..we have got actually be aware of the energy of fear as it is actually happening……… Our usual reaction to fear is to create a battlefield. Our fear is at war with our tremendous yearning to be from it, and the site of the battle is the mind and the body in which the process is taking place…………the attitude of practice is to open the process up, to see that it is all part of us: the fear, Page 161 of 306

The Bliss Technique. the yearning to be free of it, the mind and the body, the gentle awareness observing it all We sit there with all of that, all one thing. It may be that at first, with a strong feeling like fear, you'll mostly be watching your means of escape. That can be valuable too. You see yourself denying, repressing, explaining, running away, fantasizing. You might watch these things again and again, until finally - because you're not buying into them -the mind gets tired. Then one day-and you can't force this - fear comes up and attention meets it, becomes one with it, allows the fear to blossom, which is what the fear wanted all along………that is what all phenomena want, just be allowed to arise and pass away in their own time. It is when we prevent that blossoming - by ignoring or repressing it - that fear hangs around, dragging us down, because we are expending so much energy holding it off. If we let it blossom, it has it's life and departs………….."

Introduce this new idea to your Bliss Technique practise now. Play around with it. Open to it with a gentle mind.

Don't try to force understanding. You are in a process of learning. For example, when you reread this lesson next year, watch how your level of understanding has grown and how everything written here seems so basic and simple.

An exercise Here is an exercise to play with this week. As usual, follow the basics of the Bliss Technique as we have already outlined. Now: Choose one of the most frequent and difficult mind states that arises in your practise, such as irritation, fear, boredom, lust, doubt, or restlessness.

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The Bliss Technique. For one week, in your daily sitting, be particularly aware each time this state arises. Allow it. Notice how it begins and what precedes it. Notice if there is a particular thought or image that triggers this state. Notice how long it lasts and when it ends. Notice what states usually follows it. Observe whether it ever arises very slightly or softly. Can you see it as just a whisper in the mind? See how long and strong it gets. Notice what patterns of energy or tension reflect this state in the body? Become aware of any physical or mental resistance to experience this state. Soften and receive even the resistance. Finally, simply be aware of yourself sitting here in this chair, gently watching this state, allowing it to come, and observing it like an old friend.

(From 'the Path of Insight The Bliss Technique by J. Goldstein and Jack Kornfield )

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Module 9 A Full Practice of The Bliss Technique

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The Bliss Technique. Module 9: A Full Practice of The Bliss Technique

"Practise doesn't begin until we see there is no escape from this simple activity of simply watching and observing, without preference, whatever is happening moment to moment." Larry Rosenberg.

This module is broken into two parts. In the first part, you’ll start to use your MP3 tape, ‘Experiencing the Bliss Technique’, that will help to experience the fundamentals of the Bliss Technique. In the second part of this module, you’ll find written instructions on how to experience a more advanced and deeper form of the Bliss Technique.

Part 1

Your MP3 Tape: Experiencing the Bliss Technique.

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Format:MP3

Again, let’s review the essential basics: The best time to practice on this tape is early in the morning or late at night before you go to bed, but anytime where you can be quiet and undisturbed is fine. However, do not practice after a heavy meal. Leave 2-3 hours before you start. Before you start, let’s recap what we have learnt There is no need for any complicated sitting postures or esoteric breathing techniques. They do not belong to this simple form of the Bliss Technique. To begin, sit upright in a chair with your back straight, your feet together or a few inches apart and your knees spread naturally. Hands can rest on the knees or thighs. The main thing is to be as relaxed and as comfortable as possible while keeping this basic posture. It is not necessary to sit like the Indian meditators do - cross-legged in a lotus position unless you have already practiced this position and find it comfortable. And if you do like that position, keep doing it. People in the East practiced in this form mainly because it was the predominant way they sat in ordinary life. However, it is all a question of choice. Most Westerners will probably find sitting in a chair the most suitable and effective way. However if you like the lotus position, please do it. Here is a flash demonstration of the proper lotus position. http://www.flashmavi.com/yoga_padmasana_learn_the_lotus_pose.shtml

The key is to remain

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The Bliss Technique. 

Relaxed,



Comfortable



And poised with your back straight.

You can face ahead, maybe tilting your gaze a little bit downwards with your eyes half-closed. We suggest half-closed because that will help you to temporarily cut off many of the visual stimuli that may distract you; however by keeping them half-opened it will help you resist the temptation to fall asleep or drift into fantasy or an aimless dream state. In the beginning, you may find this happening. If it does, it is fine. Simply note it - without judging or criticizing yourself and revert back to being aware of your body being fully present in this chair or on this cushion. Now before you begin, make a gentle commitment to yourself:

‘I'm sitting here to practice. There is nothing else I have to do or think about for the next …… minutes (length of your practise)’

If there is, go and do it or think about it and come back to your the Bliss Technique.

Get comfortable now and start listening to your MC3 Player.

However, remember the tape is just a temporary aid. Like the words in our course, once you understand the meaning, you can throw away the words.

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The Bliss Technique. Likewise, as you learn and apply the simple principles of Bliss Meditation you will not need the tape. However, in the beginning, you’ll find it very helpful in keeping you focused on the basic principles of the Bliss Technique and on helping you actually experience the energy that underlies all our experiences. Enjoy.

What to do at the end of the tape?

Try to practice this simple form of the Bliss Technique for at least 10-15 minutes every day this week. The key is:

Don't try to do it perfectly. And don’t go looking for an ‘experience’ In fact, don't try to ‘achieve’ ANY particular result at all. Just play around with this gentle, playful joyous exercise. Don't practice as if you are doing an exam. Stay open and relaxed. As you practice for the first few days, notice particularly how your mind reacts. Will it stay still or will it go off in a gallop and then quieten down? Notice what feelings - what deep physical sensations you experience as you try to stay present in your body in this 'now' moment? Watch especially, how you react to these feelings and sensations?

Whatever happens, welcome it all.

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The Bliss Technique. Try to spend at least 10-15 minutes or longer if you prefer this week, practicing the Bliss Technique. Remember 15 or 30 minutes of actual DOING the Bliss Technique is better then 10 hours of reading or studying about it. And please, accept that many times you won't feel like doing it, especially if you are a beginner.

Again don't worry if you feel like this. In fact, it is a good sign - it shows that all the old repressed energies that have made your life so dull and miserable in the past are coming up to the surface to be released. Sp try to keep this ….    

Detached, Playful, ‘Beginner’s mind’, Open-minded attitude

as you practice over the next few weeks, and soon, you will actually EXPERIENCE- that great essential joy that was there all along ……the joy and bliss of Pure Awareness.

How to ground yourself after meditating. Step1 Stay sitting upright with your back straight and feet flat on the floor. Step2 Continue to relax and let go of any stress. Step3 Focus now on the bottom of your feet and imagine sending imaginary roots into the Earth. Let these roots go deep and branch out taking in a deep breath as you do this.

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The Bliss Technique. Step4 As you exhale, send all your negative energy and stress down through these roots and into the Earth. Step5 Now when you inhale your next deep breath, draw up into your body, from all around you all the energy you need. See this energy as a white light or a green healing light. Imagine this energy is all around you and every cell and organ of your body is literally breathing this healing energy into itself. (In fact, this energy is all around. Scientists now refer to it as zero point energy and it seems that this energy is omnipresent i.e. ALL of it is present EVERYWHERE. (More of this in a later module) Now continue to imagine your body breathing in this healing grounding energy Step9 Refocus on your feet and let the energy from the Earth and the energy from the Universe become one. Let them flow into your body. Step10 When you are finished, take three slow deep breaths. You should now feel relaxed and renewed and grounded into the earth to bring the joyful energies of the Bliss Technique into your daily life.

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Part 2

Introduction to a more advanced practice of the Principles of the Bliss Technique. Here I want to introduce you to a more in-dept introduction to the principles of the Bliss Technique. Use the MP3 tape, in the beginning to help you get to know and practice the basic principles of the Bliss Technique. However, as soon as you learn the basics, there will be no need for the tape. You will then begin to practice without it. Do this only when you feel ready. Page 170 of 306

The Bliss Technique. And as you practice daily ( and enjoy each practice – TREATING IT AS A PLAYFUL GAME WHERE YOU ARE LEARNING MORE AND MORE EVERY DAY) – your understanding of these ideas will grow and you will want to progress to this deeper practice described here. This practice is written in the form of a meditative practice. As you read and practice daily, continue to open your mind to these new ideas and concepts of reality. Again, don’t accept or reject them out of hand. Give them time and plenty of relaxed, open-minded attention and practice. Try to look on them as a new template for experiencing life. Before you begin this practice, read this section a few times. Now there is absolutely no need to remember all of what is written here. Remember:

“Words exist for meaning, but once you understand the meaning, you can throw away the words.”

However, if you like, you can pick out key sentences or concepts to meditate on during your practice. This can be very helpful. The main thing is to read the script every day before practice with an open mind and absorb its spirit and general guidance. Also, it is important that you keep referring back to this script and again DURING THE YEAR as a general framework for your practice.

And you’ll be AMAZED at how MANY things that seem crazy now – will then make perfect sense!

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A practice

Sit down. Relax. Aware of your body Aware of yourself just sitting there. Ground yourself. Maybe open to the awareness of your bottom on the solid seat, your feet planted on the solid floor, or your lips as they gently touch each other. Become aware of how you are feeling. What dominant mood or feeling is present? Do you feel calm or do you feel restless -- impatient? All moods are fine. Notice if you are starting to judge already, comparing different moods or wishing you felt different. Remember: No preferences. Simply note your predominant emotion, open to it as it is in that moment. No desire to feel anything but what you are actually feeling moment by moment. Simply stay with whatever is present - whatever comes into your field of attention - a thought, an idea, a memory, a pain in your leg or a deep sensation of unease. No clinging to it. No labelling it. No comment on it. Simply note and dispassionately watch it as it reveals itself, aware of how it all just rises and falls - comes and goes. Or: a thought arises and decides to stay. Fine. Simply note: ‘Thought hanging about’. No care. No concern.

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Your concern is not what arises and what it does but your ability to non-judgmentally watch everything that arises and falls away without getting emotionally involved in it and wanting to change it. Let the thought do what it wishes. Just maintain a completely impersonal observation-like a chemist observing a chemical reaction. Watch - as you don't get involved - and don't resist or attach to it, how the thought will simply lose interest and fall away. Whether it does or not is of no real concern to you, you simply note and observe whatever it does. You are not interested in the thoughts themselves or their content, simply the impersonal process of them raising and falling -- sometimes shouting for your attention - trying to entice you into their temporary world so that you'll become lost and controlled again.

There is nothing wrong with identifying with these thoughts if that is what you want to do. However, in the Bliss Technique, we watch and observe our thoughts with non-attachment so that we can experientially realise that we are NOT these thoughts, but that state or Field of pure awareness that lies beyond any such mental formations. Always be gently aware of yourself in the room, present in the here and now. It is important that you stay centred - in the body - not drifting away. Maintain a soft, gentle awareness. Open to whatever is present. Maybe, now you hear a sound. A child, shouting or a dog barking? If it has come to your attention - fine. Simply note: 'hearing, hearing' and focus your attention on the experience of the sound.

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The Bliss Technique. Don't get involved in what is causing the sound or whether you like it or not, simply make a note, 'hearing' and when it is no longer predominant or calling your attention simply come back to yourself - being aware of yourself here in this room. You'll be aware of many sounds and noises in the background and all around you. Fine. No resistance. Just a gentle awareness. As you stay present, you may wish you were in a different environment where it was quieter. Don't make this reaction wrong. It is only a thought in your mind. If you don't fight it or try to push it away it will have nothing to 'stick' to and just go on it's way. We recognise it as just another thought raising and falling - a composition of energy, which has no value or power except the value or power we give it. Try to stay present in a gentle, forgiving way. Accept that now and again, your mind will wander and you may find yourself thinking about last night's TV or an argument you had last week with a friend. Fine. Don't punish yourself for this. No judgement or resistance. Simply make a note of 'wandering' and gently be present again in your body open to how you are feeling now in this moment. After a while you may feel certain sensations in your body distracting your attention. Maybe a feeling of being very hot or a feeling of being blocked. You may experience temporary pains or aches in your body. Gently focus all your attention, mindfulness on the sensation itself. (Again important to emphasize we don't hide from the discomfort or pretend it doesn't exist. Neither do we make it 'wrong' OR wish it wasn't there. We accept its presence; it's validity and make it the object of our investigation. We know resistance will only cause it to persist while gentle non-judgmental awareness like a bright all- expansive warmth will dissolve it. )

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The Bliss Technique. See how carefully you can observe and feel the quality of the sensation: is it hard or soft, hot or cold, vibrating or tingling, burning, pulling or tight? Open fully to the sensation as it is. Have no concern, no desire, no preference at all for how it may be. It can be anyway - anyway it wants. Do not make even the slightest distinction as it reveals itself - remember "make the smallest distinction, and heaven (pleasure) and earth (pain) are set infinity apart". Simply feel the sensation and notice as accurately as possible what happens to the sensation as you observe it. Does it get stronger? Fine. Does it get weaker? Fine. Does it dissolve? Does it get smaller? All fine. No distinction. Just a gentle awareness - a gentle noting: 'sensation' or 'feeling'. What is important is the clarity of our awareness. Not getting 'lost' or 'consumed' by the sensation or pain - becoming so identified with it that we believe we are it and nothing else exists. Simply watch it as it gets stronger or weaker, expands or contracts. Sometimes it may disappear. But we don't take any of it personally. It arises …… stays for a while …….. it passes away. It has no real substance, no enduring core, it is a temporary, empty phenomena. When the sensation is no longer predominant, come back to the simple awareness of yourself here in this room. The feeling of your feet against the floor. The sensation of your bottom resting on the seat or cushion. Stay soft and relaxed……. Open, yet alert and precise. Just noting carefully and gently, moment after moment whatever object arises, always coming back to the sensation of yourself sitting here on this chair when nothing else is predominant or calling the mind away.

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The Bliss Technique. Pay attention to any reactions in the mind to any sensations you feel. If you are observing painful feelings and you feel a sense of restlessness or fear make a note of these mind states, observe them carefully and see what happens to them as you impersonally note them. Watch what happens as you allow it all to be without the slightest resistance or censorship -as you release all desire for it to be any other way but the way it is this moment. As you watch without the slightest desire to interfere. As Levine reminds us:

"The unconscious becomes conscious when nothing censors even the least arising of suppressed material. When nothing is eluded or left unexamined, that which lies hidden - from the terrifying personal to the rapturously universal - comes into the healing of effortless awareness. No words can describe the absolute joy, freedom and peace of a liberated mind. It is synonymous with the open heart"

As you note 'fear here' or 'resistance here', does it get stronger, does it get weaker, does it disappear? Just a simple impartial non-identifying awareness. Nothing personal. Just open to whatever is present at that moment. Be aware of any tendency to go looking for different sensations or feelings. Keep the awareness very simple, all the time coming back to the sensations of your body sitting in the chair simply watching these different objects as they arise and fall.

The idea in practise is not to look for anything special and not to try to make anything special happen; rather it is to note carefully what it is that is actually happening. When thoughts arise in the mind as soon as you become aware that you're thinking, make a simple note: 'thinking' or, 'wandering'.

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The Bliss Technique. Again no judgement or evaluation. No comment on the contents of the thought just a simple note, 'thinking' or, 'a thought'. Not 'my thought' - just an impersonal, impermanent thought passing through. Focus again on the here and now. Likewise, if images or pictures arise in the mind make a silent note, 'seeing', if sounds predominant make a note 'hearing'. If certain sensations in the body call to your attention, fine, simply note them. A gentle, non-discriminatory, impartial awareness Open to all - judging and rejecting nothing. As different objects of experience reveal themselves just be mindful and attentive to each object and notice what happens to it as it is observed. Beware of your mind 'wanting' certain thoughts - certain feelings to arise. Beware of your mind - forgetting - and falling into the old habit of picking and choosing - wanting to allow some objects and reject others. Liking some. Fearing others. Clinging to some and pushing others away Again just observe it all. Not getting involved - not trying to change anything. No resistance.

"Hell is our resistance." Just a note: 'resisting'. 'judging'. Gently noticing how it all arises is there for some time and then passes away. Watch How EVERYTHING rises and falls. 

Thoughts



Feelings



Memories

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The Bliss Technique. 

Judgements



Comparisons

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Movements of resistance.

Sometimes the mind may get confused by too many objects or isn't clearly aware of where to focus. You'll get feelings of being lost - overcome, by feelings of losing control. Let the feeling be. It, too, is OK. Don't make it wrong. Don't identify with it silently note: 'a sense of confusion.' Let it be. It will rise, be there for a while and then pass away. If we forget and fine ourselves resisting, fine - again, simply note it with no judgement - just a gentle watching. As we allow it all to be - the 'good' and the 'bad' we'll find all these temporary phenomena slowing down………., thinning out………, falling away……….., simply dissolving……….

And we'll begin, slowly to realise that we are not any of these objects or impersonal processes but the actual space, the sea of pure awareness these processes are taking place in. We are that pure Awareness. That state or Field of pure Being that was always present, but of which we were totally unaware of. We'll begin to experience this awareness – this JOY. Real Pleasure. That's why it makes no difference what we feel. We have the potential to experience this state of pure awareness no matter what state of mind is present. Confused mind. Angry mind.

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The Bliss Technique. Impatient mind. Bored mind. Open and allow them all. Allow yourself to feel them all. All are equally valid.

Release the preconditioned hate, condemnation, judgement and resistance to them and they will reveal themselves as they really are - the one same energy just vibrating at different frequencies. When they arise in the Bliss Technique, release any tendency to make a distinction between them, to compare, to evaluate. Simply open to whatever is present at any moment. They simply become the object of attention. If we are not aware of them when they arise, they can become unconscious filters on our experience and we may begin to view everything through the filter of a particular emotion. Sometimes the different mind states and emotions may come associated with thoughts or images or with certain sensations in the body. Feelings of happiness or sadness, frustration, excitement or restlessness Many different kinds of mind states may arise. Allow all. Embrace all. No distinction. As you become aware of them, make a specific note of that particular state of mind so that you'll not get lost in it or begin to identify with it. These mind states, like all other objects are rising and passing away. They are not 'I', not self and do not belong to anybody. Just stay mindful as they arise. These states are less clearly defined than objects. They don't have such a clear, beginning, middle, and end and yet they can become very predominant objects of experience.

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The Bliss Technique. So if a mind state or mood becomes strong, again make a mental note of it - and open to it in all its different states of intensity. Watch how it is not you - how it does not belong to anyone. It is not 'my fear', 'my anger', or 'my boredom'. Just watch how it arises, presents itself and then passes away. When they pass away, what is left? What was there all the time but we never noticed because we were totally, totally engrossed and involved with the contents of awareness and NOT AWARENESS itself.

Pure Awareness

We can't describe this - it can only be experienced. When we learn to be still, to release all judgments, and all comparisons, it is to help us to loosen and to finally dissolve our, up till now, almost total identification with the contents of awareness.

And then…..…to begin to experience the 'Space', the 'Presence, the actual Field of Pure Awareness in which all these objects continually arise and fall away in. When we are still, we begin to experience 'That' which is present now in it's entirety - always has been and always will be.

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Pure Awareness.

