I’m so grateful to him for bringing this up. Frankly, it’s a concept that’s always delighted and inspired me, but at the same time, I haven’t really spent any time thinking about for a long, long time.
Not to go all “ooga-booga,” but have you noticed that when the Universe (or substitute whatever cosmic force you prefer: God, Allah, your subconscious, the Green Men from Mars controlling your thoughts) wants you to pay attention to something, it really has a way to get your attention? After leaving that evening, I thought about it and then as I’m so apt to do, forgot about it pretty quickly until the next day I went to a yoga class as the teacher spoke about the “bliss body.” It’s the great joy and peace that is part of our very being and not dependent on any external occurrence. (Of course, outside circumstances can remind us of our bliss bodies just as they can obscure our experience of the bliss -- but these circumstances never truly erase that bliss body.)
On that particularly warm, beautiful day -- the first after a long, grey winter -- there was a noticeable change in mood in pretty much everyone you met. It was hard not to feel it yourself – that incredible lightness of being brought on by the first run of sunny days and well, not having to wear 10 pounds of extra clothing.
But our bliss bodies are always here, we just pile up the anxieties and busy-ness on top of it like so many down-filled layers that we end up so burdened that we eventually forget this great source of happiness resides within ourselves every moment of every day.
So after these two very related discussions, I’m going to try to heed the Universe and try to get back to a sense of play in how I think and how I act. I love my bliss body – I’m so much happier and at peace when I function through that body than, say, my late-catching-the-train-cuz-I-overslept-(AGAIN)-body, or pissed-off-cuz-my-sandals-gave-me-blisters-body or my generic-cranky-pants-body. It’s the body that loves to express the lila, the play of the universe.
It’s also the creative force that in some ways has been missing from my studio. It’s the creative lab part of making art – the playful, what’s-this-material/tool/thingy experience that leads to breakthroughs.
Lately, as you know if you've been reading this, I’ve been a little obsessed with fur and have had this growing desire to not just paint fur but get my hands in it, yet I’ve made excuses about actually going out and getting some scraps to start. I dunno why; I just have. (Aren’t we always the ones that get in our way the most?)
I finally hauled my sorry self (as apart from my bliss body) down to the fabric district to get some fur scraps. As a firm believer in karma, I couldn’t let myself by whole pelts but even buying the scraps made me feel like I was making a withdrawal from my good karma bank. Then eBay came to the rescue. I found vintage fur stoles and coat collars from animals looooong dead that I could source for a fraction of the price, both cash and karma-wise.
I have no idea what, if anything, will come out of this experiment, but then again that’s kind of the point of play, isn’t it? Who asks a kid, "you spent all afternoon in the sandbox and what do you have to show for it?" When did we ever grow out of needing time to just play and let our minds and hands wander just for the sheer pleasure of the experience itself? When did we start needing to demand a purpose from every action as a way of justifying our existence? Isn't enough sometimes that we just are -- and simply let ourselves revel in the lila of that experience?
Image: Mid-day; Naples, Florida; May 2009
