What Is The Source Of Bliss?

A short talk about the root of addictive behavior and the source of the high in every experience. Self-knowledge atma-vidya is a timeless tradition revealing the true nature of self. Join John Weddepohl for this insightful talk.

Transcript

The thing is to understand is that in any experience, You are the high in the experience. You are the end of the experience, The beginning of the experience, And the totality and the content of the experience, Whether it's ayahuasca or it's an ice cream or it's a yoga practice or it's anything. Whatever the experience is, You are the high. So thinking the high is in the experience is a problem because then, Especially when it comes to a drug, And the problem with things like drugs is that you want to keep repeating the experience. And so the mind becomes very much more sophisticated and to let that go becomes more and more difficult. Just think about it, Having even been exposed to the understanding of yoga and teachings of yoga and meditation, Etc. How difficult it is to let those go right now, Right? Because we become so locked, There's become another samskar. So this is what we're dealing with. When the mind finds solace in anything, It becomes another samskar that you've got to uproot. Yeah? And so, I think it's a problem because the person wants to just keep repeating it, You know, And then it becomes a situation where you no longer enjoying the drug, The drug is enjoying you. In other words, No longer like a person hooked on alcohol, The alcohol is drinking the person, The person is no longer drinking alcohol. And so the drug is getting high on me. I am no longer getting high on the drug, Right? And that's where this ends up being, Right? And so this can happen with yoga as well. Meditation, Meditation, You know, Not knowing myself as the bliss itself, The pureness itself, The content of meditation itself, You know, As the meditation itself. You know, I'm getting lost in practices, Lost in all these things. Nothing wrong with the practices. They're absolutely impeccable and beautiful. One needs them, Right? But they are helpful in that they prepare the mind. That's what they are. They make the mind what is in yoga called adhikari in this tradition. Adhikari, Prepared mind, Ready to accept the truth. And that's what meditation yoga is there for to do. If I can't accept myself as truth, I need something to remind me. And I think in this day and age, We all need to be reminded. You know, First of all, The yoga teacher's job is not to give us practices, But to prepare, First of all, If our minds aren't ready, To help us prepare our minds to accept the truth of who we are. But then while, You know, Giving, Nowadays what's happening is all the teachers are doing is giving us practices and saying, Oh, Experiencing the joy, Experience the bliss, Experience the cosmos that you are, You know, You know, It's not good. I experienced bliss in ice cream. I experienced bliss when I eat this banana. I experienced bliss when I'm having sex. I experienced bliss when I'm having whatever I'm having. But does that tell me what what bliss is? No. Does it? I'm experiencing happiness in watching a sunset, But does it tell me what happiness is? No. Nothing's telling me, You know, What happiness is and what everybody should be doing right now is instead of chasing bliss and becoming bliss warriors, You know, Chasing all around the world, Climbing Machu Picchu and going crazy everywhere, Bali and everywhere and doing bliss gatherings everywhere, We should be finding out the source of bliss. You know, What is the source? So that's always been the job of the teacher is to introduce you to the bliss itself, Not introduce you to practices and roles, You know. So I said recently in this week, Going to get to college, You get introduced to and what it be a lawyer or a doctor or something like that. That's fine. In the relative world, They give you a role, You know, Doctor and they give you a role of lawyer, You know. But now going to a teacher, You don't want to be given roles. You want to be introduced to the truth. Because we've got enough roles and bliss is not a role. Happiness is not a role. It's, You know, What we want to be introduced to is the role less, Infinite, Absolute that we already are.