The choice is ours at any moment. No waiting. No time is needed unless we want it to take time, which is fine to. It's all a question of choice. Larry Rosenberg puts it very simply when he says: As you practice ….."These states of mind start thinning out, falling away. The direction of meditation is for everything to go back where it came from. It comes out of stillness and goes back to stillness. As the mind grows quiet and still, our sense of psychological time falls away and we open up to a vast spaciousness. It has been there all along, behind our agitation. He continues: " The ancients spoke of the sky that is beyond the clouds. The productions of the mind are like clouds, some beautiful, some dark and threatening, but they are all clouds in the sky of the mind. The sky is vast, glorious, and unchanging, was never born and never dies". And he concludes: "Most of us live at the level of the clouds. We barely know there is a sky. And the way to the sky is through the clouds, by studying them, by observing them carefully in a friendly and unbiased way. In time, as we do that, they pass away, the same way a feeling passes away when we bring mindfulness to it. Then we open up to something altogether different, vast and silent, full of energy and love, of every kind of nourishment we need….. We realize it has been there all along."

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And the choice is ours, at any moment to experience it…..if we will open to the possibility it exists now, behind the incessant noise and chattering of our every day daily mind.

Our choice.

Exercise 2 For this exercise, choose a massage therapy you would like to enjoy. Now before your session with the therapist, prepare yourself. Spend about a half an hour practicing the Bliss Technique in your own home. You want to approach this massage with a completely new mind-set, than in the past. You want to see and experience how different the massage feels when you apply the simple principles of the Bliss Technique.

The Massage As you lie down on the couch, just be aware of your body Ground yourself. Become aware of how you are feeling. What dominant mood or feeling is present? Do you feel calm or do you feel restless -- impatient? Even nervous? All moods are fine. Notice if you are starting to judge already, comparing different moods or wishing you felt different. Remember: No preferences. Simply note your predominant emotion, open to it as it is in that moment. No desire to feel anything but what you are actually feeling right now. Now as your massage therapist starts to feel into your body, simply stay with whatever she is doing. Page 182 of 306

The Bliss Technique. Don’t resist anything: As she is massaging, if a thought, an idea, a memory, a pain in your leg or any deep sensation arises, just open to it.. No clinging to it. No labelling it. No comment on it. Simply note and dispassionately watch it as it reveals itself, aware of how it all just rises and falls - comes and goes. Or: a thought arises and decides to stay. Fine. Simply note: ‘Thought hanging about’. No care. No concern.

Your concern is not what arises and what it does, but your ability to non-judgmentally watch everything that arises and falls away without getting emotionally involved in it and wanting to change it. Let the thought do what it wishes. You may have a thought: ‘I’m not feeling anything’. Or: ‘Nothing is going to happen.’ Fine. There is nothing wrong with these thoughts – if you don’t make a big deal of them. Just allow them to come …..and GO. Just enjoy a completely impersonal observation-like a chemist observing a chemical reaction. Now just watch - as you don't get personally involved - and don't resist or attach to it, how the thought will simply lose interest and fall away. Whether it does or not is of no real concern to you, you simply note and observe whatever it does. You are not interested in the thoughts themselves or their content, simply the impersonal process of them raising and falling -- sometimes shouting for your attention - trying to entice you into their temporary world so that you'll become lost and controlled again. Again and again, bring your full presence and consciousness back to the concentrated touch of the massage therapist. That is your anchor.

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The Bliss Technique. All the time, fully aware of yourself in the room, present in the here and now, as the massage therapist works on your body.

As in the Bliss Technique – and when you are making love it is important that you stay FULLY centred in the body - not drifting away. That is always the key: Fully present in your body. Opening to EVERY bodily sensation as it arises. All the time trying to stay present in this moment. Not escaping into fantasy or the future. Accept that now and again, your mind will wander and you may find yourself thinking about last night's TV or an argument you had last week with a friend. Fine. Don't punish yourself for this. No big deal. No judgement or resistance. Simply make a note of 'wandering' and gently be present again in your body – opening again to the full touch and warmth of the massage therapist kneeling your body. Going deep into it. Releasing years and years of concealed and buried tensions, fears and resistances. Now, consciously allow, or command your body to let each cell, each muscle to OPEN WIDER – to relax itself FULLY so the past that is buried there can be dislodged, freed and liberated.

Open to this feeling of renewal, freedom and expansion. Or now and then, you may feel certain sensations in your body distracting your attention. Maybe a feeling of being very hot or a feeling of being blocked. The feeling that nothing else can happen. That there is a limit to everything. You may experience temporary pains or aches in your body. Gently focus all your attention, mindfulness on the sensation itself. Page 184 of 306

The Bliss Technique. (Again important to emphasize, as in the Bliss Technique, we don't hide from the discomfort or pretend it doesn't exist. Neither do we make it 'wrong' OR wish it wasn't there. We accept its presence; it's validity and make it the object of our GENTLE, SOFT investigation. We know resistance will only cause it to persist while gentle non-judgmental awareness like a bright all- expansive warmth will dissolve it. ) See how carefully you can observe and feel the quality of the sensation as the massage therapist works on it: is it hard or soft, hot or cold, vibrating or tingling, burning, pulling or tight? Open fully to the sensation as it is. Have no concern, no desire, no preference at all for how it may be.

It can be anyway - anyway it wants. Do not make even the slightest distinction as it reveals itself - remember "make the smallest distinction, and heaven (pleasure) and earth (pain) are set infinity apart". Simply feel the sensation and notice as accurately as possible what happens to the sensation as the massage therapist works on it. Now let her do that. Just open to the energy of her movement on your body…and how it affects this sensation. Does it get stronger? Fine. Does it get weaker? Fine. Does it dissolve? Does it get smaller? All fine.

No distinction. Just a gentle awareness - a gentle noting: 'sensation' or 'feeling'. What is important is the clarity of our awareness. It is this ‘clarity of our awareness’ that will transform how this massage feels for you. Not getting 'lost' or 'consumed' by the sensation or pain - becoming so identified with it that we believe we are it and nothing else exists. Simply watch it as it gets stronger or weaker, expands or contracts.

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The Bliss Technique. Sometimes it may disappear. But we don't take any of it personally. It arises …… stays for a while …….. it passes away. It has no real substance, no enduring core, it is a temporary, empty phenomena. Stay soft and relaxed……. Open, yet alert and precise. Just noting carefully and gently, moment after moment whatever object arises, always coming back to the sensation of the touch of the massage therapist on your body. All the time fully present in the body……opening up to and allowing yourself to experience the infinite pleasure it is capable of. However you don’t forget the great paradox: Be aware of any tendency to go looking for different sensations or feelings. Keep the awareness very simple, all the time coming back to the sensations of your body as the massage therapist gently works on it

The idea is not to look for anything special and not to try to make anything special happen; rather it is to note carefully what it is that is actually happening. Because it is this gentle, non-resistance attitude that RELEASES all the blocks and tensions in your body allowing the infinite pleasure of the life-force energy to be experienced in your body.

Now as this pleasure arises, allow it. Don’t make a big deal of it. And don’t try to cling to it or hold it or make it stay. Enjoy it. It is your true natural state. It is what we should all be feeling. It is the best healing energy you can ask for.

It is a frequency of energy that your body has been starved off.

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The Bliss Technique. A frequency of love, of pleasure, of joy that will make every cell of your body sing. You will feel this energy in the very pores of your skin, the roots of your hair, rushing into all these areas that have been starved of this healing frequency for ages. When you continue to experience this, you will soon know, from direct experience that this quote from Eva Pierrakos is now a real fact, and not some fancy form of escapist imagining. ‘Since the streamings of pleasure are also the forces of life, health,

renewal, and regeneration, your health and longevity are results of your capacity for pleasure...

Conversely, to the degree that you deny yourself pleasure, because of fear or misconceptions- to THAT degree you cut yourself off from the wellspring". . But we must not try to hold on to this pleasure – or try to prolong it. That is just another form of resistance. If you find yourself doing that- fine, simply note that is your old self simply acting as it always did in the past. With full awareness, be present again in your body …..opening fully to the touch and feel of the massage therapist as she continues to work on you. Opening to whatever feeling, energy or sensation is there…..letting it grow, enlarge and expand as you contemplate the infinite nature of energy and pleasure….

Do Not Discourage Yourself! Matt Engelman in Genuine Freedom gives us this piece of advice, which is vital when you start to experience this marvellous, natural bliss energy streaming through your body, healing and nourishing it. He warns: “A common mind-trap is to assume, after a great experience, like a great massage – or a brilliant day, that the following day or the following massage will be a pile of shit. This is a very common mind-trap. It is encapsulated by the cliché: ‘You can’t always have good days – or great experiences.’. Excuse me, respected reader, while I shout an obscenity…….”Bullshit!”. This train of thought, together Page 187 of 306

The Bliss Technique. with “My luck is running out,” are self-fulfilling prophecies, and it is as simple as that”.

In the next module, we’ll see how we are always cutting ourselves off from orgasmic Pleasure – the body’s most important healing and regenerating energy

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The Bliss Technique.

Module 10 Why Are We All Afraid of Pleasure?

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The Bliss Technique.

Module 10: Why Are We All afraid of Pleasure?

‘Since the streamings of pleasure are also the forces of life, health, renewal, and regeneration, your health and longevity are results of your capacity for pleasure... Conversely, to the degree that you deny yourself pleasure, because of fear or misconceptions- to THAT degree you cut yourself off from the wellspring". Eva Pierrakos

We missed it all the time. What we have all being unconsciously looking for - that real sense of joy, of completion, of bliss - has been with us all along. It is here, this VERY moment, but we have simply forgotten. We have been conditioned from early childhood to look ONLY to the external world to find our joy, our peace and our happiness. As we have emphasised here, there is nothing wrong with this. But this joy and pleasure will be temporary and short-lived, unless we recognise the source from which all joy originates.

Then we can enjoy the ONE and the MANY. But our problems begin when we forget this simply truth and start to look exclusively to the external world and believe nothing else exists. Yet, our very nature IS joy, peace and love. And…..we DON’T have to blindly believe this.

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We can learn to access these energies at ANY time, but most of us never will, simply because we believe they do not exist.

A Million Dollars! Imagine you had a million dollars in the bank. You need it badly as you are barely surviving in a tiny room with no food. You spend every day there, getting weaker and weaker. However, years ago, your family told you that you had a million pounds in the bank - but you did not believe them. You had always lived in poverty and nothing good had ever, ever happened to you. So you couldn't believe them - "No, such a great thing, effortless abundance would be just too good to be true. No, they must be lying to me". And so you starve to death in a dingy room. "That story is stupid", most people will say - "Why didn't he just go to the bank and check for himself? He would have had nothing to lose". Exactly! Beyond the movement of all your fears, thoughts, feelings and memories, there lies a field of pure awareness, of pure intelligence, the nature of which is joy, pleasure. It has always been there, but have you CHECKED it out? Like the man in the story, you don’t bother because you believe there is nothing there! Yet, it was there all the time for you to enjoy. Is this the real meaning behind Buddha's statement when he said (to paraphrase)? "You can awaken in seven lifetimes, seven years, seven months, seven days, seven hours, seven minutes, or you can do it now. The choice is always yours."

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What’s Stopping You? I want to quote the following paragraph to you in full again. The same paragraph we first read at the beginning of our journey. Now, this time…..see how your attitude has gradually changed. How….new possibilities are beginning to open up to you.

‘The Full Pulsation of Life’ It is from a lecture on ‘The Full Pulsation of Life’, given by Eva Pierrakos. However, I want you to pay special attention to how YOU react to what is said. ‘ "A very liberated human being with few or no blocks or inhibitions, without distortions or negativity, is capable of a high degree of pleasure, for then the energy of the subtle bodies penetrates the surface body. Only then, when a high degree of bliss is experienced will the person deeply know that human pleasure is essentially the same as the cosmic state of bliss, that they are not opposites, but one and the same. Real pleasure is intensely fleshly and intensely spiritual. The ultimate state of liberation, of cosmic being, is total pleasure. The ultimate reality is pleasure. Bliss is the natural state of a unified being in harmony with himself and the universe. By this we mean a state of physical and spiritual bliss that is experienced in every particle of one's body and soul, with all sensations and faculties alive, awake and feeling. This state is very much a present reality. It is your birthright, my friends.

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The Bliss Technique. Your longing for it is the most real and healthy movement within you. Pleasure is a state in which your entire being, EVERY CELL OF IT, vibrates and pulsates undividedly, in harmony with itself and the universe, and hence with another human being. There is no division within you, no doubt about the rightfulness of your bliss. You feel no guilt or hesitation. On the contrary, you will deeply feel that the greater your ecstasy, your pleasure, and your joy, the more you contribute to the world."

After reading that, most of us will think: "How marvellous - how nice that would be - but of course, it's not true”. That’s how most of us would react. We all believe the above is just not possible for us. When we are born, we all absorb and accept, without question humanity's deepest assumptions - about what is and isn't possible in this human existence. Let's be honest.

As a race, we don't believe in joy. In pleasure. In ecstasy. We believe that life is essentially one long, hard struggle and the only joy we can expect are tiny ‘pockets’ of it here and there. We also believe that these never last - and what's more -- if we are too happy, we get scared! We believe happiness won't last and worse: Something will happen to punish us for being so happy. Taking into account our history, this belief, this ASSUMPTION about the joyless nature of life is understandable.

To day, these memories have hardened into unconscious core beliefs, which few of us ever question and they dictate what we believe is possible for us to experience in this life.

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“How Broad Is Your Acceptance?” For most of us, we just can’t ALLOW ourselves to relax and experience this infinite ocean of pleasurable, ecstatic orgasmic energy…streaming through OUR BODIES now. A lot of this has to do with our belief in lack. As most of us were brought up in and conditioned by the Western world’s absolute beliefs in scarcity and lack……we all think there is never enough of anything. So we feel we must always be careful…..and not use very much….of anything in case it will run out…..

We lack any concept of the real infinite abundance of energy. So we can’t picture how limitless it is. We badly need to change this. For a start, look at something as obvious as a blade of grass. Although it's life cycle only consists of approximately 5-6 months in many regions, a single blade continually produces hundreds of additional seeds of offspring. And as it grows and matures, it begins to produce additional seeds, millions of them, and the cycle continues season after season, year after year, century after century. Try to calculate the number of seeds that that one blade of glass is ultimately responsible for producing? The answer of course is, it’s impossible as the number never ends. As one blade of glass produces more seeds, they in turn produce more seeds…..and the number is infinite… The energy of the seed is infinite. Now consider the recent discoveries in Zero point energy. John Assaraf and Murray Smith explain it very well in their new book, The Answer,

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The Bliss Technique. ‘As scientists continued pursuing their explorations on staggeringly small scales, they eventually found themselves staring at something truly confounding. They termed it the zero-point field (ZPF), because at this most infinitesimal of levels, some sort of force appears to be present even at a temperature of absolute zero, when all known forms of energy vanish. Here, beneath the level of energy itself, exists a still more basic level. The field at this level is not exactly “energy” anymore, nor is it a field of empty space. It is best described, physicists realized, as a field of information. To put it another way, the undifferentiated ocean out of which energy arises appears to be a sea of pure consciousness, from which matter emerges in clustered localities here and there. Consciousness is what the universe is made of; matter and energy are just two of the forms that consciousness takes. Ervin Laszlo calls this field that underlies and connects all things the A-field’ Now here’s the amazing thing in regard to our discussion of energy ‘For example, chemical power, the force of chemical interactions, operates at the level of molecules and atoms. Nuclear power operates at the level of the atomic nucleus, about a million times smaller - and it is a million times more powerful. Yet even the nuclear level pales in comparison to the deeper levels today’s quantum physics is exploring. According to Laszlo, the zero-point field has an energy density of 1094 ergs per cubic centimetre - that’s ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion times more energy in a single cubic centimetre of “empty space” than you have in all the matter in the known universe.

And that’s just one cc of empty space. Imagine what you’d have in a quart. Isn’t extraordinary? Once again, try to get a real feeling of the amount of energy we are talking about in just one single cubic centimetre of so-called “empty space’ Really focus on this.

‘An energy density of 1094 ergs per cubic centimetre - that’s ten thousand billion, billion, billion, billion times more energy in a single cubic centimetre of “empty space” than you have in all the matter in the known universe.

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Doesn’t that give you some grasp of how limitless energy really is? Now, consider this: Simon Driver of the Australian National University Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics and his team estimated in 2003 the number of stars in the known universe…… The figure they agreed on was 70 sextillion - 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. But they added: 'This is not the total number of stars in the universe, but the number within the present range of our telescopes,' Driver said. Let’s go back form the stars to our solid feet on the floor. But even here, we are confronted with the awesome infinite abundance of energy in all it’s different forms. Take your humble insect! Yet, insects have the greatest number of individuals living of at any one time. It is estimated that there are approximately 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive. There are 1,017,018 species of insects in the world with some experts estimating that there just might be as many as 20 million species out there. Everywhere, limitless energy in all forms!

‘Infinite Bliss Energy’ We are mere drops in this infinite, omnipresent Sea of Energy. We can soak every atom and cell of our bodies in this pleasure-tingling energy a million times over- and that still wouldn’t be a drop in the ocean. But to experience this - we need to relax, REALLY relax each cell of our bodies and allow this…… LIMITLESS nourishing, healing, rejuvenating, life-giving, ecstatic energy to flow through us.

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When you can turn this ‘tiny trickle’ to an OCEAN of this energy, waiting to flow through you, you’ll be amazed at the significant changes you’ll see in your body (See Module 9 - The Bliss Technique and Your Body)

“I Don’t Deserve it ……” Most of us still stubbornly believe we ONLY deserve to experience just a TINY amount of this energy, this pleasure in our bodies now. So, for most of us, the answer to the VITAL question: “How Broad Is Your Acceptance?” is a sad: “Very little.” And that is why we experience so little.

We can only experience that which we accept is really possible for us now. And anytime, we think that maybe, just maybe more is possible for us, we come up again and again against another hard solid psychic BLOCK. This block is virtually a living psychic entity in us -made up of centuries of old beliefs and conclusions about what is possible, tied together with old, stale energies of hopelessness and pointlessness.

An Incredible Evening Of Enlightenment! One evening, here’s a real life-changing challenge: To sit down and spend time one evening with this ‘belief entity’? Spend a full evening with it. Make it the object of your gentle, blameless meditation. With gentle awareness, let it speak it’s ‘mind’ to you. Let it express itself to you and allow it to fully and finally dissipate itself. Listen to its old conclusions, which you have believed in for so long.

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Let it all come out….. It might whisper……or ‘shout’ at you…… ‘Pleasure is not possible for you…... Pleasure is bad…..dangerous. Evil. It will overcome you……..control you……..lead you to hell……We’re not here to enjoy life….so pleasure must be wrong ….and anyway, like all good things, it must be difficult to get…..it MUST be…..Yes, of course, you HAVE to work, and suffer and toil, to experience it….so you can’t have it now……Maybe later…..when you might deserve it……when you’ve paid the price…… And on and on….. Let it all come out in the gentle, soft field of your awareness…. As you do this, you’ll discover that, at the core of all these thoughts, you’ll find another core belief: The assumption that pleasure is something that is very ’rare’, very ‘special’ and very difficult to get and must be ‘EARNED’. Now, go even deeper and deeper into this belief ……and you’ll find an even stronger belief behind it: The belief that as you are now, you don’t DESERVE pleasure. That you are not good enough or worthy enough as you are now to experience such ‘great’, AWESOME pleasure. Maybe other people can…….but not you. You believe, that in your case, you MUST surely ‘fix’ certain things about yourself to be ‘worthy’ ….and then, maybe….just maybe…. you might experience this blissful energy dancing in delight throughout your body. (And remember the irony of all this – everybody else is thinking the same about themselves!) This belief is like a psychological brake operating in every cell of your body. Subtly, it is closing down each cell, restricting it…..so that you can feel very little sensation or pleasure in your body. And when this happens, you conclude that the truth of your old belief has been confirmed. “Look, I’m doing my practice- just as you described – but it makes no difference. I am feeling nothing. Just as I told you I would. Again, like I told you, it’s all nonsense…….’

