On being blisssed out

Until a couple of years ago I used to attend a weekly yoga class run by Ananda Marga. It was gentle yoga with a lot of resting between postures and it ended with a meditation. I would come out 'blissed out'. This was different to my Quaker blissed out state - more of that later. I liked the Hindu inspired teachings that were part of the class and the various teachers over the years mostly young white and European were gentle souls. Then things got a bit evangelical for my taste and so I stopped going. But I miss it - the yoga and the blissed out state so I am thinking of going again.

I have always been blissed out from time to time at least since I was a teenager if not earlier. Maybe a briefish dabble with hash helped - it used to bliss me out even on small doses and then it didn't. But getting involved with spiritual healing, meditation and Reichian therapy (an energy based form of psychotherapy) in my late twenties early thirties led to more regular blissedoutness. But I never came to rest quite within a spiritual/religion home.

Then 20 years ago I stumbled across Quakers and felt I had come one. The blissed outness seem part of things and I loved their archaic language and their egalitarianism - I am convinced I was in the English Civil War in a past life and of course Quakers stared in that period - 1652. Many of the people who were Levellers in the 1640s became Quakers in the 1650s.

But I have a problem. I find it hard to talk about my blissed outness to my fellow Quakers. This problem of mine reduces my intimacy with my fellow Quakers. It's like I can't switch out of my blissed outness into ordinary' conversations over tea afterwards. No-one seems to talk about what we have just done together int eh silence of the Meeting. I am also rather lacking in some social skills (we teach what we need to learn!) and I struggle in social situations with people I don't know that well. So after 15 years of attending Manchester Quaker Meetings I still feel on the edge. |Even I've been an Elder and am in my 7th year as Quaker Chaplain so in theory I should be in the thick of things.

Back to the blissed out thing. I guess I became a Quaker because this was a great way of honoring and developing my blissed outness even if we don't really have much apparent Quaker language for it. Unlike say Wilber who offers an all signing all dancing model of human spiritual development. So I was culturally ready for a quaint old fashioned language egalitarian group that was inclusive and which struggled with the word 'Christian' and it also helped me resolve some of my issues around sin.

But I struggle on a human level with this being a Quaker.

OK back to blissed out. Ananda Marga blissed out is different to Quaker blissed out for me. It's calmer perhaps because it is after and during yoga. I come out of the classes often feeling lit up. Quaker blissed out seems different. Maybe it is partially because after the Quaker silence there is usually lots of notices which pulls me back into being cerebral. It is as if I/we can't say 'that was stunning'. Or 'that was stunning for me how was it for you?' I know, I know, people who were not stunned might feel excluded. But not being able to acknowledge I feel stunned is excluding me. OK so I am going to have break that taboo.

Basically I am a mystic as some of you know hence this blissed outness. OK then what is being a mystic? Let's leave that one for another post!

Thanks for your listening to this!