What Is Your Bliss?

“Bliss is that deep, fulfilling, sustainable, driving need you have. That thing that is the true ‘you.’ Your bliss is your life’s purpose.”
Kenneth Benjamin

For much of my life if you asked me what my bliss was my answers would have been changeable. I might have had to think some to answer the question. I might even have said, “I don’t really know.”

I recently asked a friend what she likes to do more than anything. This woman works non-stop. She teaches during the day, then goes home to raise two teenagers. Her husband works constantly so much of the emotional investment of raising children is left to her. She puts her all into it. My friend had to think about my question. “I don’t know. Reading maybe?” Her own happiness is not her first priority.

How many of us don’t really know what our bliss is?

What we most love, what makes us happiest, the areas in our lives which bring us joy and satisfaction, this is our Higher Self speaking to us of our purpose for being here. Guiding us toward our purpose through the emotion of bliss. Who doesn’t want to repeat a pleasant or blissful experience?

Some lucky people already know where their passion is, they pursue it actively, it is their vocation or their job and consumes their life.

Then there are others like me who enjoyed lots of things and tried lots of different jobs, never settling. All the while I pursued my bliss, unaware that I did so. My difficulty with identifying my bliss came from the fact that it was too familiar, too much a part of my inner life. It was my comfort. It was a place of flow and every so often deep joy and love. It certainly didn’t feel like anything that could be my work or my purpose in life. It was too natural to me, like breathing.

I started journaling as a teenager, living away from home at boarding school in a room with three other girls. A naturally, private person I found the lack of privacy hard. My journal became my private space. A place where I could go to release the adolescent anguish of a fourteen year old learning about herself and others. I wrote furiously of whatever upset took me at the time. As my feelings scrawled over the pages I was able to feel calmer. As I calmed myself, solutions to problems presented themselves and I worked them through in my writing. Always I felt comforted. At times I had an “ah-ha” moment, feeling a sense of enlightenment, like a light bulb coming on in my head. Those were the best times when I felt a tremendous sense of fulfillment, love and connection.
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I am still journaling, fifty years later. My writing has expanded into this blog, and I acknowledge it as having high priority in my daily life. It is my bliss.

​Allow yourself to be guided. Find your bliss and follow it.


Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​What makes you happiest of all?

Chances are your bliss is already an active part of your life however small. Today, make it a priority to discover your bliss.

1. Think about what comforts you, what cheers you up when you’re feeling low. What are you doing?

2. Now think about times when you experienced flow. Time flew by. You were absorbed completely in what you were doing and what you were doing flowed through you almost without thought. You looked up to find that time had passed you unaware. You were in flow. What were you doing?

3. Now think about peak experiences in your life. Those times in which you experienced fulfillment, happiness, deep love. What were you doing?

What do these activities have in common? What patterns underlie these activities? Hidden within you will find your bliss.