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But now we know the reason why you are feeling nothing. Yes, you are practicing the Bliss Technique, but you have never challenged this old belief system/entity that is still dominating your thinking. It is STILL whispering to you (and you are agreeing!) that to feel this good, this ecstatic, just cannot be easy. It must involve a long process of struggle, disciplined effort and persistent hard work……and then you might- if you’re lucky – experience a tiny nugget of pleasure. And even if you do that---you think you should be very grateful. ‘Don’t you KNOW how hard and scarce and impossible the good things in life are?’ This is what this old belief system is shouting at you, as you practice now.

Drop This Old Belief Into the Dustbin! That’s why it is so important to start the process of releasing this old belief structure by simply being CONSCIOUSLY aware of it everyday. But, please be gentle and PATIENT with yourself. As humans, we have believed all these ideas for centuries. They have a strong vibration in us and so we must be patient and good-natured as we feel these old beliefs rising to the surface of our minds to limit our present day experience. For centuries, they have soaked into our consciousness, into the very cells of our bodies from the memories of our ancestors. Read this great excerpt from the great Irish poet, Eithne Strong from her book, ‘Flesh…..the Greatest Sin It captures the thoughts and feelings of a young Irish girl at the end of the last century. Acknowledge this ‘young girl’. She was, in a way your great grandmother. She was all our great grandmothers in the universality of her feelings.….

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The Bliss Technique. And even today, the energy of her fears and feelings can still be felt in all our cells. Read. ‘The terrible sins are those against purity; the vilest. Remember the sixth commandment Thou shalt not commit adultery. What is adultery? Hold your tongue and learn obedience. Mortify the flesh, that is the enemy; not to be pampered, scourge it that you may not fall into the eternal fire. Remember what it is like to be burned. Imagine your whole body burning and never ending. Imagine that punishment and realize then how much better to punish yourself now; polish harder, go hungrier; be glad you are cold; cold and purity combine; welcome the sweat of heavy labour, it washes you pure; remember purity is supreme; to be virgin there is nothing higher for a woman. Mystic Rose……. We pay the price of their indulgence. Eve gave in, encouraged another to the flesh, We must refuse; do not lean back in your chair, stretch flesh to the last endurance. Remember Christ stretched on Calvary….. Christ scourged; scourge the flesh. Chasten it. Indulgence heats the blood. Chastity is everything, Deny the self. Do not look in mirrors what have you to see but your vain self that is dust. Do not taste. Remember Christ has gall and vinegar. Do not touch. Remember the Seven Deadly sins……. All through the centuries, this negative church conditioning against pleasure and joy has been cruelly programmed, imprinted into us Listen to ‘Ellen’, again: From the first, Voices of Authority had forbidden: Deny flesh: Mortify. Abnegate. Voices had wrought fear: Remember Hell. Remember Mary, the Immaculate, conceived without sin. Remember. Ellen remembered that flesh was sin, flesh laid on flesh brought stirrings that meant hell. The old voices sounded always

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The Bliss Technique. unrelentingly in her life. Do not indulge. Punish. Crucify self. And the new: from the pulpit, now, the priest frenzied out his loathing; vituperation of flesh convulsed him near seizure. from her book, ‘Flesh…..the Greatest Sin by Eithne Strong

Don’t listen To Them- We ARE Joy-filled Beings! All of us, to a large degree have inherited the full imprints of all our ancestor’s deep feelings and conclusions about life. And ….about what our bodies are capable of experiencing and enjoying. Yet the real truth of our true nature is entirely different. Remember what we wrote a the very beginning: ‘We are joy-filled beings all the way to the core. You know, when you really look at the bio-chemistry, you will see that the human organism is designed for the ongoing experience of joy, pleasure, bliss. What’s an endorphin? What are the skin and the senses? A fragrant, yellow-bursting flower? There’s no escaping it: We are set up for bliss. But look at us. We’ve missed; we’ve totally missed the mark’.

Yes, we have missed the mark! And to wake up and EXPERIENCE what you, me and everyone of us is truly capable of experiencing - we need to wash away all these old limited beliefs/conclusions. We need to dissolve them in the warm light of our gentler, patient nonjudgmental awareness

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The Bliss Technique. These beliefs were not bad. They were just wrong conclusions that our ancestors people reached on limited and distorted knowledge….. We need to let go of the past and wake up and realize our body is primarily an extraordinary feeling and sensing organism. This is one of the core points I want to emphasize again and again through his course.

The Bliss Technique is never an attempt to get away from our bodies or to forget them. Or to negate them. Your body is absolutely central to the Bliss Technique. We need to recognise the body's true function as an incredible biological sensing and feeling system that allows us to experience every energy frequency from the very highest to the lowest right here and now in this life. Up till now, most of us have experienced only the surface of these frequencies. In fact, most of us believe that’s all there is. A little sneeze of pleasure here and there, if we’re lucky. But that’s only the surface. We have only touched upon 1% of these frequencies. And that why we’re here.

To feel To really feel, taste, touch and smell the ecstasy of life. Page 202 of 306

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To experience, in a human body, the full range of all these frequencies.

We are feeling beings. That’s why it is so important that when you practice the Bliss Technique, you remain fully present in your body. In EACH cell of your body. And …… to allow yourself to gradually realise that because we all share the same extraordinary biological and neurological circuitry, you too are capable of experiencing some of the most exquisite energy frequencies available to any person.

Your body is the vehicle that allows you to draw and 'digest' these frequencies so that you can experience them fully in this three-dimensional world. You are worthy as YOU ARE now…..To experience it all. Too old. Too fat. Too thin. Too stupid. Too ‘past it’. Too must of a failure. Too poor. Too selfish. Too lazy. These are all just excuses to put it off…. to pretend it is not possible for you now. We’re not talking about how you look, but what you are CAPABLE of feeling, through your extraordinary human nervous sytem.. You are a being of energy now.

You deserve it now. This day.

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The Bliss Technique. Monroe gives us all an unique insight into the very personal nature of the ideas that we are talking about here. Here are her words and beliefs about pleasure, and how it affected her ability to experience real pleasure in her life. ”What I told you when I first became your patient is true. I had never had an orgasm. I well remember you said an orgasm happens in the mind, not the genitals. You said there was an obstacle in my mind that prevented me from having an orgasm; that it was something that happened early in my life about which I felt so guilty that I did not deserve to have the greatest pleasure there is; that it had something to do with something sexual that was very wrong, but my pleasure from getting pleasure from it caused my guilt. That it was buried in my subconscious. Through analysis we would bring it to my conscious mind where we could get to the guilt and free me to be orgasmic. Well, we sure worked it and it got nowhere. I’d go home and cry and vomit from the frustration. Then you said for the orgasm problem we would try a different approach. That you would tell me how to stimulate myself, that when I did exactly what you told me to do I would have an orgasm and that after I did it to myself and felt what it was, I would have orgasms with lovers. (As In the Bliss Technique – you must learn to feel it in yourself first, in your own body first, then with others) What a difference a word makes. You said I would, not I could. Bless you doctor. What you say is gospel to me. By now I’ve had lots of orgasms. Not only one, but two and three with a man who takes his time. I never cried as hard as I did after my first orgasm. It was because of the years I had never had an orgasm. What wasted years. How can I describe to you, a man, what an orgasm feels like to a woman. I’ll try. Think of a light fixture with a rheostat control. As you slowly turn it on, the bulb begins to get bright, and then brighter and brighter and finally in a blinding flash is fully lit. As you turn it off it gradually becomes dimmer and at last goes out.

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The Bliss Technique. Speaking of Oscars, I would win overwhelmingly if the Academy gave Oscars for faking orgasms. I have done some of my best acting convincing my partners I was in the throes of ecstasy”.

For us all, it is this idea- THIS belief that, as we are now, “ that we do not deserve to have the greatest pleasure there is’ that stops us from experiencing this health-giving energy in our body. And, as we have seen, this belief can affect us from a Hollywood sex goddesses to the ordinary person on the street. From today, we need to start to think outside the limits of our past experience. To gradually allow yourself to play around with this new possibility; that pleasure is not bad or wrong. And it is not limited or scarce. And as Osho once wrote, misery is the key business of all the organized religions. He wrote: “If dropping the misery is as easy as I say, then all these fake religions lose their business. It is a question of their business. Blissfulness has to be made so difficult – almost impossible- that people can only hope for it in some future life, after long arduous journeys.” But pleasure is simply the true nature of the energy of life itself- an energy that is infinite.

An energy that we have blocked from our bodies by the harsh, frozen nature of all our old beliefs. When you practice the Bliss Technique to-night, begin to breath deeply now and to relax, REALLY RELAX your body more and more. Let all the centuries of limitation and fear, that are deposited in the cellular memory of your body be released. As you practice, imagine them falling away…... Being joyously dislodged and released from every cell and organ of your body. From your eyes. From your hair. From your bones. Your muscles. Your skin.

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The Bliss Technique. From the very heart of your DNA……..and let a new warmth, an new energy and pleasure beginning to seep through….. Remember earlier what we talked about Zero point energy. Well, consider this now: In just one small cell of your body, there is more potential power than you could use in a lifetime. Then, realize that: ‘In one small cell, there is also more potential pleasure than you could experience in a lifetime……. Now: Consider that your body is made up of trillion of these cells…., trillions and trillions of them ! …….and then, you’ll realize that the pleasure we are capable of experiencing is really beyond comprehension. Then …IMAGINE when your trillions of cells IGNITE in pleasure with the trillions of cells of your love partner…….. No wonder such a ‘Big Bang’ is capable of creating a brand new life! As Stewart Swerdlow puts it in ‘The True nature of Sexuality’: ‘Each person is truly a microcosm of the macrocosm, and in sexual union each individual has the opportunity to feel, experience, and replicate the original Act of Creation. Life itself.

Begin today! Don’t let the limits of your past experience determine your future. Just because you have never experienced this energy in your past, does not mean you can’t experience it now. Remember the story of Roger Bannister. Roger Bannister, was a 25-year-old British medical student, who become the first man to run a mile in less than four minutes. In the world of athletics, it was widely believed that no human being could run the mile in less than four minutes.

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The Bliss Technique. Doctors and athletes and sports experts were unanimous in the view that the four minute barrier could not be broken. Not possible, they said. Can't be done. In fact, it was believed that no man could attempt it without causing significant physical harm to the body. Then, on 6th May 1954, Roger Bannister did the impossible. At an athletic meet in London, Roger ran the mile and touched the finishing line in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, thereby shattering the four minute barrier. In reality, what Roger did was prove that the barrier was not a physiological one. It was just a mental barrier. What Roger Bannister did on that windy day was not merely set a new world record; he demonstrated that breaking mental barriers can help us deliver breakthrough performances. And what afterwards was quite amazing: Just 56 days after Roger Bannister smashed the four-minute-mile mental barrier, another runner John Landy too broke his own mental wall and ran the mile in 3 minutes 57.9 seconds. But that's not all. By the end of 1957, sixteen other runners had run the mile in less than four minutes. The mental barrier had been well and truly smashed! So what actually happened? Did athlete's bodies suddenly get stronger? Was their new technology behind improving runner's shoes? Did training methods get better? Did they try harder? None of these really. It's just that the mental barrier - the self-limiting belief - that a mile can't be run in under four minutes - was shattered. And that opened the floodgates. Likewise, just because you have never experienced something in the past, does not mean you can’t experience it now. All these runners succeed because after seeing Roger Bannister do the impossible, they opened their minds to a new possibility. They ALLOWED themselves to believe it really WAS possible. And they experienced it.

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‘Don’t Try. Just Allow……That’s the Whole Secret’ As we have emphasized, when practicing the Bliss Technique or enjoying a bliss-filled massage – you can’t ‘make’ or ‘force’ pleasure. It is there all the time.

Your only job is to relax away all the obstacles that block it’s flow into your body. The key is to always stay fully present in your body….and allow yourself to feel without preference, whatever is present at any moment with a soft, gentle choiceless awareness. This is the paradox: Don’t want this pleasure. Don’t try to get it. You can’t. Don’t care about it. Simply focus on staying fully present in your body and watch what happens. A gentle, soft choice-less watching. Don’t put ANY limits on this pleasure as it rises in you. That means you’re trying to achieve something. Obtain a result. Your only GOAL is to keep practicing the CORE principles of the Bliss Technique….and allow what happens to happen. And the more you can hold this gentle attitude…as you practice, the more of this energy you will open to. Again, drop all mental limits you might have as to what is possible to experience. The energy is limitless – so will be YOUR experience!

Enlightenment? “Society cannot allow ecstasy. Ecstasy is the greatest revolution. I repeat: Ecstasy is the greatest revolution. If people become ecstatic, the whole society will have to

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The Bliss Technique. change, because this society is based in misery”

Osho

Please realise this: There is no such thing as 'Final Enlightenment'. Or a final Pleasure we must reach. This idea keeps us locked into the future and, we spend all our time running here, there and everywhere. Looking and waiting for that final transformation of enlightenment that will, somehow allow us to experience the full ecstasy of life and that will be it. Our job will be finished.

But the joy and ecstasy of life - this incredible frequency of life - this 'IT' that we spend our whole lives looking for - is INFINITE and WITHOUT END. When you start to practice and as your thoughts and energies slowly begin to calm down, you will EXPERIENCE a gradual feeling of PEACE, a feeling of FULLNESS and of JOY. You will open to a new energy.

YOU ARE NOW EXPERIENCING 'IT' - ABLEIT ONLY A SMALL TEMPORARY SEGMENT OF 'IT'. But you are EXPERIENCING 'IT' NOW. You have no other place or time to go to. It is all here now as Bartholomew reflects in 'Reflections of a brother': "There is no place you can ever go that will have more God than is present here, in his moment, now." The only difference between you and the great masters like Buddha is that they are simply experiencing more and more of that extraordinary pure energy, Pleasure or intelligence of life. They are experiencing a joy, a level of peace and understanding that is probably far removed from ours -YET IT IS THE SAME JOY AND PEACE WE ARE EXPERIENCING NOW - ONLY, (IF WE CAN PUT IT IN THESES TERMS) 'A LARGER AMOUNT OT 'IT'.

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The Bliss Technique. Open to this idea. You are experiencing 'IT' now -(even, if at this stage it is only a temporary glimpse) - that which you have always been looking for. Drop the idea that you have to wait for the future to begin to experience it.

It is here now in all its totality. It is infinite. There is no goal or perfect standard to reach - simply to open up and allow yourself to experience as much (or as little) of these frequencies of joy and peace as you choose. Dan Millman, author of 'Everyday Enlightenment' put it well when he said recently: "I think it is more realistic to say that we have a responsibility to realize and live from that state [access these higher energies] moment to moment rather than thinking that we'll just have an experience and say, "From now on, that's it. I'm enlightened." Allow yourself to open and to feel all the frequencies of the pure energy and pleasure of life now. The intelligence and pleasure of this energy is like Numbers.

Infinite.

Go on. Start counting 1,2,3,4 …..1 billion and 1,and 2, and 3, …….. One trillion and 1, and 2, and 3, ………… Go on Keep counting …....... You’ll see like the energy of Life, THERE IS NO END.

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Module 11 Obstacles To Pleasure

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Module 11:OBSTACLES TO PLEASURE

"We come to see that the worst and most difficult things also change, that they are empty experiences, light and shadows that we all share and that arise and pass in the clear space of mind". Jack Koenfield

You go into the room. You close the door. It is quiet and peaceful. You sit down to practice for one hour before you go to bed. You make yourself comfortable - relaxed, poised but alert. You open to how you are feeling; gently being aware of whatever feeling is predominant. You watch impartially as certain thoughts, ideas or memories of the day arise, stay for a while, and then pass away. As you maintain this soft, non-attacking, non-judgemental awareness your brain waves begin to relax into an open relaxed Alpha state, your heartbeat and respiration follow suit. You begin to feel open, relaxed, joyous yet alert, and totally present. As Jack Kornfield says: “ We come to see that the worst and most difficult things also change, that they are empty experiences, light and shadows that we all share and that arise and pass in the clear space of mind." The hour seems to fly by. You get up and go to bed, relaxed, light-filled, bliss-filled renewed. An experience more pleasurable and tingling than sex.

and

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The Bliss Technique. The next night - you sit down again to practice. A memory of the previous night steals into your mind. You remember how ‘well’ it went. You begin your practice of the Bliss Technique…... Yet, after a while, you begin to feel restless, uneasy, annoyed. Your mind won't be still. You can't get the same feeling as last night. You wonder what you are doing wrong. You try to get rid of this feeling you don't like. Nothing seems to work. You start to feel frustrated, angry and fed-up. Then you think: "I shouldn't be feeling like this". And you, subtly start to resist this feeling -- to make it go away or to change it so that you can get the feeling you had the previous night. And on it goes…. And you go to bed tired and depressed, thinking: "Why is this Bliss Technique stuff sometimes good and sometimes bad. What am I doing wrong? This is the key Question: What is happening here? One night, everything went well for you, but the second night, you couldn't repeat the same 'success'. You'll experience this too, if you are not aware of what is happening. You'll sit down to practice and everything will be perfect. The mind still, the body relaxed. You'll just stay in the moment as it arises not comparing it to anything, no judging, no resisting, just ALLOWING whatever arises to be with a clear awareness. You'll have no desire to 'pick and choose', just a gentle, disinterested moment-by-moment observation. A JOY. The next night, you sit down to practice and you experience the exact opposite. But if you look very closely and are honest with yourself when this happens, you'll see that when you sat down to practice THIS time, you had a very different GOAL or objective in mind. Page 213 of 306

The Bliss Technique. It may seem a very subtle distinction, but as we have said before, 'Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart'.

A Key Distinction What is this distinction? The first night when you sat down, your ONLY goal was to allow yourself to feel, WITHOUT PREFERENCE, whatever arose moment to moment. You were not trying to make yourself feel any specific way. You had a TOTAL OPENNESS and RECEPTIVITY to whatever feeling tones and thought form were present. However, the second night there was a subtle difference. At the back of your mind, you weren't willing to experience WHATEVER mind state was there that night - you were TRYING to re-capture the feeling you had the previous night. So you were subtly judging, evaluating and comparing every feeling and fighting and resisting them - trying to change them into the feeling you had the previous night

In truth, you were not practicing - you were judging and resisting and thus, you felt bad, stuck and fed up. This is one of the subtle obstacles we have to be aware of. When we practice, we may find ourselves comparing. If we allow ourselves to get lost in these comparisons, we will soon start to make our present practice 'wrong' and try to ‘change’ it. Let us never forget that when we practice we are not looking for any PARTICULAR results.

It is the grand paradox of the Bliss Technique. But it is VITAL we understand it.

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The Bliss Technique. We let go of any expectations. We release any models of how it should be.

Our ONLY GOAL is to be present – AND to be open to whatever is present at that moment with no preference treating everything with that same awareness. The peace and the joy, the pleasure and the incredible sense of well being that we feel is the natural outcome of this simple awareness.

It happens, naturally by itself. We cannot 'make' this joy or 'produce' it. IT IS THERE ALL THE TIME We can only open to it, allow it. By simply allowing ourselves to feel, without preference whatever is present, moment-by-moment, we are simply dissolving the blocks - the clouds that hinder our experience of this natural Presence The simplicity of the Bliss Technique fools us. It is indeed the grand paradox of the Bliss Technique. So when you practice, get very quiet. Listen to your mind. What is its deepest intention? Is it trying to capture a past experience or is it willing to have the courage to face whatever is present without judgement? The former will cause you pain and resistance. The latter, real joy.

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Judging and Resisting As you practice, your old conditioning will raise its head again and again …….whispering such thoughts as: 

"This is a waste of time"



"This is boring"



"Doing this won't do me any good "



"I should be out doing something else."



Or ‘Just sitting here and being still is pointless".

