Enduring Bliss

     Regular readers know that in August of 2013 I was granted an occurrence that I have variously labelled with the synonyms Quantum Moment; Spiritual Download; and Peak Experience.
      The name Peak Experience comes from the studies by the American psychologist Abraham Maslow (1908 –1970), best known for creating a hierarchy of needs.
     According to Maslow, there are always four aspects to a peak experience: it is vivid; unexpected; benevolent: and enduring. It is also something rarely spoken about, and as a result it is easy to doubt.
     In the beginning the energy was unparalleled and certainly vivid, 14 months later seems a good time to explore the whole, especially to establish whether it has been enduring, or whether it was some other, more fleeting phenomenon.
     As time passes, events become memories and might fall away from daily experience. They shift and change as we re-tell the story; revealing the details we wish we had noticed. I am now that much older and, I hope, more objective than I could be in the early days and weeks.
     Vivid Whatever name I give to what happened, there remains an intensity that is difficult to describe. I wish I could say that I thought first of a blossoming rose or lotus in my heart-space, sadly I cannot. I have likened the sensation to cauliflowers opening behind my ribs. It felt dense and heavy, somehow more like vegetables than blooms, yet it was profoundly lovely. My chest was filled with an energy that gave the impression of growth as the seconds passed. Within the restriction of my physical self it became denser and heavier and more intense. Writing about it the impression is real again, although less extreme.
     Unexpected I was with a client. We had finished a Reiki session; we were drinking tea and being sociable. It was a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing. No ritual had been invoked; neither of us had any expectation of anything more; there was nothing in any way unusual. Until it happened.
     I have used words like ‘hit’ and ‘slammed’ and ‘broadsided’ in my attempts to describe the suddenness and force I felt. Out of nowhere it landed in my physical body as the dense-chest impact, and it surrounded me as it filled my energy field.
     Benevolent My first reaction was love. I suddenly loved my client. I loved myself and my life. I loved the place where I was sitting, and I loved the whole world. The pressure in my heart-space transmitted bliss onto my emotional plane. So much bliss within me that the loves I was feeling crowded together, and became an impenetrable entity sharing all four planes of expression within me. As my physical body processed awareness of the ‘cauliflower’ in my ribcage, my mental plane generated blissful thoughts, my emotional plane wallowed in the ecstasy of the moment, and my spirit remembered that this was a contracted moment, part of the plan I had laid out for my life.
     Enduring The bliss spilled into the rest of that day and that month and that year. It endures. More than a year of linear time has gone by, and the bliss remains with me. The loves that landed in that moment have expanded. Cosmic love flows through me like a river, and I am blessed to be at the seashore. I do not channel a narrow one-person stream of Cosmic harmony: I am like the delta. Powerful and limitless love fills me with well-being and moves through me, it broadens and extends its range, moving enjoyment and delight into my interactions with the world.
     During the weeks following this life-changing moment, I received insights about my work and my life. I was granted keys to how various aspects of my work could be combined. My responses to people and ideas underwent shifts and realignments, and I treated myself with compassion, and became very clear about boundaries. 
     I no longer worry that the effects will somehow evaporate and vanish. I have been changed, and my life is forever improved.

     Jo Leath has been supporting clients through change and growth since the 1980s.
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