We are all strongly conditioned against stillness. We have an unconscious feeling that it is, somehow wrong, immoral, and, in some way cheating. (We are not criticising action here - doing things and doing them well. We are stressing the need for balance. For periods of profound silence and profound action. Humanity to day is unbalanced - totally focussed on the external - on the doing.) When we are learning the Bliss Technique, these old conditioned thoughts will rise again and again into our field of awareness. If we are not aware of them, we'll find ourselves, at a subtle level, beginning to fight them, resist them, judge them as 'out of date'- 'wrong'. You'll start to think: "I shouldn't be thinking such thoughts now." A process of judgement, of resistance will begin. A thought ("This is boring") that was just passing through -- now starts to take on a life of it's own ……. Your resistance gives it energy and life and the more you resist it the more it will persist, BECAUSE now, you are giving it more and more energy. And you’ll end up feeling stuck and fed -up.

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The Problem? What is happening here? What caused all the trouble? Most people, who are new to the Bliss Technique will blame the original thought - "This is boring - a waste of time". They will contend that if that thought hadn't arisen in the first place there would have been no problem. However, the truth is the exact opposite. The thought is fine. It is OK. It's valid. It is just one of the thousands of thoughts that will pass through your mind each day. Whether you’re meditating, enjoying a massage or making love. Again and again, we go back to our central theme: The problem began when we made the thought 'wrong'…. When we judged it as ‘unhelpful’, as a possible obstacle to a 'successful' practice. This judgement, this conclusion led us to, subtly, BEGIN to resist the thought to try to change -to make it go away - to repress it. We then set into motion the law of the unconscious that says ‘the resistance of anything only leads to its persistence’. This is one of the key hindrances in the Bliss Technique that we always have to be consciously aware of - our continual, unconscious tendency to judge and resist everything. In the beginning, you must continually remind yourself that it makes no difference what thoughts you have or what feelings you experience when you practice. The problem only begins when you start to separate the thoughts and feelings and judge some as 'good' and 'acceptable' - and others as 'bad'.

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The Bliss Technique. What you are doing then is not experiencing each thought as it arises with a clear non-judgmental awareness at the moment it arises, but a part of you is interpreting each feeling and comparing it to other feelings - evaluating it - and if, according to your past conditioning such a thought or feeling is considered 'bad' or 'undesirable' you begin to fight and resist it and become lost and controlled by it.

The Bliss Technique ends - resistance begins. Never forget the one and only goal of the Bliss Technique. It is as Stephen Levine puts it: "When you practice, no state of mind is preferable to any other. Only the clarity of seeing is of importance. It is not what is seen so much as how clearly it is perceived"

Larry Rosenberg, he says:

in

'Breath

by

Breath'

is

quite

clear

when

" The mindfulness of the Bliss Technique is unbiased. It is not for or against anything, just like a mirror, which does not judge what it reflects. Mindfulness has no goal other than the seeing itself. It doesn't try to add to what's happening or subtract from it, or to improve it in any way."

The problem does not lie in ANY particular thought or feeling - it depends on how you relate to all the different thoughts and feelings as they arise and fall in your field of awareness moment by moment. If you continue to believe the problem lies in certain thoughts and feelings - then when you practice, you'll always be in a state of fear and tension. All the time, you’ll be anxiously studying and watching each thought and state of mind to see if it is acceptable. It is this tension, this critical judgmental, watching and resistance that causes all the contraction and restriction we feel in the Bliss Technique. As Eckhart Tolle says in ‘The Power of Now’ Page 218 of 306

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‘The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind’.

When you practice, open wholeheartedly to whatever is present at any moment. No preferences. No ‘models’ of how things ‘should’ be. If you find yourself judging - fine - accept it. Don't resist. Don't try to push it away. Simply watch your mind judging. Observe the process of judging without getting personally involved in it. And once again, we will experience for ourselves the simple truth: Our simple, non-judgemental awareness of our mind ‘judging’ will release us from this restrictive process.

It is a grand paradox, yet it is true.

‘Only When I Feel Like It’. Another obstacle we will face as we deepen our practise of the Bliss Technique is the desire only to practice when we feel like it. For example: the time when you usually practice arrives. You delay it. Page 219 of 306

The Bliss Technique. You decide to put it off for fifteen minutes. You don't feel peaceful or calm enough to practice. You feel restless and excited. Or you feel bored and fed up. The idea of sitting down to practice feeling like this fills you with dread. You decide to 'do' something and then hope you'll feel better - and then you'll sit down and practice. If that is what you decide to do, it is fine. It is valid. Great. It is your choice but you are missing a golden opportunity to experience the incredible joy and peace that lies hidden in these restless bored states of mind. Again it boils down to our conditioning and what we explored in Module 5. We believe certain mind and feeling states are 'bad' - 'terrible' and must be avoided at all costs. So we put off The Bliss Technique until we are feeling different - until a more pleasing mind state is present. But ask yourself: ‘How free are you here? Aren’t you totally at the mercy of your every changing moods and feelings?” Also, when we are meditating, this conditioning can keep us in a constant state of fear and apprehension. We are always afraid of what we may feel. But not just in meditation, but when we are having sex or wanting to enjoy a full-body massage. We are afraid to really relax, to really let go and to simply open to WHATEVER is present with total acceptance in case an 'unacceptable' feeling or thought comes up. And then: We are terribly afraid we won't be able to deal with it. If you only practice when you feel like it i.e. only when certain mind states are present - then you will always be in the grip of judgement and selection. You’ll always be anxious and tense because you'll feel you always have to be on guard - to fight and resist those 'bad' feelings and thoughts. You'll always feel struck. Page 220 of 306

The Bliss Technique. You'll be a prisoner. Stephen Levine pinpoints the problem in his book 'A Gradual Awakening' when he says: "I know many people who sit only a few times each week- when they feel like it- which means they only practice when certain qualities of mind are present, when they're not distracted by worldly pulls. Thus they only see an easy mind, a mind that wants to sit. They don't see the mind that causes us the most suffering; the mind that's distracted, that wishes it was doing something else…. they don't see the mind that's depressed or lonely, or even the restless wanting mind that is peering into the icebox, or changing channels on the TV, looking fir something to watch. They don't see the mind that wants out. Therefore they seldom experience the great power of meditation to cut through negativity and discomfort and open a spacious perspective in which to let go of such bondage."

Total Awareness So what do you do when it's time to practice and you don't feel like it - when you feel totally bored and restless? Or if you’re feeling anxious and nervous as you are about to make love. First, accept how you are feeling. Who say there was anything inherently wrong with this feeling sensation? What’s wrong with feeling nervous? Who say we should dislike it and want it to go away? It is fine. It is valid. It is an energy frequency that is common to all of us. We simply accept this feeling and allow ourselves to open to it and feel it moment to moment.

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The Bliss Technique. We don't COMPARE it to any other feeling. We drop all distinctions and preferences and we just FEEL the energy as it presents itself moment by moment. We just stay with the feeling and let it become our meditation This feeling of boredom and restlessness becomes our object of the Bliss Technique. No wanting to escape from it. No wanting it to go away or change. No trying to improve it.

For, possibly the first time in our life, we face, and experience it as it really is. We notice when we are bored, restless or nervous how the mind tends to spin in circles or runs through the same routine over and over. We watch how the mind gets catch in reminiscences and regrets and we spin out hours and hours of stories and imaginary dialogue. We watch, as the mind tends to jump from object to object. A gentle watching Not wanting the mind to be any other way but the way it is this moment. We are totally impartial. No care. No interference. It is as if we stand back and let it play itself out. We know its conditioned nature. We know that when we stop resisting and simply allow it to move through us with mindful attention, it will reveal it's true transitory and insubstantial nature. As we maintain this soft, non-interfering awareness we release our, up till now, almost total identification with these temporary mind states and we begin to experience the space in which these things arise and into which they dissolve. We begin to experience the Space; the Pure state of Awareness boredom or restlessness is floating in. Then -- that moment is NOT a moment of boredom but a moment of clear awareness. We realise we are observing boredom, nervousness but not becoming lost in it.

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The Bliss Technique. We begin to get a glimpse and a taste of true freedom. In the beginning, you'll find it a challenge. You'll feel a great urge to do anything - anything but sit down and face these feelings - these restless energies that control our lives, if we remain unconscious of them But if we don't run away and can put aside, even for a few minutes all our preconceived judgements and just stay with these feelings, a whole new level of understanding and contentment can grow. So we let boredom, or anger, or frustration or if we prefer joy or peace become our object of the Bliss Technique. Whatever is there, we feel it fully, we feel it's texture, it's energy, the pains and notes in it. We feel our resistance, our dislike of it. We feel our non-acceptance of it and watch, as part of us wants it to go away, to change - and for another sensation to take it's place. We look directly at how this energy works in our body and mind. We remember it is not 'my' boredom or 'your' boredom. We depersonalise it. It is a state of mind that is common to all of us. From the king to the beggar. As we allow it, in this way and finally release our old conditioned response of running away or resisting, we will get the experiential realisation that ANY state of mind can be incredibly interesting and wondrous to experience.

Fear No matter what 'obstacle' we meet in The Bliss Techniques, we treat it the same. You may feel afraid….. anxious……..fearful. Again, remember it is not 'your' feeling. Everyone experiences such feelings.

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The Bliss Technique. Don't deny these feelings. Let's say you become fearful. Let yourself experience this feeling mindfully, noting 'fear', . How does it really feel? For the first time in your life, really experience it as it is. Where in the body do you feel it? How does your mind react? What bodily sensations do you experience? Of course there will be times, especially in the beginning when you'll find this difficult. These intense feelings will capture your attention and drag you into their world. You'll forget your spaciousness and start to identify with the fear and feel you must resist or get rid of it. Fine.

Be gentle and patience with yourself. We must soften our attention and add a little warmth and forgiveness to it. Let the sensation of fear be there. Accept our conditioned fear of fear. Accept our tendency to lose our centre now and then and be overcome by the emotion. With practise, we'll learn how to sit with it, how to be impersonally mindful of it moment-by-moment and after some point as Jack Kornfield says: "There will simply come the recognition, "Oh, fear there you are again- how interesting". We'll have made friends with our fear and we'll gradually realise as our capacity to be mindful grows more continuous that we are filled more and more with joy and rapture." What is this joy and rapture? It is the pure state of awareness - the space in which our fear and all the other states of mind arise and dissolve back into. This state of awareness exists right now.

We can never lose it. We can only temporarily forget it.

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When will you wake up?

7.7

Sleepiness

As we practice, we will sometimes have the experience of sleepiness. Be careful here. If we are not mindful, the body will try to persuade us we are too tired and sleepy to practice - that we should stop and do it another time. Be honest with yourself here. Your tiredness may indeed signal a genuine need for sleep. You may be working or pushing yourself too hard. However, if you are getting sufficient sleep and rest, you may still experience a sense of tiredness and sleepiness as you practice. However if you look carefully, you'll see this second kind of sleepiness comes not as a result of tiredness, but from a resistance to face some unpleasant or fearful body or mind state. We don't want to feel something and so we get sleepy and try to give ourselves an excuse not to have to face this mind state with open acceptance and awareness. If you feel tired and sleepy begin by noticing it. Again, no condemnation No comments. Just bring a soft merciful awareness to the sleepiness. Be aware of how the body feels, the heaviness in the eyes, the feeling of sluggishness spreading. Open and observe as much as you can. Watch the temptation to give in - to fall into the sleep - in truth the desire to escape from this mind state that you have already, out of simple blind, unconscious conditioning already condemned as 'bad' and as 'intolerable' and not to be faced.

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The Bliss Technique. Take the role of a disinterested spectator. Remember, you have absolutely no judgmental interest in how this feeling 'feels' or what it does. If it gets bigger or smaller, hot or cold, whether it disappears at once or hangs around for a while –you don’t care. No concern.

Your only interest is in your clarity of perception. How clearly you can see and note all it's movements all with equal acceptance and impartiality. As we open to this kind of tiredness that is caused by resistance, we'll notice the feel and sensation of tiredness gradually dissolve. We’ll also notice the underlying resistance and fear that caused it rising to the surface to be acknowledged and accepted with conscious awareness.

Doubt Another friend we’ll meet as we practice is ‘doubting mind’. It may be doubts over ourselves, or doubts over whether all of this is a waste of time. It may be a doubt (i.e. a thought) that says: “Am I doing this right? We may start to doubt the value of our practise – whether it is ‘right’ for me. ‘Maybe I should be doing something else? Maybe there is a quicker, better way – one more suited to me?’ All these observations may sound reasonable, but if you look carefully you’ll see what lies behind and gives rise to all of them: ‘The doubting, sceptical Mind’. It is this energy that we must open to and allow become the object of our practice. Look at it carefully and with detachment. Open to the doubt as it begins to rise. Notice how your mind reacts?

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The Bliss Technique. It will be maybe very subtle -- but if you are very quiet, you’ll notice the mind will register the ‘thought’ (the doubt) and then immediately put a label (a judgement) on it. When this happens watch how the mind automatically tightens and closes around the doubt as if it were poison in an attempt to prevent it from spreading and to help to push it away and repress it. Again, no judgement whether this reaction is right or wrong. Just a gentle, noninterfering awareness. We don’t make the doubt ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. We don’t get involved in it or try to reason or explain it away. We go beyond the specific doubt to the energy of the doubting mind behind it. It is these anxious, nervous sceptical forces that keep us in this ruffled, tense, restless state of mind. As we open to these energies – allowing them to be without judgement and without interference we see their essential nature – just pure energy rising and falling away. We see the impermanence of doubt –how it rises and falls in the limitless ocean of being if it is not judged or resisted.

When we allow the energy behind doubt to just be – STRIPPED of all judgement, resistance, hate, and fear we experience it, as it really is – pure ENERGY in constant motion – joy. We learn that doubts can only trouble us if we fear them – if we put up a mighty resistance to them – or if we stick by our old conditioning, which falsely tells us that doubts are automatically, by their very nature ‘bad’ and ‘unhelpful’ and must be done away with immediately. It is our unconscious acceptance of this conditioning that leads us to judge and resist, to attack and to be afraid. Doubt is not an uncontrollable monster that can devour you. If you’ll just learn to sit with doubt and let it become your friend, you’ll realise that, broken down to it’s bare bones……

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‘Doubt’ is just a string of thoughts in the mind knitted together by a subtle feeling of fear and resistance. Like every other mental phenomena if you don’t get personally involved in it, tamper or interfere with it in any way or try to push it away or make it wrong, it will simply rise, make itself known and then, devoid of any form of attachment, simply fall away. You’ll realise it, too, is no big deal.

An Exercise For one week in your daily sitting, it might be helpful to spend time in being particularly aware each time this mind state of doubt arises. Late, you can practice this when you are trying to enjoy a massage or when you are making love. Sex is another form of ecstatic meditation. And doubt can hinder your performance and enjoyment if you don’t know how to deal with doubt when it rises. When you are practicing the Bliss Technique….watch carefully for it. Notice how it begins and what precedes it. Notice if there is a particular thought or image that triggers this state. Notice how long it lasts, and when it ends. Notice what state usually follows it. Observe whether it ever arises very slightly or softly. Can you see it as just a whisper in the mind? Can you see how long and strong it gets? Notice what patterns of energy or tension reflect this energy in the body. Become aware of any mental or physical resistance to experiencing this state. Soften and receive even the resistance. Finally sit and be aware of yourself, watching and waiting for this state, allowing it to come, and observing it like an old friend. Now continue on with the Bliss Technique as we have previously described. From 'THE PATH OF INSIGHT ‘ J. GOLDSTEIN & J. KORNFOELD.

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Module 12 Your Body And The Bliss Technique

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Module 12:Your Body And The Bliss Technique

We are not just bones and blood and flesh, we are magnificent conduits of energy that make us laugh and dance and sing." Chris Griscom

One of the most common misconceptions about any form of insight meditation, such as the Bliss Technique is the idea that it has nothing to do with the body. At a subconscious level, most of us tend to believe that things like meditation should be a 'wholly spiritual activity' and that the presence of a physical body is nothing but an unavoidable hindrance to the attainment of that peaceful, blissfilled state.

But the body is absolutely vital in the process of the Bliss Technique. The body is an essential part of us - because it is IN the body that we will FEEL and EXPERIENCE all the higher frequencies of the meditative practice. In fact, the Bliss Technique means nothing if you do not see the effects on your body. You are one with your body. And as you begin to access and feel these higher ecstatic energies running through your body, your body which is made of the same ENERGY, but vibrating at a different speed – will begin to RESPOND to this ecstatic, HEALING lifegiving energy.

You’ll see the difference in YOUR eyes. In YOUR skin. In YOUR hair.

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In YOUR muscles. In YOUR bones. If you don’t - then the Bliss Technique is a fraud. As Ramakrishna once said: “When a person attains ecstatic love of God, all the pores of the skin, even the roots of the hair, become like so many sex organs, and in every pore the aspirant enjoys the incredible pleasure of communion with life itself.”

A Physical Transformation As you continue to practise the Bliss Technique, everyday subtle physiological changes will begin to take place in your body. Each time that you experience the deep relaxation of the Bliss Technique, you create certain conditions in your mind- body. 

Your respiration ALTERS, it becomes slower, deeper and more rhythmic.



Your pulse rate SLOWS down and muscular activity DECREASES.



Oxygen is used at a LOWER rate and carbon dioxide is also manufactured at a LOWER rate.

 

The lactate concentration of the blood, which is scientifically linked to the anxiety level DECREASES sharply during the process of the Bliss Technique.

This should bring home to us the realisation that there is an INTIMATE relationship between our different mental states and our physical bodies.

In fact, for every change in consciousness, there is an exact corresponding change in our physiological make-up. 'In the Power of the Mind to heal', Joan and Miroslav Borysenko, point out:

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The Bliss Technique. "The molecular mechanisms through which [changes of consciousness] can impact the immune system have to do both with the automatic nervous system and some tiny proteins called neuropeptides. Our brains are like pharmacies, compounding a wide range of drugs that affect both our moods and all of our biological systems. For example, when threatened with death -say if a tiger had you in it's jaws - you would experience extreme fear and your body would respond by producing neuropeptides called endorphins and encephalins that would make you feel sleepy, peaceful and numb as you took your place in the food chain" Other changes you will notice as you practice are alterations in hormone levels and an INCREASE in Alpha waves in the cerebral cortex region of the brain. Your brain waves will alter to this light, refreshing Alpha level. In fact, this is one of the most significant developments in our attempt to show that the Bliss Technique is intimately linked with our bodily processes.

We must never forget that the Bliss Technique is never an attempt to get away from our bodies or to forget or escape from them. But to help us recognise the body's true function as an incredible biological system that allows us to experience and FEEL every energy frequency from the very highest to the lowest right here and now in this life. We may discover as Chris Griscom points out in 'Ageless Body': "What a magnificent awakening to discover that this body you have been ignoring or trying to get out of, turns out to be the vehicle of cosmic energy to which you were unconsciously trying to return"

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A New Discovery The discovery that the practise of meditative practices like The Bliss Technique can alter brain waves was first made possible by the discovery in the early twenties by a man called Hans Berger. Berger discovered that the brain is in a constant state of electrical activity, which might be recorded through the strategic placing of electrodes on the scalp. Although, he was abused and ridiculed for his claims, his ideas soon became the foundation for a brand new form of medical research known to-day as electroencephalography.

The Aging Process Scientific researchers have also discovered that the daily practise of meditative practices like the Bliss Technique can also exert an incredible influence on the body's ageing process.

Again, this should bring home to us the realisation that our bodies are INTIMATLY AFFECTED BY and intimately RESPONSIVE to the ecstatic energies we access through the practice of the Bliss Technique. Beginning in 1978, a UCLA physiologist named R.Keith Wallace began to research the effects of meditation on human ageing. He decided to use three markers for biological aging: blood pressure, nearpoint vision and hearing threshold, all of which typically decline, as people grow older. Through his research, he was able to show that all these markers improved with long-term practise of meditation, clearly indicating that biological ageing was actually being reversed. He found that meditators who had been practising regularly for fewer then five years had an average biological age five years younger than their chronological age; those who had been meditating longer then five years had an average biological age twelve years younger than their chronological age.

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The Bliss Technique. Twelve years younger! Researchers are convinced the answer lies in the effect that practices like the Bliss Technique has on the body's ability to generate and secrete certain hormonal substances, namely an intriguing steroid called DHEA. DHEA is a plentiful substance that is secreted by the adrenal cortex.

It circulates in the bloodstream in quantities thousands of times greater than either the sex hormone, estrogen and testosterone, yet science has been unable to pin what it's exact role in the body is. All that is known is that it declines in a virtual straight line with age. Levels of DHEA peak at around age 25 but continue to reduce to about 5% of their maximum by the last year of life. However in 1989, in Temple University a biochemist called Arthur Schwartz made an extraordinary discovery when he injected DHEA to mice and observed a remarkable reversal in ageing. Scientists now had some key evidence that DHEA must have some key role to play in the body's ageing process but they also found an important link between DHEA and the body's exposure to stress. Research began to show that the body's DHEA reservoir was significantly depleted by marked levels of stress. Scientists began to draw the following conclusion that if someone can keep up his DHEA levels, his body must be resisting stress, and with fewer stress reactions, ageing should be retarded. In a related experiment, 328 experienced meditators were examined and their levels of DHEA were compared to those of 1,462 people who had never practised meditation. The results were highly significant - for example, men over 45 who practiced had 23% more DHEA, the women meditators 47% more DHEA. Overall it was estimated that the meditator's DHEA levels were equivalent to those of people five to ten years older

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‘Echo’s Of The Past’ ‘The fact is no one has ever become enlightened through denying or fighting the body or through an out-of-body experience. Although such an experience can be fascinating and good… ..in the end, you always have to return to the body, where the essential work of transformation takes place.

Transformation is through the body, not away from it. Eckhart Tolle, Power of the Now

Most of us can’t experience these natural, ecstatic energies because our bodies are blocked by the false beliefs and conditioning of the past. Most of us carry this ingrained conditioning about our bodies, most of which comes from our cultural past, especially the negative religious beliefs of aeons ago. As we have discussed, these beliefs are still with most of us, albeit at a deep unconscious level. Most of us still have this idea -- this feeling -- that the body is in someway, ‘bad’ or ‘useless’. That it is something over which we have no control. We believe that it is something that we just have to ‘put up’ with. We hope that it will continue to function well and not be attacked by any external diseases or illnesses. And most of it comes from our religious ancestors had an extraordinary negative, pessimistic view of the body. It was, essentially 'sinful'. A part of us that was wholly ‘inferior’ and detrimental to our 'higher self' - the soul. The body and its instincts were the enemy - out to destroy us! We were told to fight, hate, and resist its ‘sinful’ nature and to beat it into submission so that the ‘soul’ could triumph!

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The Bliss Technique. We were instructed to take no pride in this nasty body. To subdue all it’s natural desires with brute force. And to make matters worse, the body too was also the vehicle of sex - and so it was doubly bad! Sex was really ‘ bad’, the daddy of all badness! The insidious tool of the 'Devil'. And we were then told, if we were wise to annihilate this natural urge before it tempted and destroyed us. These ideas, which were held with such ferocious, frenzied energy by our ancestors, still linger on today in our collective unconscious and even today, without conscious awareness -- we are all still unconsciously susceptible to their influence. Ellen remembered that flesh was sin, flesh laid on flesh brought stirrings that meant hell. The old voices sounded always unrelentingly in her life. Do not indulge. Punish. Crucify self. And the new: from the pulpit, now, the priest frenzied out his loathing; vituperation of flesh convulsed him near seizure. from her book, ‘Flesh…..the Greatest Sin by Eithne Strong

It is interesting to listen to people who say: "I don't believe any of those ideasthey have no impact on my life" - who after a period of intense practice will realise that many of the beliefs they do have about their bodies, have their origin in these past pseudo-religious belief structures. We need to become aware of what we really believe about our bodies.

NOT what we think we believe, or would like to think we believe - but what we really believe at the CORE of our being. In the white of our bones.

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An Eye-Opening Experiment Bartholomew, in the book 'Journeys with a Brother' recommends a very simple, but very effective exercise for people to get in touch with their bodies. He says: "I would like to conduct a little experiment to-day that might bring up some resistance. I want you to pay close attention now to how you feel about your body. I want you to close your eyes now and follow this directive. When you are in touch with the feeling of how you actually feel about your body - I want you to say to yourself: "I totally love and accept my magnificent body". This statement may be the furthest from your own, but do it anyway. Then wait a minute and allow yourself to feel that acceptance. Don't make it a mental exercise. Try it and see what happens……… Now I want you to give yourself this message over and over again for the rest of the day. Say it with focused awareness, and then wait a few moments to have the body receive it. 'I love and accept my magnificent body'. It is a message your body may not have heard in its entire lifetime. If you had treated any friend of your with the same amount of judgmental scolding you have treated your body, they would have left long ago….. Your mind will say: "I don't think my body is magnificent'. Don't worry about what your mind thinks. I want you to let your cells hear the message. They are waiting like parched desert sands for the water of your approval, and gratitude…….. As you do this exercise, you do not need to run away from any feelings that come up. In fact, it would help to notice them as they come and go. You might experience boredom, discomfort, resistance, embarrassment, shame, whatever. Feel it, don't think it.

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The Bliss Technique. Don't run, don't change, don't avoid anything; just be present. All you ever have to do is to stay focused totally in the present, paying quiet attention, and the natural truth will make itself known." As you do this exercise, savour it. It will help you to realise how much all of us put down, dislike, and in a lot of cases, HATE our bodies. A lot of us believe it is horrible - a useless clump of flesh and bone that will soon rot and decay - so why bother with it?

Fear and Insecurity

‘Do not turn your attention elsewhere in your search for the truth, for it is nowhere else to be found but within your body’ Eckhart Tolle, Power of the Now

When we look even closer, we'll see that we all have a lot of sweaty, anxious fear about our bodies, a whole world of intense insecurity and anxiety. If we'll look even closer, we'll also see that most of us have a totally mixed-up attitude to it. At one level, we hate and fear it and wonder why we bother with it - yet, at any outer level we regard it, potentially as a great prize. We believe it's appearance MUST be a 'certain way' - nice-looking and attractive, and if we believe it isn't -- we judge ourselves harshly and conclude we are ‘not good enough’.

We tie so much of our self-esteem, our self-worth to the ever-changing scenery of our physical bodies. Is this true for you?

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The Bliss Technique. In your Bliss practise, open to what you really FEEL, not think, FEEL about your body. The important thing here is not to hold back, to repress, or to resist or censor even the slightest reaction. As we have discovered, this is the essence of the Bliss Technique so you are now prepared for this exercise. The Bliss Technique will now help us enormously to discover and release the unconscious beliefs that are now creating the experience of the body that we are all now familiar with. Just sit now and be present with your body. Open softly to it. Open to whatever feelings you have about it. Open to what thoughts, ideas and pictures of it appear. As you penetrate deeper, you will realise that you have a complete image of your body in your mind, an image that may bear no resemble at all to how your body actually is. We see this most clearly in cases of extreme anorexia. A person may be severely underweight - nothing but skin and bone, yet she may be totally convinced that she is overweight - that her body still has too much fat. Her body has changed but she still totally identifies with the image she has of her body in her mind. She believes this image truly portrays her as she really is and that it is how other people perceive her. The real problem is not her eating habits but her obsessive identification with this image as reality. The problem goes even further, and this problem is common to all of us, to a greater or lesser degree.

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A Limiting Belief We believe we are our bodies - and nothing else. We let our bodies define us. We are convinced other people relate to us and judge us purely on physical terms. Yet, the TRUTH IS even here the problem is not our body or it’s appearance. If we’ll go deeper, we’ll see IT IS our need to be wanted, liked, loved, desired – it is our NEED to impress. If we'll look very closely, we'll realise we don't actually want the body to be beautiful for it's own sake. We want it to be beautiful or to look ‘a certain way’ because we believe that this condition is vital if our deepest needs of love and acceptability are to be fulfilled.

That’s the real reason. This belief controls all our lives to a greater or lesser degree. The problem is that we have linked the satisfaction of these vital needs almost exclusively to the reaction of other people to our physical appearance. This is fine, if that is your conscious choice. It is not 'right' or 'wrong'. It is only painful in the sense that it leads to frustration and eventual loneliness. Deep down, a lot of us hold this belief and because of our unconscious acceptance of it, we are always concerned with other people's opinions of us. We're obsessed with losing weight or other forms of frantic self-improvement. We have a terrible anxiety to 'look just right'. In public, most of us will deny this. We'll say we're making all these changes just for ourselves - for our own benefit, but in the ‘quietness of our own solitude’ we know the true motivation.

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The Bliss Technique. We want to be liked. We want to be accepted and appreciated. We want to be wanted. This desire is fine and natural - but please realise this: Our problems only begin when we believe that the satisfaction of this desire depends solely on how we look.

It is our acceptance of this belief - our total conviction that this belief is true - and NOT what we really look like -- that causes our suffering. (More about this in the next Module) In the Bliss Technique, we will discover this simple truth for ourselves. It is not our bodies that we hate, but the idea or image we have that our body is not good enough as it IS to get us what we want. This idea is deeply ingrained in us, and our popular cultural constantly reenforces it. But freedom - and genuine peace of mind will only dawn when we realise and experience for ourselves that REAL joy, REAL happiness and REAL ecstasy does not depend on how we look but in WHAT WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO FEEL MOMENT-BY-MOMENT. At any moment, you have a choice; you can either feel or experience the pain and restriction of your judged and repressed feelings or you can experience your essential nature - the core energy that you are - your life force. The experience of our true nature - our life-force - which is available to ANYBODY at ANYTIME is the experience of TRUE PLEASURE.

In fact, you could say it is the OCEAN of pleasure, while the other pleasures, while good and fine in themselves, are merely the tiny streams that lead on to it. Listen again to Colin Sission:

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The Bliss Technique. "Bliss consciousness is the main essence behind self-observation. It is the essence behind all the great teachings, except it seems to have been lost somehow, or has been reduced to some superficial mythical concept...........

No amount of wealth, power, sex, drugs or fine food contain happiness in themselves but only serve to draw out a minute portion of that infinite bliss already latent within each of us......... Bliss is the underlying state constantly present .......... yet most of us don't experience it. Why not? It is because of the state of our mind. It is all clogged up with suppressions and tensions...........it is in a state of constant restless activity..........and until we have cleared the system our experience of joy will be limited to physical sensations or intellectual amusements.........'

Open yourself to this possibility: This joy, this bliss is yours to experience no matter HOW YOU LOOK or how old you are - or whether you are rich or poor; young or old, Catholic or Protestant. It is a joy that surrounds us all, waiting to be experienced. Recall how Bartholomew describes it: 'When you start to feel it moment after moment, coursing through your physical, mental, and emotional bodies, you will shed tears of gratitude. It is the most exquisite thing possible to feel in the body.

All other pleasures fade beside it. You will be filled with indescribable gratitude..........'

But most of us will never experience it simply because we have forgotten that such a state of being even exists as Deepak Chopra said earlier: "This state of pure awareness exists now but most of us have no idea that such a state even exists simply because our minds are continually preoccupied with the stream of thoughts, wishes, dreams, fantasies and sensations that fill and block our waking consciousness moment-tomoment.............." Are all these old quotes that you read earlier now making more sense to you?? Page 242 of 306

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To Wake Up All we have to do is wake up - to realise there is much more to us than meets the eye. We don't even have to believe such a state exists - all we have to do is just open our minds to the possibility and let the process of the Bliss Technique reveal our true nature. When we fully understand this, we will effortlessly lose our obsessive attachment to how we look. Of course, this does not mean that we will or should lose all interest or concern for our appearance. Of course not

We will simply lose that compulsive feeling of anxiety and worry over how we look. There is nothing wrong with looking the best you can, if that is your choice. The problem only begins when we become DEPENDENT on it to obtain other people's approval and acceptance. When we start to believe that 'how we look' will itself determine how much 'joy and pleasure' we can reasonably expect to receive in life. Yet, all this time when we are worrying and fretting over the ‘tiny streams’ that lead to the ocean we have totally forgotten all about the mighty limitless ‘OCEAN’ itself………. that lies just beyond the hill………….. However if everybody believes there is nothing beyond the hill, then we'll spend our whole lives missing out on it's incredible benefits…………

It's not the ocean's fault; it was there all the time …………

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A Proper Perspective “The body should be taken care of. One should not be against it, one should not condemn it. If you condemn it, you have already condemned God, because in the deepest recess of the body God resides. Osho, Body mind Balancing.

Truly look at your body. Go deep, deep into your body. Cell-by-cell. Deeper and deeper. At its essence, it is only energy. Energy in constant change. Your body is simply trillions and trillions of cells in constant motion. When you delve further into these atoms, you discover they are tiny whirls of energy. You are energy. I am energy. Everybody is energy. We are all composed of the same energy.

Stripped of all judgement, all comparison, and all labels your body right now is simply energy vibrating at a certain frequency. When you look at the people around you - really look at them and beyond the superficial judgements, comparisons and labels, which you usually allow to distort your perception. See what is really there.

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The Bliss Technique. We are all the ONE ENERGY NOW IN CONSTANT VIBRATION. We'll get an experiential glimpse of the very real underlying oneness that connects us all.

Sit With Your Body Most people just can't sit and be fully present in their body. Mentally, they want to push it way or run away from it. But to enjoy the true power and potential not only of the Bliss Technique, but of true sex, that ecstatic full body-mind union with another person, you must learn to be FULLY PRESENT in your body. It is absolutely essential. The Bliss Technique helps you do that. When you practice the Bliss Technique, remain fully present in your body- fully present in EVERY cell of your body. And ……allow yourself to gradually realise that because of your body’s extraordinary biological and neurological circuitry, you are capable of experiencing all of the most exquisite energy frequencies available to any person.

Your body is the vehicle that allows you to draw and 'digest' these frequencies so that you can experience them fully in this three-dimensional world. As you practice, especially in the beginning, this new understanding will be obscured by your old feelings of hate and resistance. However, as you get quieter and quieter, you'll realise that it's not your body per se you are hating or pushing away but your mind's old concepts, or images of your body and all the repressed energy behind these concepts. You'll realise that you don't really hate your body - it is only energy constantly changing. It is these images you have of your body that you WANT TO RESIST AND RUN AWAY FROM.

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The Mighty Ocean We all want to experience good feelings. That is good and fine, but I want to ask you to take it a step further. Open to this idea: All the joys and pleasures of this life are fine, excellent, magnificent things. Good food. Good wine. Great Sex. A great book A great party. All of these pleasures are here to be acknowledged and enjoyed but -- their true purpose is to give us a brief preview - a temporary ‘taste’ of the true source of joy. They are the good, great tiny streams. They are asking us not to get dependent and attached to them but to recognise and appreciate them and to follow them to their SOURCE.

To the OCEAN of JOY itself that is ever present at the centre of our being. When we allow ourselves to experience the Ocean, we realise that we can STILL enjoy the tiny streams, but we are now no longer……..

So fearfully and compulsively obsessed and dependent on them. We realise we have true freedom and choice. And we must not forget this joy, this incredible feeling of well being is not some imaginary feeling or the product of some poet's fantasy but a real, definite energy frequency that CAN be felt IN the body.

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The Bliss Technique. As Virgina Essence says in the 'Hathor Material' : "The feeling of joy, is felt through the heart center. The feeling of compassion is also felt through the heart center but the feeling of bliss is a cellular occurrence that permeates the entire body. What happens in ecstasy and bliss is that the Ka (the life-force) begins to vibrate at a very fast rate. The harmonics open in such a way as to stimulate the brain and the central nervous system, especially the neurotransmitters, which begin to stimulate the cells into a feeling of ecstasy and bliss. This then becomes a full-body sensation and emanates throughout the entire body in every cell."

When we practice, we are effortlessly accessing and drawing into our bodies this higher-frequency, life-enchancing ENERGY that affects the body's nervous, biochemical and brain systems in marvellous ways.

Improvement of body luster and general health-When your mind focuses on a particular part of the body, the blood flow to that part increases and cells receive more oxygen and other nutrients in abundance.

It lowers oxygen consumption. It decreases respiratory rate. It increases blood flow and slows the heart rate. Increases exercise tolerance in heart patients. Leads to a deeper level of relaxation. Good for people with high blood pressure as it brings the B.P. to normal. Reduces anxiety attacks by lowering the levels of blood lactate.

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Decreases muscle tension (any pain due to tension) and headaches. Builds self-confidence. It increases serotonin production which influences mood and behaviour. Low levels of serotonin are associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches. Helps in chronic diseases like allergies , arthritis etc. Reduces Pre- menstrual Syndrome. Helps in post-operative healing. Enhances the immune system. Research has revealed that meditation increases activity of 'natural-killer cells', which kill bacteria and cancer cells. Also reduces activity of viruses and emotional distress.

A New Perspective Enjoy your daily Bliss Technique practice.. Enjoy the peace and stillness you experience and realise that as you practise daily, life-enhancing changes are, effortlessly and naturally, taking place in your body. A whole new world will open to you – and a new relationship with your body.

You'll begin to realise how important the body is and how a strong, healthy body will, immeasurably enhance your practise. You'll also begin to marvel at what an incredible energetic system our body is and what it is truly capable of. You'll start to see the body in this true, wonderful true context. The past will be gone.

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Here’s the Science’s part……… Longevity & Beneficial Hormones Released During Meditation.

In certain brain wave frequencies, produced by deep states of meditation the brain releases numerous highly beneficial substances, including (HGH) human growth hormone. As we become older, the brain creates lesser quantities of these beneficial substances and we therefore develop various ageing symptoms and diseases. Recent research performed by Dr. Vincent Giampapa, M.D., a prominent anti-aging researcher and past-president of the American Board of AntiAging Medicine, revealed that regular deep meditation dramatically affects production of three important hormones related to increased longevity, stress, and enhanced well-being: cortisol, DHEA, and melatonin. At the slower Alpha and Theta brainwave patterns, production of DHEA and melatonin increases significantly. One study noted an increase in DHEA of as much as 44%. Some even had DHEA increases of up to 90%. Melatonin increases were even more astounding, with average increases of 98% recorded. Many participants even had increases of up to 300%. On the other hand, cortisol levels declined by an average of 47%. Of course, not all study participants showed the same results, but about 70% of the study participants recorded the above improvements. Cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone. Cortisol

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Cortisol is a hormone naturally produced by the adrenal glands. According to Dr. Giampapa, cortisol is the major age-accelerating hormone. It also interferes with learning and memory and is, in general, bad news for your health and your well-being. Cortisol is the "stress hormone," and the more of it you have, the more stressed you feel...the more vulnerable to disease you are and the faster you age! DHEA is extremely important. DHEA

Another hormone, DHEA, is also produced by your adrenal glands. DHEA is a precursor, or source ingredient, to virtually every hormone your body needs. DHEA level is a key determinant of physiological age and resistance to disease. When levels are low, you're more susceptible to aging and disease; when they're high, the body is at its peak—vibrant, healthy, and able to fight disease successfully. DHEA acts as a buffer against stress-related hormones (such as cortisol), which is why as you get older and make less DHEA you become more susceptible to stress and disease.

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A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (December 11, 1986) found that a 100 microgram per deciliter increase in DHEA blood levels corresponded with a 48% reduction in mortality due to cardiovascular disease—and a 36% reduction in mortality for any reason! The benefits of Melatonin Melatonin

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland and helps to create restful sleep. The inability to sleep soundly can dramatically decrease the quality of your life and greatly speed up the aging process. The production of this important hormone rapidly declines with age. New research also reveals that Melatonin is a powerful antioxidant. Biological implications of reduced melatonin: Melatonin is a ubiquitous neurohormone whose production is low during the day and high at night. It passes through cell membranes and acts as a highly potent antioxidant to scavenge free radicals that cause damage to DNA, Reiter (1995). Hence melatonin reduction is involved with diseases produced by free radicals, including cancer, aging, neurological diseases, acute heart disease and heart attack, Reiter and Robinson (1995). The circadian cycle involvement of melatonin shows that reduced melatonin will alter blood pressure and heart rate, neurological cardiopulmonary and reproductive functions. It suggests that reduced melatonin will also reduce immune system competence and enhances the risk of cardiac, neurological and carcinogenic disease and death through reducing its antioxidant activity. These predictions are checked against clinical studies. Melatonin reduction and health effects:

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Reiter and Robinson (1995) and Brzezinski (1997) reviewed the clinical studies involved with reduced melatonin. Dr Brzezinski identifies roles for melatonin in sleep and circadian rhythm, mood, sexual maturation, reproduction, cancer, immune system response and aging. Dr Russell Reiter, an eminent melatonin researcher, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Pineal Research. Reiter and Robinson confirm all of the effects identified by Brzezinski, and add arthritis, asthma, diabetes, hypertension, blood clotting and stroke, cardiac arrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, heart attack, epilepsy, manic depression, suicide, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases. Published papers are cited to justify each of these health effects. Most of the 21 associated conditions relate to the oxidative damage by free radicals and melatonin's multiple roles as a potent antioxidant, sleep enhancer and immune system booster. Serotonin Meditation also increases the production of serotonin within our body and brains. Serotonin is a main neurotransmitter and has profound influences over your mood and behavior. Depleted serotonin levels are directly linked to depression, obesity, insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, migraine headaches, premenstrual syndrome, and fibromyalgia. In treating anxiety and depression-related disorders, drugs such as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft help to restore healthy levels of serotonin. But why put yourself through the adverse side effects of these costly medications when you can achieve the same results by enjoying daily periods of meditation. Endorphins Endorphins are a category of neurotransmitters that the body uses as an internal pain killer. These compounds are also responsible for the allencompassing sense of happiness we sometimes feel. Endorphins are thought to reduce blood pressure and have been linked in the fight against cancer. People who exercise know endorphins well, as they produce what is known as 'runner's high'. These same pleasant feelings are also experienced by people who meditate, and studies show this is due to the higher levels endorphins that meditation elicits. Human Growth Hormone

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It is within delta that our brains are triggered to release great quantities of healing hormones, one of which is human growth hormone (HGH) which we make less of as we age, resulting in many symptoms and diseases associated with aging. Hollywood stars pay up to $20,000 a year for synthetic human growth hormone injections, because it brings back youthful energy, looks, and stamina. And I agree, the effects of HGH are dramatic:Greater Stronger Less Increased looking,

muscle brain

function tighter

tone, bones, fat, youngerskin!

and

HGH is one of the reasons kids have endless energy—their pituitary glands spew out heaps of the stuff! Unfortunately, your body produces less HGH as you get older—as much as 50% less by our late 50s.

And it shows! But HGH injections are frightening side effects!!

dangerous,

expensive

and

can

cause

Now you know you can produce HGH and many other healing hormones, naturally and safely with a little daily with deep states of meditation.

“By quieting the mind, which then quiets the body, and the less turbulent the body is, the more the self-repair healing mechanisms get amplified. In fact, scientists have shown that the better your DNA, your genetic machinery is at healing itself, the longer you live. That's how meditation lowers biological age.” Dr. Deepak Chopra

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The Bliss Technique. RECCOMMENDED READING. Ageless body, Timeless mind, by Deepak Chopra. Random Press. The Ageless Body, by Chris Griscom. Light Institute Press. See also chapter 4, 'Divine Self' by Joanna Cherry from the book 'New Cells, New Bodies'. S.E.E. Publishing Company, Santa Clara, California.

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Module 13 The Greatest Addiction Of All

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Module 13:The Greatest Addiction Of All

The most epidemic health problem we have is self-hatred. I understand this may sound outrageous, especially to someone who has not felt self-hatred or who is in denial. But whenever you get to know anyone more deeply, you’ll find a kernel of self-hatred inside them that runs very deep. Barbara Ann Brennan

All our problems with sex and life stem from our neurotic selfconcern. From our obsessive self-consciousness. Our ultra-sensitive concern with WHAT other people might think of us. What this man says now applies directly to you. Don’t shy away from it: “You fear what other people think of you because you secretly fear that you are less than you should be….. …..And that the real you – seen up close– is absolutely unlovable. How strange that all of the secret fears of humanity are exactly the same.” One of the world’s most gifted healers, Barbara Ann Brennan, after spending years treating literally thousands of patients, came to this conclusion: She wrote: “The most epidemic health problem we have is self-hatred. I understand this may sound outrageous, especially to someone who has not

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The Bliss Technique. felt self-hatred or who is in denial. But whenever you get to know anyone more deeply, you’ll find a kernel of self-hatred inside them that runs very deep. And Robert Hoffman, creator of the Hoffman Quadrinity Process and a pioneer in studying the origins of our negative behavior patterns, also came to the same conclusion when he states that the basic wound is the same in all of us:

“a deep, ingrained feeling of being unlovable”. Andrew Cohen says the SAME thing, over and over again in his book 'Enlightenment is a secret': "Most people are suffering from the same agony, tormented by ideas of who they are, who they want to be and who they don't want to be. It helps you when you realize that this predicament is the human condition. It helps you when you realize almost everyone is suffering in this same misery. Realizing this can help. It can help you see through the illusion that you are suffering in your misery alone and isolated……when you realize that it is the average condition of almost everybody." And In 'The P'taah Tapes', a book by Jani King this is made very clear: "You live in fear of discovery, of being 'found out'. Now why it is that you are afraid? It is because if anybody knows really who you are they will not love you. The basic fear is that you are not good enough, that you are not worthy of love and loving. It is very difficult for humanity to say "This is who I am", because all of you are terrified that if you show who you are, somebody will not love you and the pain will be so great you will die." What is THIS fear that won’t let us do when we want in life? On the surface, it’s obvious, we’re afraid that people might laugh at us, ridicule us or not like us in life.

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But if we go deeper, we’ll discover there is more: We all have this ABSOLUTE, iron-clad belief that OUR happiness, OUR survival, in fact OUR very existence is dependent on people……Liking us…… Approving of us Desiring us. Seeing us in a certain way. This unconscious belief is buried deep in our bones. In a series of instant, almost unconscious snap-shots, we’ll start to envision nightmares of lonliness, of cold, indifferent separation, of eternal isolation……… This is our core fear. And it is the energy and presence of this fear that paralyses us and stops us from participating in and enjoying all the joys and pleasures of life. To see this, let’s go back to the Dutch documentary we talked about on our web page? How none of the guys could even approach the beautiful woman. She was gorgeous. She was freely available. They were all normal, healthy blokes…….deep down, they all wanted her, and admitted so…..but none of them could do it. Could you? This moment, you are just a phone-call away from her. A phone-call from pure sexual ecstasy with her. Put on a clean shirt …..and off you go! Soon you’ll be there. But it’s not that simple, is it?

Because what is between you and her RIGHT NOW, is MORE than just a simple phone call. There is a huge OCEAN now between you and her now.

An ‘ocean’ of fear, and self-hate.

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The Bliss Technique. An ocean, full of a terrible terror of what will happen (in truth, what will the people involved think of me) if I make a show of myself and it all goes wrong. Let’s make it more real. Let’s say it is a Saturday night and you meet a woman and get on very well with her. After a few drinks, you take her home, and she likes you. Deep down, in fact she wants you. She wants to meld with you, to lose herself in your energy – to feel an orgasmic rush – to free herself from ‘herself’ even for these few minutes. She really wants you , but………. ‘Something’ won’t let her either. ‘Something’ stops her too. The subtle taste, twang of fear. The anxiety of acute self-consciousness. The fear that becomes: “ Thank you for a good night. I really enjoyed it, but I have to go now…..Up early tomorrow. Bye” Yet, behind this goodbye is really nothing, but a self-conscious fear. That same fear, terror that is whispering in her ears what it whispered in this writer’ ears:

“I couldn’t do it. My acute self-consciousness inhibited me from completely letting go......and giving myself over to the pleasure I know I could be feeling..... I was worried about how my breast and stomach would look .....and thus I was too distracted, numb to any of the delicious sensations I could be experiencing. I know…., I know we are more critical of their bodies than men are....Yet it's true: What turns men on is seeing us really excited and lost in pleasure. But I'm cut off from this kind of abandon because I'm just so absorbed with worrying about how I will look, how I will appear that I've lose the ability to know and concentrate on how I feel”.

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Whether a man or a woman, it is the same fear in you that stops you from performing – or even ringing up the girl or man you want.

The Fear of Fears But what is this FEAR that governs and strangles our lives? It’s actually quite simple. It is chronic fear of what other people think of you. And we are all addicted to it……..100%!

The ‘Drug’ Addiction We All Suffer from! Anthony deMello, in his book, ‘Awareness’ called it the biggest drug addiction of all. The truth is:

We are all addicted to the ‘drug’ of approval and acceptance given to us from other people. Don’t ship this. It is the key to everything we talk about in this course. The fact is it’s really is almost as if we were drugged from an early age. We were brought up to need people. And we all brought into the idea - that we need their acceptance, their approval, their recognition, their appreciation and their applause to BE HAPPY. To feel we are SOMEBODY. We feel we are not somebody or worthy if people don’t like us.

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The Bliss Technique. We feel we can’t be happy or experience the ecstasy of life if people don’t appreciate or desire us. We really, really BELIEVE it is impossible.

This false ASSUMPTION distorts our entire life and makes it literally impossible for us to relax sufficiently to experience life as it really is, this moment IN OUR BODIES. All our energies are going towards…….. thinking and worrying about what the person is front of you or the person behind you might be thinking of you, instead of being totally present in the moment. Listen carefully to Malcolm Godwin again. This IS where all our energies are going: ‘The worse hole in the energy fabric is the ego, that false sense of self which is the social mask of each individual entity. This illusory persona, which we are convinced is our real self, is the greatest energy drain, for it requires untiring attention for its selfcreated dramas and sense of self-importance. Most of the energy available is sucked down the ego tube to bolster its sense of worth, along with its endless thirst to be respected, loved and acknowledged”.

Isn’t this absolutely true? We can see this even clearer where sex is involved. Here we are even closer to people. More vulnerable. More exposed. More sensitive. It is this ‘ ego Structure’, worried about how the person you are with is perceiving you –that won’t let you really relax and go out and do what your heart desires. And what is causing this ‘Ego Structure’ of yours so much concern ……his terrible addiction and NEED for human approval and acceptance.

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The Bliss Technique. That part of us that desperately believes (and it’s only a belief that we have always blindly assumed was true) that it MUST be seen, approved, needed and desired.

And virtually every time we make love, this experience is dominated by the same addiction. The same belief that: ‘ I must perform here. I must be good here. Impressive here. I MUST be an outstanding lover in this moment of time. I MUST get an almighty erection and make her cum. MUST. MUST. MUST. And for the woman, it is exactly the same. The same fears and desires to measure up. And behind this is the same fear: “If I’m not good, if I don’t ‘perform’, what will he/she ‘think’ of ‘ME’? What will she say about ‘ME’? And what then will others think about ‘ME’? And….how will this ‘ME’ cope with the mortification, the horror of the low opinion these people will have of ‘ME’? Don’t you see all of this comes back to the very root of this ‘ego-self’ that you regard as you.

The BELIEF that your survival, your happiness, your joy depends on the approval of THIS person- or any person. The idea that you need THEIR approval.

When you realize you don’t – it is the most liberating idea of all. The birth of true personal freedom. But we must first Wake Up to our addiction. As Anthony deMello notes the addiction to this ‘drug’ – the need for approval – is the most powerful addiction of all. And we are all addicts. But most of us are not aware of this, because virtually every other person is also an addict, and so we believe it is a normal and natural way to be.

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Our Self-image Everything we do, is to promote, protect or maintain this 'self-image' that we believe we are so that we will be liked and accepted. As we have mentioned before, how many of us can look - really look another person in the eye, without any trace of self-consciousness? Or stand naked before another person? We find it uncomfortable, because we are afraid of what they may be thinking. What if she thinks I' m too fat/stupid/old/ugly? How then will she/he perceive me? What if they don't like or want to be with me? What if they think I'm not good enough and then ignore me? So this part of us is terrified and looks away and tries to keep it's distance so that it's image of itself will remain in tact - undisturbed. You can see this for yourself – right now. Today, sit down with somebody and just be present with them. Fully present. Just you and that person. With every little or no conversation. After a while, you’ll start to notice things: You’re moving around; you’re talking; you’re fidgeting; laughing, smiling, agreeing, nodding, shifting, your eyes moving from point to point……..in fact, a whole load of very specific ‘body movements’ to create a whole load of very subtle, but real distractions and diversions. We think all this ‘body movement’ and ‘activity’ is normal , and it is ….but the real motive behind it all is actually the fear and desire to hide ourselves – to stop people from seeing us too closely, too clearly. So we distract their too-close attention upon ourselves by trying to focus their attention elsewhere, with our ‘stories’ and ‘hand and eye movements’. We do this so that they can’t really see….. can’t really discover, up close, what we believe is the real truth of us. So even in a normal conversation like this, there is actually a deep sense of separation, of lonliness, of unease.

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We feel no real connection, no unity consciousness, as we’re too focussed on ‘keeping them away from us’. We feel lonely. And of course, in a sexual situation, this fear and anxiety is magnified a hundredfold.

What’s Really Behind This Fear? Again, the problem lies in our total addiction to, and our terrible need for approval and acceptance. Our belief that we HAVE to be liked. Needed. And Desired. The idea that our entire existence, our happiness, our very survival is dependent on other people liking and approving of us. Deep down, we are all utterly convinced of this, even if we are not consciously aware of it. We cannot conceive of ourselves being possibly happy if people don’t genuinely approve or like us.

And because we all believe this, we CAN NEVER TRULY relax and let go. We FREEZE. And this applies to you. Otherwise, you would be experiencing ecstatic sex all the time Let’s go back to the Dutch documentary we talked about on our web page? How none of the guys could even approach the beautiful woman. Well, that’s not true. At the end, one bloke did go into the room with her and we had success at last! Or so we thought.

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Later on, however, the woman admitted nothing happened……the man couldn’t ‘perform’ ……but he had begged the woman, literally begged her not to reveal THAT fact. This compulsive concern we have with what other people think of us seems to be almost hard-wired into us. It subconsciously colours everything we do. It is like a psychic parasite that lives in us, sucking away all the pleasures in life we could enjoy, leaving us with only a tiny trickle. This parasite is our neurotic self-concern. Our obsessive self-consciousness that stops us from relaxing, letting go, and surrendering to the moment and enjoying the infinite pleasure and natural intelligence of our body. But to experience any of this, we need to be open, relaxed, free, and unconcerned. We need to be able to relax the grip our ego-self has over us. That part of us that is totally concerned with what others think of us. Only then will our body respond by being able to really relax. It’s vital we overcome our fatal addiction to the drug of approval. Like any drug, it is stealing away our life. Our life then is always about waiting, about tomorrow …..about postponement.

The Ecstasy of Being A Nobody! Can I ask you to consider this dangerous statement:

“ You fear nobody because you are perfectly content to be a nobody.” I bet you that idea frightens the life out of you.

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The Bliss Technique. I bet, right now you feel a tremendous resistance to it. Now……., don’t run away from this idea, for the moment. It is not the negative, defeatist, ‘lonely’ statement it seems.

In fact, it is one of the most life-liberating and life-affirming ideas you will ever hear. Yes, I agree on the surface, it sounds like our worst nightmare: To be a ‘nobody’. Yet, what would it mean in practice. It would mean to stop being obsessed by what others think of you. You would no longer need to waste most of your life’s energy trying to impress others. You would no longer need to care if you are right or wrong. If people think you are stupid or ugly. Intelligent or plain dull. No longer need to control, manipulate or worry about their impression or opinion of you. In fact, an incredible, intoxicating freedom and pleasure would start to grow in you: No longer will you be even slightly concerned about what the person over there thinks of you. In fact, as we go and fully examine this idea you’ll discover the greatest paradox of all: the less you need people’s approval, the more you’ll be able to FULLY enjoy their presence Jean-Paul Sartre was wrong: ‘Hell is not other people’. Hell is our obsessive self-consciousness when we are around people. Take that away and all human interaction is inherently unifying and sheer heaven!

Resistance I accept, that in the beginning every cell of your body will resist this idea. The idea of being a ‘nobody’ will stir a deep fear in you. One of the ungrounded fears you’ll have is that you might grow callous or indifferent to yourself and others.

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The Bliss Technique. The negative part of you will think….” If I start not to care like this……surely I’ll lose all discipline, all focus, all concern about myself and others……I’ll end up a dirty, smelly beggar who has no standards or values at all. No, this is just your ego, your fear-self speaking. You will never lose your core self-consciousness, which is a good and essential part of you. Without it, you could not function in this world.

All it means is that you’ll get your life in proper context…..and you’ll lose your obsessive self-consciousness, and obsessive concern with what other’s people think of you. You’ll literally feel a huge weight or pressure lift off your shoulders. Your body will start to fully relax again. Maybe for the first time in your life. Every cell and organ will begin to let go, open-up like a flower petal and …………‘breath’ deeply again.

You’ll start to feel streams of energy move again in your body as this terrible tension that kept your body locked, blocked and frozen begins to dissolve and melt away. And as these ingrained, locked-in fears and tensions begin to drain away, you’ll even feel your body begin to pulsate again. As Alexander Lowen points out in ‘Joy’……” Although we are familiar with the pulsations of the heart, the fact is every cell, every tissue and the whole body pulsates, which means that it expands and contracts rhythmically. The heart expands and contracts as it beats, the lungs expand and contract as they breath. When that rhythmic pulsation is free and full, we feel pleasure. We are pleasurably excited. When the excitement mounts so that the pulsation is more intense, we feel joy. If the intensity of the excitement reaches its maximum or acme, we experience ecstasy. In the absence of ANY excitement or pulsation, the organism is dead, we feel nothing”.

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If we want to allow ourselves to experience all the pleasures and mysteries of life we must adopt this new mindset. We must overcome our addiction to this drug of human approval. But don’t take this idea on trust. Play around with it. Experiment with it. Open to it’s possibilities and allow yourself to feel the difference in your body when you approach life without this addiction or need.

“Me, Me, Me, Me.” Have you ever looked into this ‘me’ that is so concerned with what others think? In fact, in common with most of us, your whole life is probably consumed by this “Me, Me, Me, Me.”-this ‘self’ that you regard as ourselves. Yet if we look closely, it’s hard to find this ‘self’. It is essentially just a series of thought pictures, images and conclusions that you have reached about yourself and yet, you spend most of your life and, most of your ENERGY defending and protecting this self-image, this ego-self. Most of it will deny this, but it is true. Malcolm Godwins hits the point on the head when he writes in ‘The Lucid Dreamer’ ‘The worse hole in the energy fabric is the ego, that false sense of self which is the social mask of each individual entity. This illusory persona, which we are convinced is our real self, is the greatest energy drain, for it requires untiring attention for its self-created dramas and sense of self-importance.

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The Bliss Technique. Most of the energy available is sucked down the ego tube to bolster its sense of worth, along with its endless thirst to be respected, loved and acknowledged. Why is this so important? Because when you are hurt, or self-conscious when you are about to make love, it’s not you that is hurt, embarrassed or tense, but this ‘ego structure’. It is this ‘‘fake Ego Structure’ that squirms and shudders in embarrassment when you want to relax and surrender in the intimacy of sexual union.

It is the Greatest Lie of All. Anthony deMello sums it well when he says in his ground-breaking book, Awareness: He writes: “There is yet another illusion, that it is important to be respectable, to be loved and appreciated, to be important. Many say that we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That’s false. Drop this illusion and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, a natural urge to love, but not to be loved. “ And yet we all believe, WITHOUT QUESTION that it is important for us to be liked, loved, desired and appreciated. To be important. Yet it is an illusion. Let this idea SINK in. Free yourself from this illusion. From this addiction. As this realization slowly starts to sink in, repeat the eye exercise we mentioned earlier. Notice now how much easier it is; how much more open and relaxed you are, and how deeper is the connection you can now start to feel.

But, most important of all, notice the difference in the person’s response to you.

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Notice how their energy field, even their breathing changes to match yours. As your relaxation deepens, you’ll begin to experience true rapport with people. And the key to this sense of real unity consciousness is when we lose our chronic addiction to be liked, admired and to be important.

Summary 101 We accept, without question the belief that to be happy, we MUST have the acceptance, the approval, the appreciation and the applause of other people. It is so ingrained in us, so accepted as a natural fact, that most of us will go through our entire lives without once questioning it. And because we believe it- it makes us ultra-concerned, ultra-sensitive to what people think of us, so we can never totally relax, totally let go and enjoy ourselves. Don’t dismiss this idea. At a deep conscious and unconscious level, it influences virtually all of your interactions with people. This false conclusion has been accepted by generations before you as a natural fact of life and it literally embedded in the memory of each of your cells. Your great, great, great grandparents were just as nervous and as anxious as to what their friends and their neighbours thought of them as you are of your friends. When you look at it from this long-term perspective, we can all realize how pointless and meaningless this concern and worry is. Arthur Balfour, a former British Prime Minister was probably right when he said: “Nothing matters very much and most things don’t matter at all”. But because we are attached to this belief, we do suffer now. And it does steal away all our pleasures.

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And attachment is the key word here. An attachment is simply a belief that without something, you CANNOT be happy. And most of us are totally attached to this belief And we have never, ever considered the fact that this is ONLY a belief we have blindly accepted – and not a fact. Not a truth.

Still Not Convinced? Are you still not convinced this belief has any power over you? Then, for one day only,try doing what Michael A. Singer suggests in ‘The Utethered Soul’: “There’s a reason why you dress the way you do. There’s a reason for everything you do. If you want to see why you care so much about what you wear and what your hair is like, then just don’t do it for one day. Wake up in the morning and go somewhere dishevelled with your hair a mess, and see what happens to the energies inside of you. See what happens to you when you don’t do the things that make you comfortable.” Most people will find even this very difficult to do. ‘Something’ inside us will resists, rebels, not let us. Even to go around with our hair in a total mess! This is our past self, our ego-self, the ‘Structure’ we talked about earlier, worried, terrified about the effect this ‘mess’ will have the people who see us. We’ll start to get nervous, anxious, tense and blocked …and then we’ll start to make up excuses why we can’t do it at this moment in time. “I’ll do this simple experiment, some other time.”. And of course, we decide not do it, and for a moment we feel ‘comfortable’ again. (Because we’re back in our comfort zone)

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The Bliss Technique. But, then, after a little while….. something else will happen: We start to feel uneasy, uncomfortable, empty, lacking in something…..a feeling we’ve let ourselves down…..missed out on something. What has happened is that once again this belief and fear of what others will think has robbed us of an opportunity to experience another aspect of life. In this case, something small……but it applies to everything in life.

We opted to stay in the ‘comfort zone’ - safe and secure. But numb and dead. And after a number of these missed opportunities…….,, we start to feel that life is passing us by….. We are letting it…because we can’t get out of this straightjacket of this fear. This belief program that we have been brainwashed into since birth that we need other people’s acceptance. Listen to Anthony de Mello, this time from his book, ‘Walking On Water’ He writes: “Think about a little child on whom a drug has been tested. When it grows up it’s whole being cries out for the drug. Living without it is a pain so great that it is better to die….. You and I like that little child have taken this drug that is called ‘approval’, ‘appreciation’, ‘success’ and ‘acceptance’. Once we have taken the drug we become like robots.” But not only that: “Because you have taken this drug, you’ve also lost your ability to love. You can no longer see any human being. You are ONLY aware of whether people accept you or don’t, approve of you or don’t. You see them as threatening your drug or helping you get it.” And the way out: “ How do we get out of this? The fear has to be faced. We have to understand why we can’t live without people’s approval. How do we really love people. Die to them. Die to the need for people. Die to the need for their approval, acceptance and acknowledgment. Understand what the drug is going to you.”

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Still Not Convinced - Do these exercises! To start to break the iron-hold this ‘addiction’ has on you, play around with the following idea exercises. Don’t force yourself into accepting them. Just notice how you feel when you drop the need for approval from all the people around you. Notice how strong this need has a hold over you. Notice how, even in the little things (Will I wear this hat going to the shops now?) – it influences our behaviour

1. Imagine now you have come to a stage where you do not feel the need to

offer anyone explanations about yourself. What does it feel like not to have to justify your actions, ask permission, or offer excuses? When you’re with people now, adopt the motto: ‘Don’t complain, Don’t explain’. Notice how strong the urge is to explain to people if you can’t do something for them do you behave?

2. Imagine now that you have no need to impress anybody. How do you feel? How do you act when you are not trying to impress?

3. The most wearisome slavery in the world is worrying: “What sort of impression am I having on others?”

It pushes people to try to look intelligent, charming, generous, etc. Imagine that you have died to this need. That it no longer bothers you. How do you feel? How do you behave? How free and liberated do you feel?

4. Read this statement below. It is the true secret of absolute freedom. How

does it make you feel? Notice, in the beginning your almost total ‘conditioned’ resistance to it. As you read, remember this is not a negative statement. “There is no need to be popular. No need to be loved or accepted. No need to stand out or be important. These are not basic human needs. They are desires that arise from the ‘ego’ – the conditioned self- from the ‘me’. Something deep down inside you, your Self has no interest in such things. It already has all it needs to be happy. All that you need is to be aware of your attachments, of the illusions that these things are, and you will be on the way to real freedom.”

* Adopted from Walking on Water by Anthony de Mellor

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Pleasure beyond Imagination? Remember, you can’t make yourself believe these ideas. Only as you play around with them and start to apply them to your life – to the little things at first!- will they begin to evolve in you and you’ll suddenly ‘see’ or ‘grasp’ the real truth of them. They will then become part of you.

And as you do, you’ll experience the most extraordinary irony of all: It is when you don’t need people’s approval or acceptance to be happy, that you’ll enjoy the most ecstatic pleasure possible. Why? Because when you have absolutely no need to impress, or don’t care how people respond to you, your body will remain totally open, relaxed and free with them. Especially when you are making love. There won’t be a single block or lock in your body. Because now that you are now no longer so chronically tense, or terribly anxious about others, you’ll stop silently contracting all your muscles and cells, and you’ll start to get some vibrations – and some real feeling back in to your body. The web of tension that used to keep your body frozen will start to dissolve. And soon….. you’ll being to be able to experience every single nuance and taste of the newly freed ecstatic energy streaming through your body. The lesson: We need to dramatically stop linking our self-esteem, our essential self-worth with people’s view of us, of our performance. The problem is our attitude; we are putting too much importance on other’s people’s opinions. Too much of our self-confidence is tied up with this false belief that our happiness is tied with other people’s approval of us. Drop this idea. Relax. Let it go. Assign it to the dustbin of history.

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Drop it. Drop it …… Let it go. And you’ll prosper!! And the key to that ….is to simply drop your self-image.

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Module 14 Drop Your Self-Image and FEEL!

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Module 14:Drop Your Self-Image and FEEL!

"The desire to be great is what keeps you in fear." Bartholomew

As we have seen, most of us are in a constant state of fear and tension. We are addicted to the drug of human approval, of human acceptance. Unconsciously, this subtle fear is eating us up. This underlying anxiety is our constant companion, especially during lovemaking and because we have had it for so long, we think it is normal and natural. We believe it's just the way life is…... This fear is the person we believe we are. It is the image of ourselves that we carry around. It is our self-importance. It is that part of us that is always, frantically looking for security, to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted, to be the best. The writer Barry Long describes it as an "anxious, frightened awareness of the world, a negativity of perception, the terror of being ignored, not wanted - of being hurt."

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Ego-self As you practise the Bliss Technique, you'll become more and more aware of this part of yourself. Now, please don't get the idea that this part of yourself is inherently wrong or bad. In it's proper context the ego - or the image you have of yourself is needed - it helps you to experience yourself as a separate individual and allows you to relate to other people. It is only when the ego takes control and we assume that it is all that we are that our over-identification with it becomes painful. Obsessive. We believe that if this 'person' or 'personality' that we assume we are, is attacked or not acceptable to other people or worse still, ignored or discarded - then there will be nothing else - we will cease to exist in any meaningful way - there would be ‘nothingness’. This is why we protect our 'self-image' so fearfully and are always so sensitive to other people's thoughts and reactions.

A Million-Dollar Question? What would happen if you were to drop all the 'ideas', 'thoughts' and 'images' you have of yourself? As we practice, we will become more and more aware of how we ‘see’ ourselves. We'll see how the belief that we must desperately change parts of ourselves so that we can be 'better', more 'acceptable', more 'desirable', controls our consciousness. We'll experience our terrible fear that, as we are now, we may not be good enough - that there is something missing. We'll experience the incessant craving or belief that we all have, that we must be liked, respected, wanted, and appreciated by everybody and hiding beneath that craving the terrible fear, that as we are now, we might not be.

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The Bliss Technique. In 'Manifest Your Destiny', Dr. Wayne W. Dyer captures this fear perfectly when he says: "The ego is where fears originate, with constant messages that you are incomplete and need more, that you need to win to be better in comparison to others. With its unceasing pressure, the ego (the beliefs you have about yourself) keeps you in a constant state of turmoil and anxiety. Here is where all fears are birthed and nurtured within you". Now what would happen if we dropped the idea that we MUST be liked and loved by everybody? That we MUST perform great in bed all the time? What would happen if we dropped the desire - the thought that we must always stand out - always be impressive and better than anybody else? What would happen if we stopped identifying with all the old pictures and beliefs of ourselves that pass through our mind everyday?

An Incredible Discovery We would begin to experience the incredible joy of being free. Really free. It would be as if a ton of heavy metal that we had been, unknowingly carrying around with us, suddenly fell from our shoulders. Most of us have NO IDEA of all the energy we HAVE to spend every moment of the day, consciously and unconsciously - just to maintain this false ego-self. Try to experience how much this desire to be a certain 'person' has kept you locked up in a self-made prison of fear and terrible anxiety all your lives. Once again, we would discover, as Stephen Levine points out in 'Who Dies': "We think we are out thoughts [our images]. We call our thoughts 'I'. In letting go of thought, we go beyond ourselves, beyond who we imagine we are. Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind."

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The Bliss Technique. This is the same freedom Dr. Wayne W. Dyer wants to emphasise when he says: "You are absolutely free when you are not consumed with your selfimportance. You are free when you no longer need to be stroked, coddled and approved of by everybody you meet. You are free when you are no longer offended by the actions or opinions of others".

A Gradual Awakening This inner freedom will not happen at once, but as you deepen your meditative practise, watch how often the desire to be a certain person and the unconscious need to be approved of by everybody arises in your consciousness.

Watch how often the incredible desire to be right, to be one up, to be admired and looked up to by everybody tries to persuade you that the fulfillment of those desires is the key to your happiness. You will be amazed. As you practise, we must not resist these desires or make them wrong We must not forget the basic principles of the Bliss Technique that we have been practising. These desires are simply our old conditioning - our old way of looking at the world. We should acknowledge them fully, mentally stand back from them and without condemning or interfering them, gently observe them and the emotional energy behind them. We let the Law takes its course:

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As you allow them to be, without judgment, resistance or the slightest desire to change or make them wrong, they will simply fall away. This is the golden paradox of meditative practise: As you embrace them with a soft, gentle acceptance, they will fade away. If we fight and resist them they will simply PERSIST. One of the most influential teachers of insight meditation in the world to-day, Stephen Levine never tries advising us: "When the desire or craving becomes the object of observation, we observe with a clear attention that isn't colored by judgment or choice; it is simply bare attention with nothing added: an openness to receive things as they are. We see that wanting is an automatic, conditioned urge in the mind. And we watch without judging ourselves for desiring. We don't impatiently want to be rid of wanting. We simply observe it." And he continues: "Only that bare attention, that non-wantingness that can just be in the moment, has the power to decondition our compulsive reaction to wanting…….Each moment of non-wanting is a moment of freedom. Mindfulness allows that non-wanting. When there is just clear attention, when there is just watching, there's not wanting. If you are watching desire, wanting doesn't continue to seek the object of satisfaction, wanting itself becomes the object of attention and the momentum that leads to action is absorbed."

Daily Practice As we continue to practise daily, we will gradually cease to identify so compulsively with these images and desires of our self -image. Our obsessive, frantic concern with ourselves, and how the world sees us will dissolve. That terrible 'aura' or smell of inner anxiety and nervousness that used to envelop will disappear. So will that look of fear and apprehension that used to hid in our eyes ………...

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The Bliss Technique. We will experience that other great paradox of life. When we don't NEED anything or try to manipulate or control people to get it -- we will experience an abundance of it. Of course, we will continue to experience these desires to be liked and to be the best; and for people to approve of us, but now these desires will no longer control us. No longer dominate us We won't feel the compulsive need to be pulled along by them - to have to satisfy them. Our conscious awareness of them will FREE us from their past compulsive nature. We will realize that we have freedom of choice. And gradually the intensity of these desires will fade away……………and more and more we will experience the nature of that liberating freedom.

We will be able to just BE.

You are the central sun of your universe. P'taah

To night, I want you to spend one hour in the Bliss Technique. Go to a quiet room and just sit with yourself in silence. Just you. Just be….totally in the present. Aware of all of yourself as you are, right now. Aware of your body, just sitting there, ……aware of whatever thoughts or deep feelings arise within you.

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Remember….. Now, before you do this exercise, remember why it is so important. You can never escape you. Emerson, in his essay 'Self-Reliance' was referring to this fact when he wrote: "At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from." So even when you are with other person, you can’t escape yourself. You are still there. There is still just you and her. This especially true when you are about to be sexually intimate with another person. Nothing will happen. You won’t feel anything if first you can’t feel it in yourself.

If you can’t ‘get it on with yourself’ – if you can’t totally relax and feel the incredible pleasure of the sexual energy streaming through your body when you are relaxed and on your own, what chance is there you will feel it when you are tense and self-conscious with others?

Look Within! All the time the problem was within us. All our lives, we have been…. 

Blocking



Freezing,



And restricting ourselves so TIGHTLY….. that, we never felt anything.

Now is the time……by relaxing into our own being …..to start to let go.

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The Bliss Technique. To unblock ourselves. To unfreeze ourselves. First when are on our own. And then, when we are relaxed and intimate with a person we like. To do this, we must never forget the energy, the pleasure is within us. We are responsible for how much of this energy we will let ourselves experience. The other person can help us to access this energy in ourselves, but if we can’t relax and let go enough, we will still feel nothing, no matter how beautiful or alluring the other person is. Chris Griscom emphasizes this point again and again in her extraordinary book, 'Ecstasy is a new frequency': She writes: "There is nobody out there influencing the body but you. Until you can own your body, forget what anybody else is going to do for you....." "In the past, we thought, "Well, my problem is this wife that I have been with for 20 years. I'm bored." We thought we could find the stimulus in a new being. It's not there. We found that out......." "You can make love to a different person every day, and you will still feel unfulfilled, and you will not be orgasmic......." "The stimulus is not out there in the other person, and it doesn't matter how beautiful the body, or how well you do the technique. That's irrelevant. The energy, as it moves is moving in you......"

This is the key.

We have to learn how to feel this extraordinary, exquisite ENERGY in our OWN bodies first when we are on our own..... without the pressure, tension, and selfconsciousness of others present. And when you do, soon your whole relationship with yourself will change.

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You will become more and more intimate with yourself. You'll enjoy being present - really present with yourself. You’ll begin to experience a real love and acceptance of yourself and you will discover as Deepak Chopra points out in 'The Path to Love':

"That the experience of ecstasy is simply the final stage of intimacy with yourself". And then later………, when we are with another person, it will be so much easier and even more pleasurable, especially when both of our energies arise and explode together.

You Back to our quiet room and just sit with yourself now in silence. Aware of whatever noises, sounds or sensations that may be present……. Just be present now moment-by moment. Just you here…….being present. Watch gently how you react to just sitting with yourself in silence. Watch how you respond to all the thoughts and deep feelings that may arise, change and re-arise again moment-by-moment. Watch your resistance………your subtle judgements……..watch your mind tightening up - trying to get rid of certain thoughts and feelings. If you find yourself doing this - acknowledge it - accept that you are doing it and let that part of you that is resisting or judging become your object of observation. Softly and gently, watch ……how you are always judging and resisting CERTAIN thoughts, CERTAIN feelings that you believe are ‘bad’ or ‘painful’. Just watch and observe it all without censorship, without preference - without wanting to change anything.

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The key is to stay wholly in the present moment - just you in this empty room -to allow yourself to open to and observe WHATEVER arises in your field of attention moment-bymoment. As you sit there, you have no preference.

Your only objective for this period of time is to watch, observe and note whatever is present with a simple choiceless awareness. You just do not care whether the thoughts and feelings are good or bad, enjoyable or unpleasant. Not the slightest preference…… A deep desire to stop…… A heavy energy that translates itself as "I don't want to do this - It's pointless. I might do it later. A feeling of heaviness…..Of boredom……of futility’. Again open to them all. Accept these feelings. Don't make them wrong. Watch how they change - how they will arise and just fall away if you don't try to change them - if you can release your conditioned judgement of them and simply regard them as different intensities of the same energy. Just be present now…...with yourself …open to everything moment-by-moment. Moment-by-moment. Moment-by-moment. Moment-by-moment. As you stay present, gradually a feeling of warmth will arise. A silence. A Stillness will emerge. As you open to these new energies, TREAT THEM AS YOU WOULD TREAT ANY FEELING OR SENSATION. Watch any thoughts that may arise in response to this new energy.

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The Bliss Technique. "I hope this nice feeling develops? But, what if it goes away? What if it's not real? How can I keep feeling it? Don't make a big deal out of these thoughts. Let them come and go as they please. They are no different from our earlier thoughts. They are merely impermanent mental formations that arise and fall…… Allow yourself to open to this feeling of warmth, to the strange calmness and stillness that is beginning to envelop you. Watch as your mind and its feverish mental activity gradually slows down - note as the previous heavy feelings of impatience and discomfort begin to thin out and dissipate.

A New Energy Frequency – Pleasure of Love? Now watch as you begin to experience a feeling of wholeness, of completeness, a feeling of lightness and joy. You'll begin to actually experience the silent energy of love. As you open to this energy, let it grow and grow. Let it radiate from you in all directions. Now, from this new feeling perspective, begin to acknowledge and appreciate all of yourself. Acknowledge all your feelings and let them bathe in this loving energy. Open to all your thoughts and let them arise and fall, without comment in this ocean of gentle, loving light. Just let your body be present in the stillness of this impersonal, loving, pleasant energy. Open yourself more and more to this gentle still pleasure. Let it grow and expand as it wishes. Allow yourself to really feel this energy - this specific, pleasurable frequency of energy we have termed love. As you stay present in this expansive silence, allow your heart and every cell of your body to literally break open.

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The Bliss Technique. Allow ALL, ALL the negative pictures, thoughts, and beliefs you may have of yourself to come out into the sunlight of this WARM energy to be dissolved. Imagine all of the negative beliefs you have of yourself as being made of hard, solid blocks of ICE and as you bring these beliefs into the light of this gentle, WARM energy, they will simply start to dissolve and melt.

DON'T HOLD BACK. Let all the pictures and images you have of yourself come forward. Don't judge them or make comments on them ….just let ALL the images and views you have of yourself come out into the light of this gentle recognition. Continue to sit with yourself. Let those deep core beliefs you secretly hold about yourself, tumble out in to the light of awareness. Those deep fears and beliefs that having been running your life and secretly robbing you of the immense joys of life. Let yourself become gently aware of them all, without judgement, comment or resistance. Don't fight them. With bare attention simply observe them closely. These core unconscious beliefs are not bad in themselves. They are simply the result of false conclusions you made about yourself. Notice the hard solid ice they are made of. Just continue to let them come forward, with bare, choice-less attention. Notice how they have held your body in a cold, rigid hold – almost as if you were frozen solid and you could feel no sensation, no feeling in your body. Now this ‘hold’ is melting ….and you can feel life, energy, sensations, and contractions all over your body. Your body is coming alive again after decades of non-attention. Stay soft, relaxed and gentle with yourself.

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The Bliss Technique. There is really nothing you have to do to these core beliefs - simply to allow yourself to become aware of them. Like solid ice, exposed to sunlight, they will melt and dissolve…effortlessly.

It is the paradox of non-doing. Your continual, dissolve them all.

gentle,

conscious

awareness

of

them

will

gradually

As you learn to dissolve all your deepest, negative beliefs and fears about yourself, you'll notice a great change taking place. You'll begin to feel full, whole, complete - warm. Incredible currents of joy, of peace will stream through your body. You'll begin to see yourself in a new way. You'll feel different. You'll begin to radiate – literally give off a different energy frequency. As Tara Singh says in 'A Gift for All Mankind': "As we sit silent…one such person changes the vibrations of the whole planet. You can feel the presence of such a being miles away. He need say nothing" Also, you'll stop being so hard, so critical of yourself. You'll begin to take a more balanced, more positive view of yourself. Maybe, for the first time in your life you'll begin to EXPERIENCE (not talk about or pretend) a real love and acceptance of yourself. And when you do that everything changes - EVERYTHING. Barbara Marciniak couldn't be more right when she says in 'Bringers of the Dawn: "When you give yourself the dignity of your own love, as if you were royalty receiving the accolades of the people, everything changes…. When you believe in and love yourself, everything starts to go your way. The most difficult thing for most of you is making the commitment to believe you deserve love.

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The Bliss Technique. No one else has to love you. You are not here to go around gathering love from other people to convince yourself that you are worth it……. By committing to love yourself …..You become whole and complete .. And everything falls into place." This love (or specific energy frequency) that you will feel in the Bliss Technique is not imaginary.

It is a real energy field that exists in, around and all about you now. By sitting with yourself in the Bliss Technique, you are simply ALLOWING yourself to access this energy that is at the core of your being. In the beginning, you may only feel a little bit of it but this energy is infinite there is no limit to the love, pleasure you can feel for yourself and others.

Not Positive Thinking! We are not advocating here a form of positive thinking where you pretend you love yourself by repeating endless affirmations such as "I love myself. I accept myself. I am marvellous". This is just a form of mental gymnastics. It may be a start, a beginning to changing how you feel about yourself - but you must go beyond it. As you sit with yourself in silence and, allow whatever thoughts that may arise to pass away by not hating or judging them, you will, without trying or having to pretend, EXPERIENCE your natural state of being –and THIS ENERGY -Love – NATURALLY. You will naturally feel a deep love and acceptance of yourself - and there is no end to that love and joy. As you feel that energy, open to it fully and really allow yourself to experience it now in your body. Let us do as the Chinese Sage, Seng T'san advised us centuries ago: "Stop talking, stop thinking and start FEELING and there is nothing you will not understand" Page 290 of 306

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In 'I come as a Brother’, Bartholomew describes the process in this manner: "The quieter you get……. the more you will experience a feeling in the heart centre and if you are paying attention you will begin to sense just a little warmth….” ”The movement is experienced there as heat energy……you begin to love by resting more and more [in this energy], instead of in your mind with all of it's concerns and fantasies. It is not hard. We are talking about that moving energy which is love; sparkling, wonderful love". He continues: "Just be open to that energy. Start that energy into motion and when you start the love energy flowing, a wonderful thing will happen. You will start to love yourself." Later on, he wants to make very clear that this love, this pleasure is a real energy, not a fancy romantic illusion: "I am referring to an observable energy field in the vastness…. Love is an undulating energy that moves through you, within you and radiates out of you and changes everything. When it moves through you, it feels wonderful… Any person CAN begin to feel this energy, build with it, move with it and change with it". Allow yourself to open to these higher frequencies of energy and as you do, let me repeat everything in your life will change.

EVERYTHING.

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One Final Step So far, you have learned how to relax and open yourself so that you can experience the full energy and bliss of the life-force energy as it streams through your body. You have discovered the secret is to stay present in your body and to allow yourself to experience whatever energy is present without judgement, censure or preference. You have realized that it is this mature attitude of non-resistance and nonjudgement that allows the energy to grow, expand and flow effortlessly through you. You then discovered, through trial and error, that judgement, resistance and fear cause the energy to constrict and narrow to the point of non-existent. We then looked at the effect our addiction and fear of other people’s opinion of us can also cause our bodies to constrict, freeze and tightened so that we find it difficult to feel anything at all. Now….there is one last block that we must drop that is still keeping us in a state of tension and fear and blocking the full and unimpeded flow of the energy of life through our bodies…………...

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Module 15 The Sheer Bliss Of Human Oneness

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Module 15: The Sheer Bliss Of Human Oneness!

“We all share 99.99% the same genetic material. We are all 99.99% the same.”

As we have seen, most of us find it very difficult to relax and be calm even when we are just with ourselves. Even in our own company.

And when we are with other people, especially in close intimate situations, it is worse! But, as we now begin to practice the Bliss Technique, we’ll start to notice this changing.

We’ll notice a peace, a deep ease, a softness and a profound relaxation beginning to develop. Soon, we’ll be able to sit down with ourselves……centre ourselves….and remain so relaxed and calm that we’ll be able to increasingly experience more and more of the ecstasy of the life energy flowing through us….bringing chi, tingles, sensations and deep feelings of warm joy to all parts of our body. And then, as our daily practice deepens, these feelings will START to carry over into our daily life and we’ll even begin to experience them naturally when we are with other people – even in tense and intimate situations.

Union – As You Have Never Know It Before! But there is one more step beyond this that we must take if we really want to change how we feel when we are with people. It comes from a simple realization. When you make love to another person, there is nobody there.

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The Bliss Technique. Just you and them. Eye-to-eye, touch-to-touch, smell-to-smell, body-to-body. The rest of the world vanishes. There is just You ….and this OTHER person…... Isn’t there? Well, not exactly. There is also your ‘old self’ there. That ‘person’, that ‘idea construction’, who believes certain things about himself and the person he is with. That ‘old self’ that is nervous and anxious as hell now because, deep down, he feels uncomfortable and tense with this person he feels he must impress with his ‘performance’. For some reason, naked now, he feels ‘less’ than this person….and so, can’t seem to fully relax and L-E-T G-O and just enjoy WHATEVER happens. ‘Something’ in him is still keeping him tense – and over-sensitive. Even though he has released his past obsessive concern and addiction with needing to gain other people’s approval – he still feels there is something lacking. That there is still ‘something’ KEEPING him anxious and tense. We all feel this. And…..there is. BLINDNESS! You don’t really SEE the person you are with. You see ONLY the surface of them – the 1% of them. And from that surface, you judge them and YOURSELF. And most of us JUDGE ourselves to be terribly less than and inferior to other people.

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Human Equality We all pay lip-service to the idea of human equality but in real life, we all tend to believe it is a load of nonsense. The truth is: Most of us still feel ill-at-ease with people now because….deep down, we still feel inferior to them in some way. We feel just not ‘as good’ as them. And we spend most of our time trying to hide and disguise this feeling. Or try to over-compensate for it. Especially, during sex. So we can NEVER really relax and surrender to the pleasure of the moment. We are still, too tense, too frozen. Have you ever wonder why you feel like this with other people? This feeling of not as ‘worthy’ or as ‘accomplished’ as them. But before you do, please remember the terrible irony of all of this: Most of us feel EXACTLY the same way. Read again what we wrote at the beginning of our course. “You fear what other people think of you because you secretly fear that you are less than you should be…..and that the real you – seen up close– is absolutely unlovable. How strange that all of the secret fears of humanity are exactly the same.” It’s amazing, isn’t it? We can but laugh. The next time you enter a party, feeling self-consciousness and tense, remember that quote and have a good laugh to yourself. And remember: Virtually everybody else is feeling the same as you. Back to the question: Have you ever wonder why you still feel less than other people?

The answer is, you don’t see people as they really are. You see, you pay attention to only the SURFACE, only the 1% of how people are. And on the surface, yes, it definitely seems that a lot of people are better than us.

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No doubt about it. Everywhere, there are incredible beautiful people that people are instantly drawn to. Everywhere there are rich and intelligent people who have more money than you and enjoy a luxurious lifestyle where limitless excess is the norm. Everywhere, there are people who are more intelligent than you, thinner than you, more confident than you. There are builders who can build better houses than you! Surgeons who can perform better brain operations than you. Road sweepers who can clean the road better than you. And…….. in hundreds of ways, you are better than other people in other specifics. But…the problem is …..if we only look at the surface of things, yes, of course it is NO WONDER that most of us FEEL either inferior or superior to other people. Yes, it seems so right- so obvious, but like everything else that seems so right, it’s totally incorrect! Remember what we said in Module 1 We look around us and we believe that the earth and everything in it is solid. We’ll swear to it. Because that’s the way it seems! Yet, it is nothing of the sort. We now know that all matter is energy. Even rockhard steel is mostly empty space, with widely separated particles vibrating as probabilities. It ‘seems’ so solid – yet nothing but vibrating packets of energy1 We believe the earth is stationary. In fact, we plead that it MUST be – because everything ‘seems’ so ‘still’. Yet, it is speeding through space at an incredible speed. And centuries ago, we were all terrified to travel because, based on our 1% surface appearance of things, we believed the earth was flat – because that was the way it ‘seemed’ – and if we traveled too far out, we’d fall off the earth into oblivion. Although this was not true, the fact that we believed it was true was enough to create these terrible, anxious fears in us. And we believed it all because it ‘seemed’ so true!

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You and People! And so it is with our relationships with people. We all look at the surface – the 1%, the differences that separate us and based on that, we develop our belief, that some people are obviously ‘better’, more ‘special’ than us. So we feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease when we are with them. But here’s the thing: You, me, and the person you’re about to have sex with, we’re all the same! As human beings, we are all one, all absolutely equal in the essence of our core humanity. We all share 99.99% the same genetic material. We are all 99.99% genetically the same.” It is so important that we grasp and understand this. A lot of our problems in not being able to FULLY relax and really, totally and FULLY enjoy sex come from this lack of understanding and our addiction to approval. Let’s look more closely. We all share the same humanity. We’re all made up of the same stuff. We’re all constructed the same! We only look at the 1% that separates us, because it is so evident and we ignore – or do not pay ANY attention to the 99% we all share in common. This truth of human equality is a hard, cold fact. As a human being, you are as good as anybody. You have nothing to prove – so you can fully R-E-L-A-X and L-E-T G-O…… And….. if you do not feel you can relax like that with people, then the problem is not with them, but with your faulty perception and thinking. Let’s prove this. I want you to take time now to focus on this example and then pick other examples for yourself. Now: Imagine a radiantly beautiful woman. She is at home. Page 298 of 306

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I want you to really concentrate on her now- in the here and now – THIS MOMENT. Look at her. Until you can see and smell the very pores of her skin. See the roots of her hair. The smell of her scent. Don’t let your mind wander into the past or future, or into some fantasy or imagination of what you think this woman’s life might be like. Just focus on the raw reality of her life as it is NOW- this moment. Cut everything else away and focus on the bare-bones of what this woman’s life is really like.

MOMENT-BY-MOMENT That’s the secret. What does she do that you don’t? What does she experience that you don’t? What makes her so different from you? She gets tired. So she sleeps. Like you. There is sleeping She gets hungry. So she eats. Like you. There is eating. She gets thirsty. So she drinks. Like you. There is drinking. She has the same digestive system as you. She needs to clean out her system like you so she defecates. Like you. She smells and farts like you. She feels the cold like you so she turns on the heater. She is alone in this moment of time so she turns on the TV …..and sits watching it like you. She laughs like you. She cries like you. She might hear a noise …so she gets frightened like you. She thinks of an old memory and smiles like you She has the exact same biochemical and neurological system as you so she feels like you……

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The Bliss Technique. Her husband comes home. She feels love or indifference depending on their relationship. At night, she goes to the bathroom. She washes her face. Just like you. She cleans her teeth. Like you. She looks into her eyes. She glazes at herself in the mirror….She wonders how age is changing her. What other people are thinking about her. She thinks about tomorrow and plans what she has to do. Like you. She makes love….just like you. The sensations she feels are the same sensations and feelings available to you. They must be. You share the exact same neurological and biochemical system. She kisses her husband, says good night and turns around to her own side and snuggles into her pillow. She doesn’t sleep. She keeps her eyes open and just stares into the darkness. And she realizes that, essentially, she is all alone. Just as we all are. As she falls asleep, she remembers this line she once read. ‘You are born alone, you die alone and between the two you live alone in yourself. Even if you are living as part of the crowd in the dark corridors of time, or enraptured by the embrace of a lover, still the lover must sleep, as must the crowd, and you are still alone in yourself’ James Alan Conlan, ‘In Celebration to Life’

And one day too, her consciousness will pass to a new dimension and her ‘body’ will decay and writher. Just like you. We are all one.

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The Ultimate Reality When we stop to take the time and really look beyond the surface of things – at the true raw reality of life that we all share- it gives us a completely different perspective on how we relate to people.

We begin to concentrate on the 99% that is common to all of us. We begin to sense a real oneness, empathy, a real connection with each other. We start to FEEL more comfortable, more relaxed, and more at ease with each other. We feel less and less the need to IMPRESS. So we can relax more and thus feel MORE. We also see the absolute absurdity of feeling either inferior or superior to other people. But it is not enough to know this intellectually.

You must FEEL this truth in yourself. In your body. In your bones. In your blood. You MUST take time out to really focus and concentrate on the 99% that we all have in common. It takes effort to look beyond the surface 1% into the deeper truth of things. That’s why these exercises are so important. And as you proceed with them, your view and relationship with people will change dramatically. 100 %. You will feel closer to them. You will feel a part of them. Page 301 of 306

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You will feel connected to them as if all the barriers that were there earlier that separated you and kept you nervous have just fallen away. When you are together now in bed, the tension, the fear, the feeling that you must ‘perform’ will disappear as you concentrate and SEE her as she really is.

It’s a paradox but when you see how totally ‘ordinary’ both of you are – all the barriers of pretence and anxiety will effortlessly dissolve and you’ll experience the real orgasmic bliss of the closeness and merging of two people. Like all the other ideas I this course, don’t try to force this understanding. In fact, it can’t be forced. It will develop naturally as you spend time looking beyond the surface appearances that separate us and focus on the 99% ground of being that unities us.

Exercise By David Deida from his book, Instant Enlightenment. Here is another exercise you should try every day for the next 21 days. When you do, see how your attitude to your lover changes and how more relaxed and laid back you feel when you are together. This exercise is quite graphic. The point of it is to force us to wake up and see ourselves as we really are. Beyond the glamorous mask we are put on. To help us to see that beyond the differences, we are all the same. We are all in the same boat. And when we do, we will all relax more, stop things so seriously and stop creating all this unnecessary, chronic tension in our bodies trying to impress the person we’re with.

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The Exercise Imagine a lover now. Imagine him or her clearly…..in some fantasy situation….. 1. Whatever your fantasy is (savage sex in a steamy jungle, gentle massage in the lapping waters of a warm beach) see and feel your fantasy like a movie. Speed up the movie, faster and faster. Speed it up until it is a blur of white light 2. Start the fantasy wherever you naturally do (imagining you are in a canopied bed surrounded by candles, or behind a bush in a public park), and continue the fantasy, at fast speed, imagining the rest of your lives together. Fantasize growing old together, your attractive partner rotting with age: teeth falling out, breasts sagging like pancakes, penis shriveling like a worm, breath stinking like mold. Repeat this over and over for a few minutes, starting with the sexy fantasy and proceeding through inevitable old age, disease, and decrepitude End the fantasy with you or your imagined partner dying, putrid excretions dribbling from each hole. 3. Engage your favourite fantasy, but with a kind of X-ray vision, so your partner’s skin becomes transparent. You might still be together, dancing beneath the moonlight or making love in the woods, but now see your lover’s intestines, bile, lymph, skeleton, and liver. Your lover’s bladder fills with urine while your lover’s colon lurches with excrement. Continue the fantasy for a few minutes as if you had this X-ray vision, seeing right through the skin to what your attractive lover really looks like on the inside. Modern physics explains that matter is energy. Even flesh and bones are mostly space, with widely separated particles vibrating as probabilities. So, imagine your favourite fantasy, feeling your body and your lover’s as mostly space vibrating: space making love with space, energy dancing with energy, in a meadow of flowers or on a fluffy blanket that is also space vibrating as energy.

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Module 16 AND FINALLY…..

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Module 16 AND FINALLY…..

. A young person approaches you and shyly asks you: "Why do you practice this technique? It seems so pointless". You look at her and smile, "Because it is so blissful’. So pleasurable. It's as simple as that”. "But I don't understand - it looks so boring. Just sitting there" "Yes, it may seem that way - but can I ask you, have you ever experienced pleasure in your life - like when you make love to someone you love?" "Ya- kind of." "Well, the energy, the pleasure I feel in the Bliss Technique is just a more EXPANDED, sustained version of that energy’. ‘It is NOT a way to avoid or criticise sexual energy, but it is just a way to experience this energy -the life-force energy at its SOURCE. You can still enjoy the beauty of sexual energy but now, you have the option to experience it at a higher level. The young woman nods as you continue. "This energy that I experience in the Bliss Technique is the life force - the very energy of life - it is an infinite, all-intelligent, omnipresent energy…. …In science they are beginning to refer to it as 'zero point energy'. Did you know, for example that the zero-point energy in one cubic centimetre of space is said to equal the energy available in a million, million tons of uranium? Some people refer to it as the energy of God." The young woman seems hesitant and says: "But I don't believe in God, it's not important to me." "I understand, but let me ask you this: " What would you do if I were to put a pillow over your head now and tried to smoulder you?"

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The Bliss Technique. "What! I'd kick and fight and do anything to stop you." "Exactly. That's exactly what you would do in order to protect your life - YOUR LIFEFORCE – The energy of God or LIFE in you. So you see, whether you realise it or not, LIFE or ENERGY, or whatever term you want to use, is the most important thing in all our lives". Now….go ahead now. Stop talking about it. Stop reading about it. Go ahead now and experience it. The next step: When you have mastered the Bliss Technique, enjoy our 10 Day special program.

Or if you want to use the Bliss Technique to lose weight or improve your health, follow our new weight-loss course.

All these courses can be downloaded with the Bliss technique.

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